Selling design in India | A lesson from hours lost
Being in the agency business for a while we thought it was time to take a close look at our studio’s sales process or a lack thereof and spruce things up. We recognized a crucial cue/signal to assess our leads and identifying this cue early on has saved us countless hours.
Coming straight to the point —
We have reassessed our qualifiers for vetting leads and a big one amongst those is whether they have any intuitive sense of how design works and how it might help their cause.
We have submitted ourselves to the notion that for those cases where design isn’t understood deeply we shall move on and invest that time with leads where a nuanced and a richer conversation can take place.
We recognize that not every business owner or founder is aware of how design functions and neither do we expect the same, though there are many project owners out there who do and we want to stick to them.
In our short journey, we’ve learnt a great deal about running a service business. Big lessons for us have been around sales and marketing. This comes from our own experience in the Indian context but it just might be applicable across.
“ It’s a fool’s errand. If you find yourself in this process you’re already on a losing wicket. If you find yourself having to justify the work you do day-to-day with your senior stakeholders, it’s time to find another team or another company. “
says David Travis (founder User Focus) to the many who ask him how they can help their teams or senior stakeholders understand the value of UX/Research.
Then vs Now
Agency founders find it really hard to say no to projects. The fear of losing a project is real and that comes forth in investing disproportionate effort with every possible lead and treating them all as equal.
If you are a consultant or run an agency, we guess you’ve been there.
For us, the biggest time sink have been those cases where we’ve found ourselves convincing the leads about the value of design itself. For the longest time not realizing what a futile attempt it’s been. We are not skilled enough in persuasion to change people’s mind over a few calls on such a deep topic, especially, in the face of preformed notions.
In the events where we did onboard projects despite this indication, the experiences haven’t been fruitful. Unrealistic timelines and expectations. No trust in the process. No heed to expertise have been the common traits in those engagements.
Building pitches and drafting emails isn’t fun and even less when the gut says it’s not going anywhere. So as a growing business with limited resources it’s been a great decision to establish certain guard rails along our sales and marketing activities. It brings in clarity, peace of mind and reclaimed time which can be invested back in things we really like to do.
Some suggestive cues in the conversations
- Design doesn’t happen in silos and should be understood well. ex- Ad assets can’t be built without understanding customers and without knowing a clear value proposition for the various segments. Same story for products.
- A lack of willingness for a proper diagnosis of the situation and challenges at hand.
- Wanting “designs” served up right away.
- Putting an unreasonable weightage on the logo design for a business’s success. A logo is not the brand.
- Design as a band aid measure.
& many more…
There was indeed a time when evangelizing design was very much needed but given the knowledge available in the public domain and that it’s been such contributing function for many successful businesses we hope project owners understand that it is beyond just shapes and colors by now (2021).
As a friend says natural selection will take its course better frameworks will emerge and the obsolete will fade away.
To our agency and consultant friends we’d say it’s never too early or too late to look into this boring stuff and it certainly pays back in folds.
Keep designing and keep leveling up.
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