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SALES In this video we’re going to be providing detailed instructions on how to excel as a sales team using Platfio. Platfio includes everything you’d expect from a CRM to manage your pipeline. You’ll be able to track your targets, which are businesses you’re reaching out to, your leads, which are businesses showing interest, your prospects, which are qualified leads who can afford your solutions that you offer, and your opportunities, which are businesses currently considering proposals. To stay organized, you can review your pipeline regularly and assign tasks to your sales team so follow-ups happen on time. The sales process usually begins with a discovery session. In Platfio, you can manage this directly through Plans. Go to a business, then Plans, and open or create a new plan. Start by giving the plan a name, listing the problems the business is facing, and the solutions you can provide. This is done in collaboration with the client during a discovery session. Next, let’s establish the personas. Personas represent the types of users who will use the software. Give each persona a name, a description, and an icon. Next, let’s go ahead and add user stories. Here, you’re able to create stories according to our standard format, “As a… Customer or Business… I want to… do something... So that… this happens!” It’s important that we capture not just what the system has to do but why that has a benefit to its various users. If you don't understand about user personas and stories, there are a lot of resources that are available on this, but this is a reasonably well established method of running discovery with clients to make sure that the solutions that we're building are comprehensive, they address the problems that the business has, and they're easily understandable by all stakeholders, including developers, QA testers, etc. Once you’re done with stories, it’s recommended to plan out what phases your application is going to be delivered in. It’s best to break the project into as many phases as possible to give the client freedom or clarity on the scope and investment so they can select just the phase they want. For example, group the first 10 stories into Phase One, the next 7 stories into Phase Two, and the remaining 3 stories into Phase 3. What we can do next is start building your Flows. Depending on the project size, you can create one board for all your flows, one board per persona if it’s a big app, one board per phase if it’s a slightly bigger app, or if it's a very large and complicated app, one board per story. You can go into extensive detail in these flows by dragging text and title nodes, grouping nodes together by adding a backdrop and color coding, to make flows clear and easy to understand. The goal is to deeply understand the client’s needs and slowly develop an understanding of what we can build for them to provide solutions. In the Design section you can embed UI/UX designs from Figma to help you personalize and create a user-friendly interface in your app. Next, let’s build our technology stack. Select from preset solutions or add custom technologies, and include descriptions and specifications for how they should function. You can also add terms of service at this stage. Then finally, we can press next. From here, if we are going to share this plan with the client, you can go and add an introduction, conclusion, attach links and also embed UI/UX designs from Figma if relevant. Then, we can go ahead and share this plan with your client. They’ll be able to view their personas, stories, flows, phases, and their technology stack. However, if you’re not doing this plan as part of a paid discovery engagement, you can go ahead and turn it directly into a proposal. When you form a plan, we found that it’s best practice to create the plan independently from the proposal. This then gives you as an agency the freedom, if the project is particularly complicated, to fall back to providing a paid discovery engagement, where we actually deliver the plan as a deliverable of a discovery engagement, and then we tender on the basis of the plan that has been created. In some cases you might want to include UI/UX design in the plan or if stories and flows are sufficient to provide a price then that may not be necessary. In the proposal, all information from the plan carries over. We add in On-goings, which are basically the ongoing services that the business is going to get after we complete the implementation. As we’re building the app in Platfio, we’re going to give clients access to the manager and the editor so they can maintain their apps themselves, and things such as app hosting and updates, chat support, knowledgebase, and provide cloud storage. Next, add a pricing plan. In this case we have a base price. We can also add an add-on price that only includes the last six features. Let’s say it’s for 46 59 and an additional 1 9 9 a month. So now we’ve got our base package and our add-on package. As a sales professional, you’ll know that different clients want different things. For example, in some cases, clients expect an all-inclusive package with one simple price, and that’s it. However, generally, a client is going to want a range of prices so that they can evaluate their budget and the return on investment that they'll get. The best option having the most features, the good option having a medium amount, and the first option providing the simplest functionality, at the lowest price. You also have the option to provide one base price, and then a series of add-ons, where they have the base price, which includes the essentials, and then allows them to choose which add-ons that they would like to include now, or potentially in the future. We find that this is the most successful, as it gives the client visibility into which features are going to drive the best return on investment for them, which features they might like to do now, and which features they can already start planning a budget for in future quarters or years. After pricing, add milestones. You can define percentages due at each stage, like 50% upfront, 25% at beta delivery, and 25% at launch. Also set subscription timing, usually beginning when development starts. Finally, complete the settings. Add the terms and conditions, you also have options for pricing and set-up some advanced options like the tax settings. By default GST is set, however, if you’re in a situation where you are in a market where you have value added tax or the GST rate is different, then you can go ahead and change them here. If you would like to not allow the client to pay, you can change that. If you would like them to pay via a different method, like an invoice, you can go ahead, turn off the payment card and turn on the payment settings where you can include the terms and conditions. Then, if you want to include a video summarizing your presentation attached to your proposal. We strongly recommend including this, as it ensures all stakeholders understand the value of your proposal as a loomed or uploaded video, and so that any other stakeholders who weren’t able to be in the meeting can still see your presentation. You can come in here and you can add an about section and add your team members. You can also add a recommended consultant if the proposal is contingent on the R&D tax incentive. Once your proposal is ready, copy the link and send it, but always aim to present it live on a call. This gives you the chance to be compelling, address objections, and ask for a decision. If the client needs more time, schedule a follow-up call before leaving the meeting. And always assign a task to ensure you follow up. To wrap up, remember to keep your pipeline updated. As clients move from lead to prospect to opportunity, update their status so your pipeline always reflects reality. Thank you for watching!