Hey guys,
I run Lowfundwala Productions, a storified-video production house for Startups.
As we grow and mature, we’re beginning to wonder how we can improve. One sure-shot way would be to understand why we lose prospective customers (we’re polite, a good mix of formal and informal to put the opposite person at ease, professional in our dealings and thorough with all the relevant information and pitches).
We now understand the value of feedback from prospective customers who’ve decided to not avail of our services. At first, this realisation began with a feeling of annoyance at our prospects for ignoring calls, sms-es and mails altogether after my team would work for hours on proposals and estimates (each video is sort of a turnkey project and requires a lot of careful planning and estimation). But then, we’re constantly reminded that customer is king (Agree 100%)
So here’s the question. When the prospect goes incommunicado (ignoring calls, smses, emails) right after getting estimates and ideas, how do you make most of the situation? For us, getting feedback would be great (on why they chose not to deal with us), but how do you extract that feedback without rubbing them the wrong way?
Thanks!
Ranjeet Pratap Singh
Hi Kashyap,
At the outset let me mention that I am a fan of you guys and your creativity. Given that allow me to make an educated guess on why I think a few prospects would go incommunicado after getting estimates and ideas.
A few days back I was planning on making a short teaser video for my yet to be launched venture, so I researched a bit online and asked around a few people about the people/companies who would do that and the costs involved. I learned that a lot of freelancers would be willing to develop a video for significantly lesser cost but they would need a very clear cut story and instructions in terms of what video to build. I also went through many DIY video designing tools/websites, and found that the major requirement would be same here too(clear story/content and idea about the video/style). I also realized that almost everyone that I talked to in start-up community had thought of getting a video designed and developed(or do it himself) at-least once, but after talking to some people most of them thought it’s too expensive and that they would do it ‘later’.
And, I think these are the two majors reasons why people would go incommunicado(along with them feeling the shame/guilt in admitting this):
1.) They contact you to get an idea of how it can be done and then search for a cheaper option(either freelance or DIY)
2.) Once they get the proposal and the estimate, they think that perhaps this is not worth it(either in their budget at that particular time or as per their perceived effort/value addition from your side).
As for what you can do in such as a case, I think the first thing would be to understand that everybody can not(and should not) be our customer, and the second thing would be break the process of providing proposal and estimates in parts. E.g. In the first interaction we would give them an outline of the proposal and ask them for their feedback on it, work on the feedback and then send a more detailed proposal. Psychologically the more a person has been involved in a decision the tougher for him to say no or avoid(theory of successive approximations or more commonly foot in the door technique).
Disclaimer: I didn’t contact any agency including yours at that time, I used a DIY tool and made a whiteboard animation.
Jitendra Gursingh
Nobody would spend (read:waste) their time on giving feedback on something they did not like unless it is an open platform (zomato, tripadvisor etc.) There is no exact answer to your question but I shall try and list possibilities:
a. Feedback has to be taken in a pre-launch stage when you are working with friends / family or some clients who are close to you & will give you honest feedback. (I am currently doing this).
b. Calls, SMSes & Mails are stage 1. If its cold-calling, an impromptu meeting is also ok (most common excuse is “just passing by your office 🙂 After a meeting or two, you should be able to identify who is the decision maker and who is a decision influencer. A decision influencer is mostly someone with whom you have a frank talk and be in touch with even if you are not doing any business with that company. You need an insider to know to which competitor your business has gone to (if it has). Once you know this, it is easier to measure differences between the competitor & your firm on aspects like quote, skills, any star member in the other team etc.
I would also take more feedback from my existing clients and understand what we are doing right & then highlight those points in sales pitches to potential clients.
All d best ..
Vivek Lath
Ha , daily story of my business and most other businesses. I can think of a few things.
– Prospect comes across the service and thinks that he needs the service. Gets in touch to realise that this is much more expensive than anticipated. Much like going out hunting for a lawyer, once the first quote comes in, you wonder, is this worth the money at this stage in the business. (Good lawyers are worth the money)
– Prospects are only fishing. If the price is cheap maybe then I will look at this. They may not necessarily need it.
– After initial conversations, prospect realises that it is lot of work from his side as well and does not have time for it.
– Prospect likes the service but thinks that it is just not important at this point in time. They are just plain vanilla busy in tons of other things. Most prospects don’t say NO after initial engagements. This is the case 80% of the time.
Followups, Followups and Followups are the only way. How you conduct these is the key. Active and Passive modes.
Active Modes – Calls, emails (try drip marketing) and uninvited visits to office (don;t be too shy to do this)
Passive – Content marketing and status updates. Most of our new business came in when we emailed them about some new deal or an update on what we are doing new. Use retargeting on online advertising models. Be in their face. Out of sight and out of mind. Remember, whenever the prospect even thinks of this service, he should come to you.
