How to succeed in business without really selling

At PreviousNext, we have completely abandoned "selling" in the traditional sense. We don't have a sales or marketing team. We are very selective in responding to tenders.

So how do we secure new business? Mostly with existing clients.

By building strong relationships with large organisations where Drupal's footprint can grow, we are able to bypass traditional sales channels. Instead of selling, we're having regular conversations (mostly billable ones!) with our clients about their technology problems and how we can help solve them - with Drupal, if that's the right answer. If it's not, that's OK too! We recognise the benefit in being involved in the conversation, even when we don't get the work.

In this model, the initial project becomes a fraction of the total business with each client. This approach has its challenges, but has been by far the most successful approach for us (and we have tried many!).

It has been driven largely by the simple fact that this strategy has proven to work, even when we weren't actively pursuing it. Eventually we realised that while other attempts were costly, and were also failing, there was this other way of doing things that was keeping us in business. So we've embraced it fully and made it our mission.

This session aims to summarise our experience with traditional sales approaches and how they fell short, as well as how we came to formally adopt at this apprach, based on its (somewhat unintentional) success. 

It will also cover how other organisations can start to adopt this model, including choosing the right clients, choosing the right team, delivering projects that can become ongoing engagements, and building relationships with the right people within large organisations. 

PreviousNext is a Sydney-based Drupal services company founded in 2009. We're a small but skilled team who have built many of the largest Drupal sites in Australia. I've been a client service manager at PreviousNext since 2012, working with clients in government, higher education and across the private sector.

I've spoken at DrupalCon Barcelona, DrupalCon Prague, DrupalCon Sydney, DrupalSouth Melbourne, DrupalGov Canberra and frequently at the Drupal Sydney meetups, about issues around project management, content strategy and general Drupal best practice.