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There’s a common method among agency founders and salespeople: “sell now, worry later”. This is a mistake. Whilst this approach can boost short-term financial growth, it is unsustainable for long-term client satisfaction and bad for team morale… not to mention unethical!
When a project has been sold without consideration, the delivery team is, most of the times, put under extreme pressure to meet unrealistic expectations. The sellers may have met their targets, but the value to all parties is diminished when projects get messy, overdue, over-budget, and out-of-scope.
Traditionally there has been a disconnect between those who are selling and the project (operations) teams. Whereas UX and design is commonly integrated into early meetings, there has been a notable gap between sales and technical departments. Thankfully, this is changing.
With the bigger picture in mind, agencies are involving the technical folk at the earliest stages of a project, including the very first exploration meetings. This is how we like to do things at Lab Digital, and in this article I’ll look at the main benefits and biggest challenges.
The sales vs. operations conflict is one of the oldest in the book. If a project is sold at 100 hours but it really needs 200 hours of work, does anyone emerge happy at the end? Usually not. Whilst a great solution may have been delivered, nobody wants their project to be a slog.
The client feels let down, the project team is overworked, and profitability goes out the window. Of course, this can happen occasionally. It’s part of the game. But there are ways to ensure that this outcome isn’t the norm, to the benefit of all involved.
In an article on the Project Management Institute (PMI) blog, Rita Mulcahy outlines various ways in which sales and project teams can work together at the outset to achieve a better result. She also writes about insisting on a finalised scope of work, collecting background contextual information, and looking for hidden personal and institutional objectives.
The article points out that by working together, the sales and project teams get the best opportunity to spot risks and uncover troubling facts. A wealth of experience is inside the minds of a technical project team, and these insights help get a solution off to the best possible start.
So what are the actual advantages of involving a technical team early in a project?
1. A confident client: If the client has access to technical expertise at the outset, this reinforces the trust in our team and confidence in our setup. We’ve found that clients enjoy speaking to technicians, and it’s also a way for us to share our knowledge.
2. Transparency at the outset: Collaboration is a wonderful thing, and involving everyone at the start of a project breeds an open mindset.
3. Team commitment: When a technical team has been involved from the start, they want to see the project through to its conclusion. Their own initial ideas can be brought to life, and real rapport will be built between the team and the client.
4. Increased freedom: As echoed by much of the Lab Digital team, the freedom to speak one’s mind is highly-valued. Access to these early meetings helps.
5. Better understanding: Our projects can be complex technical solutions, requiring integration with existing systems. If our technical team can liaise with the other party’s IT staff, obstacles and opportunities are spotted early and can be built into a proposal.
6. Scalable and future-proof: The overall quality of a solution will improve due to cutting-edge technical knowledge setting the foundation. We can plan for the future better with this influence.
Sounds great right? But there are still some challenges you have to take into account as well…
1. Outnumbering the other party: When a group of 4–5 people enter a meeting with a prospect or client, this can be intimidating and/or uncomfortable. These dynamics are hard to balance. This might also appear like the client is paying extra for the time of a bloated team.
2. Perception of desperation: If we send a whole team into an initial meeting, the other party might perceive this as a desperate attempt to close a deal. As business leaders, they may ask whether we have emergency conditions behind an “all hands to the pump” approach.
3. Strong feelings: A group of motivated professionals will often enter robust discussion, which is certainly a good thing. But this can tip over into awkward debates, which are difficult to iron out in the pressured setting of an early-stage meeting.
4. Lack of billability: Billability isn’t a real word, but it works. The team must contribute billable hours every month, and initial project exploration meetings aren’t always invoiceable. The hours soon add up to be expensive.
5. People skills: We have very knowledgeable people, but not everyone is at their best when talking to prospects and clients. For example, they might give blunt or insensitive responses.
6. Size of project: Sometimes a project is too small to justify the technical team’s full input. In this case, a project manager may size it up and check the details with our team thereafter.
There are actually two questions here:
Should you include the technical team at the definition stage, during the very first exploration meeting? The answer… usually yes, but it depends on the situation.
Should you include the technical team at the earliest possible opportunity when talks progress further? Absolutely, this is the way to estimate accurately and plan a project.
The response to the first question depends on the potential size and scope of the project. This is also dependent on whether you have the resources and the structure to allow for it. A dedicated “technical representative” is an option. However, if this person is constantly in meetings, they can’t work on the nuts and bolts of solutions. Thus, the advantages mentioned above are lost.
The second question is plain common sense. The further you go without the precise technical input of a development team, the more risk you acquire for a deal-breaking obstacle or delay.
Technical solutions are inherently complex. There will always be problems to overcome, and this is what makes our job so fascinating. Let’s get these obstacles on paper early, and plan the best route over (or around) them. Without technical expertise, it is an abstract landscape.
We’re lucky that our definition phase has technology at its heart. Our technical knowledge is tightly ingrained into everything we do and every conversation we have. It’s natural for us to be this way, but it can be tricky for some agencies and larger organisations to find the right balance.
Ultimately, it comes down to collaboration and shared values, initiated by the founders and leaders of the company. If the broader mission is to grow the business sustainably and do great work for long-term clients, it’s in everyone’s interest to collaborate to always deliver quality.
That said, getting this right needs practical implementation and structure. Project managers are at the forefront, and have a responsibility to bring together sales and operations. The inclusion of technical experts at the earliest possible stage is one fantastic way to achieve this!
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Chiel te Loeke is a jack of all trades and Operations Manager within Lab Digital. He is fuelled by coffee, loves mountains and skiing and is always awake earlier than the birds.