Selling No-Code Is Strategic to Your Organization
Customers who need no-code frequently need products and services from your other practice areas as well.
A couple of months ago I happened to be at a dinner with a large service delivery partner of ours, and I met a practice lead in their marketing area. We had a long discussion about how no-code elevates their broader organization because it represents a pathway into an organization which that also has many other types of needs as well. Effectively, this person saw no-code as a door opener for his own practice area.
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to run into the same person a couple of months later on a customer call! I was representing the no-code component of the sale, and he was representing the marketing component. It turns out his observations about no-code were prescient!
We’ve now worked on two different deals together. Furthermore, we have worked with and I hope helped to sell deliverables from a variety of other practice areas within their organization as well. That’s what this is all about.
So, given the experienced fact that no-code can bring along other practice areas, two questions come to mind; by what mechanism does that take place, and what practice areas stand to benefit the most?
What are the Mechanisms for Bringing Other Practice Areas?
To date, we’ve experienced two basic mechanisms. In the first mechanism, the sale is led by the no-code product. In other words, the customer first and foremost needs a software application, but because of that application they will need associated products and services as well. Win the software application and you win the other services.
In the second mechanism, no-code serves as an enhancement to a larger sale. In one recent example, a very large legacy migration sales prospect specifically requested no-code options. Our partner brought us in as the primary application development option, and within just a few short weeks we were jointly awarded the project. To be clear, no-code application development was just one component of a much larger sale, but it was an important one.
What Practice Areas Benefit from No-Code Selling?
Below is a short list of actual examples of practice areas and/or related product and service sales that have been pulled along recently with a no-code sale. There are many other possibilities but these are all actual examples we’ve seen within the past few months:
- Website
- Branding
- Computer Hardware and Networking
- Security Consultation
- Additional Marketing Consultation to Support Campaigns
- Portfolio Analysis Consultation
- Hardware such as barcode scanners or badge readers.
- A range of legacy migration related services such as code analysis, etc.
- Localization / Internationalization
- Compliance Consultation
No-Code is Strategic, Not Niche.
The bottom line is that selling no-code should be thought of by your organization not as a niche activity, but rather as a strategic effort. This is because application development in general is one of the most important and “stickiest” pathways into an organization, and because no-code is the fastest way to differentiate yourself in today’s application development space. If you win the application development battle you establish a tremendous amount of trust. You set yourself apart from the competition as one of the few vendors competent enough to handle these complex tasks.
In our direct experience, it is only natural then that your customer will ask you about and look to you for a wide range of other services. Marketing is a great example; we’ve referred countless marketing engagements over the years to partners. Security consultation and systems hardware are also great examples.
The organization that views no-code sales as a door opener is the organization that stands to both grow their base of customers and also to expand more rapidly within those customers across their entire lineup of practices. This is a big opportunity for organizations seeking growth.