Typical sales cycles in most B2B are long with lots of dropoffs. Be in the game.
By the way, I checked out your website. Good team. Will you be interested in making videos other than startup videos. I run a very active Youtube partner network and now want to start creating my own IP for digital media. If you guys are interested in this, ping me at vivek at goquestmedia dot com
kashyap swaroop
Thank you so much, Ranjeet, Jitendra and Vivek for taking out the time to post such detailed insights :). Allow me to revert individually and take the discourse forward for other members to take away something from.
@Ranjeet: Firstly, all the very best on your new venture. Secondly, thank you for the kind words. Folks like you fuel folks like us :).
1. I hope that’s not true, while I’m sure it’s completely possible. The core of Lowfundwala’s belief system is that Startups are the most trustworthy enterprises, especially owing to their bluntness and no-BS attitude. If they think it’s too expensive for them, we expect them to say so (we’re competitively priced).
2. Possible. I reckon we need to use statistics in our favour and make sure our customers understand the value of a video.
I will take your advice and try fine-tuning our sales process by involving the customer a bit more. And congratulations on your video. Share a link :)?
@Jitendra: your conclusions are based on the premise that the prospect did not like the product (your opening statement), which would imply that they were “fishing” for a sub-standard product? I find that a tad bit odd, though I’m sure that’s common.
1. How can I take feedback from friends/family/past clients on why a future client had high-level discussions and finally backed out and went incommunicado? I can see how they’re remotely related, but the feedback I’m seeking is more failure-specific than success-specific. Earlier clients were “sold”, so how can they comment the possible reasons my product won’t sell? (This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’d love your insights on these)
2. Absolutely. I’m just learning this :). Thank you for reinforcing the concept!
Getting feedback from existing clients is something else we’re heavily focusing on. Always good to know our plusses and strong suits. Thank you so much for your thoughts!
@Vivek: Your insights made me feel not so bad about ourselves, for the simple reason that I now understand that there can be multiple reasons, some out of our own control, for such cases. Perhaps sensitising our market about the importance of videos might be what we need to focus on.
Your advice on followups especially resonated with me. That’s one area we’ve not been very aware of. Will try these over the span of the next few months. We’ll need it.
And yes, we’re always looking for new associations. I will write to you soon :).
Jitendra Gursingh
1. Yeah I messed up the opening line with a wrong example 🙂 the intent was to convey that nobody would spend their time giving feedback on something they didnt like i.e. your pitch / your proposal. Zomato / Tripadvisor are wrong examples .. you are right, they come into the picture after the consumer has had some experience.
2. Often the reasons for success or failure are the same, IMHO. Though your first customers would have already been sold, there must be some reasons on why they went ahead with you. Though you dont go through the normal grind of pitching & approval with them, there is a stage wherein you explain your concept & improve it with their suggestions.
Also, your website has awesome credentials but could do better with a dose of excitement , a full screen video playing in the home page background to begin with 🙂
All the best..
Amit Shroff
Hi Kashyap,
We are a start-up too and i can understand your paint. It take lots of time and effort to put a proposal for a client. I find this culture in specially in India where people would go incommunicado. I think it is difficult to get feedback from them on why they rejected us, since you can expect a negative feedback if you didn’t delivered well, but if did a awesome work for a client 2/10 would give you a testimonial. Hence how can you expect a feedback from a person who is not yet your client.
I had faced situation where a pre-sales client had rejected us without even meeting us. We had a incident recently, we were suppose to meet a client in Gurgoan for eCommerce – We had shared these eCommerce Packages and asked him to meet so that after understanding his required we could give me a custom package as per his budget. He earlier cancelled the meeting and postponed it to Friday and on Thursday informed me that he have already finalized it with some other local vendor. Hence really difficult to say, people in 21st century still believes that the vendor should be walking distance from his office or home, so you cannot change these thoughts.
I also had experience where people requested for design and later rejected our bid. When they launched our design, they copied the design provided by us. Do you think I would ever take feedback from such client. No I will not and neither I would ever work for these client.
But I agree that we should understand the effort which had been put across the other guy. Hence should communicate even if the quote is out of your budget. We should learn to do business and realize the effort of others.
And above all if you ask someone whats your budget, he would never tell you. I hope i was answer to answer your question.
Ranjeet Pratap Singh
@Kashyap: here is the link, this is the first and only video I’ve ever made 😀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L71YwC7BOQ
asha chaudhry
hey kashyap,
have you browsed around on this topic?
this is a really useful read!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/one-reason-your-sales-pitch-f…
in fact, check out all of jerson’s ppts – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/how-to-beat-your-competition-to-the-discussion-table-with