Successful sales strategies
How to use “framing” in sales
Hi! I’m Dustin Dye, CEO and Co-Founder of Botcopy Inc.
Over the past four years, we’ve transformed our conversational design agency into a SaaS (software as a service) for enterprises and the public sector. We solved a problem, partnered with Google, and did so without raising capital until we surpassed 10,000 users and over 10,000,000 engagements.As a bootstrapped company, our growth strategy has followed a straightforward rule of thumb. Build what customers are willing to pay for yesterday. This process relies heavily on the synergy between our sales and product engineering team. As we continue to experience inflation and talks of recession, I want to share some of our techniques with aspiring entrepreneurs.
Framing value
Framing value is one of the most successful sales strategies. For example, the value proposition of Nike isn’t merely shoes. The value prop is that you will be more athletic in these shoes. Being athletic or at least the perception of it, has value.
You’re losing money if you haven’t found a way to express your value. At Botcopy, our ability to articulate value saved our business! Without venture capital, building software and its new features may seem impossible. I get it; I’ve been there. But I can tell you from experience — it’s not impossible! So I encourage all early-stage entrepreneurs to focus more on sales than investor outreach. Sales are the key early on. And believe it or not, you will close many deals if you frame your value correctly.
Knowing how to frame the value can evolve in many ways. For example, in the early days of Botcopy, we benefited from working directly with clients as an agency. Of course, this approach is not a path I would recommend everyone take, but it did give us a pulse on how valuable our software could be. We soon discovered that for many clients in our market, using our SaaS was much easier than having to build a custom solution themselves. Unfortunately, they didn’t always know that, so we had to tell them.
The harsh reality is that some potential clients could make whatever you’re thinking of building or have built. They could whip up a custom solution in-house and then own it. That’s why one of the most talented engineers I’ve ever worked with always reminds me: “Dustin, anything is possible. It just costs money.”
In sales, we refer to this potential obstacle as The Buy vs. Build conundrum. When this obstacle arises, it’s crucial to frame your company’s value prop! First, consider that you’re saving your client time and money developing and maintaining a solution on their own.
After all, your solution probably isn’t their core business offering. Building and owning it themselves doesn’t make business sense if you frame it correctly: Every company has limited resources, and expanding outside the core business operations can often lead to failures, losses, and opportunity costs. So please don’t be shy about letting them know that while anything is possible, some solutions take more time than others.
Understanding your value
In any good negotiation, both parties must know what value they bring to the equation. There is a win-win scenario (Zone of Possible Agreement) and a path to get there. If you fail to frame your value precisely, the deal will likely tilt in your client’s favor. Let’s use feature requests as an opportunity to frame your value.
However, before trying this framing technique, make sure you’re clear on the following:
How mission-critical is the feature to your client?
For example, Botcopy is WCAG compliant. Public sector clients would be unable to place our messenger on their website if we were not WCAG compliant. So, WCAG compliance is a mission-critical feature.
How valuable is this particular client?
The criteria could be the projected annual spending or a helpful case study or partnership. Value can take many forms; be sure to define the value. If it’s not a client that can help your business grow, it’s probably not a great idea to fast-track a feature that isn’t on your roadmap.
Will other valuable clients use the feature?
Feature requests can be tricky, especially if it’s not on the product roadmap. However, I can tell you from experience that your customers are usually correct, which is why your roadmaps should be fluid, not rigid. If valuable clients are willing to pay for a feature to be moved up the line, move it up. Up-front payment is a practical heuristic that the new build is worth it to your market.
But how do you get a client to pay for something that isn’t available yet?
For example, the feature will cost you $5,000 to build, so you need up-front funding. Of course, you can ask the client for the $5,000, but it could create some uncomfortable vibes. For instance, the client might feel they want ownership of that feature. After all, if you paid $5,000 for something and found out your competition could access that same feature after you paid up-front for the buildout, that might not sit right with you!
Let’s try re-framing the situation to make everyone see things differently and more accurately. Let’s start with what we know:
1. It’s going to cost $5,000.
2. The feature is mission-critical to your client.
3. They already spend $5,000+ per year on your service
4. Several other accounts will likely use this requested feature.
So given these priors, here’s how we’ve approached situations like this at Botcopy. First, we ask for reassurance that the client will continue to use our services after the feature build is complete. It doesn’t make sense to build a unique feature that the customer won’t use; we want them to stick around. So the question I always ask is,
“Will you continue using our product if we deliver this feature within your requested time frame?”
It’s a fair question, ensuring that the client will commit to staying if we put in the effort. Also, at Botcopy, our business model is that we charge by usage, made up of what we call engagements. So since the hard costs are $5,000 for the feature, I make sure to get reassurance that the client will commit to an engagement pre-purchase order of $5,000. So we frame the sale to focus less on buying a feature and more on the commitment to usage fees they’d be paying anyway.
One might argue that it’s the same thing — but sales are often all about context and how you frame the value for both parties. And sales are the key to growing your business!
I hope this insight helps your journey. Feel free to comment below.
