How we secured our first retainer client

“How we secured our first retainer client” – Ayotunde Ayoola for Stringify T.S

Let’s talk about how we secured our very first technology retainer client.

Most times a lot of people look at the angle of getting a client for themselves, and this might seem as an impossible task. Getting the customer who you can do business with, who you can always have doing business with over and over, and that becomes quite a lot of issues because businesses need to trust you to be able to give their service to you to handle.

For us at Stringify, it was not far-fetched.

In starting out, it was easier for the business to get clients who wanted to build websites, software related solutions, web applications, and clients who wanted to create some creative designs and services in this range. So those were petty things and they were easy to get clients to engage our services in these areas.
But when it comes to the larger part of what we do, which is the enterprise and business applications side, building industrial and enterprise-related processes with Microsoft power platform, with Microsoft Dynamics 365, setting up infrastructure for businesses, technology consulting and high-level services such as it is listed above. Most organizations want to deal with technology firms that are tenured, businesses that have been in the process for a while more than start-ups like ours.

However, one of the things that helped our organization was that the team comprises individuals with years of experience, personnels who have been engaged in Enterprise projects, infrastructure deployments, on-prem and cloud based deployments, for various organizations and various individuals, so we had good and strong hands on the team.

We also have Subject Matter Experts like our Principal Consultant who also did quite a bit of advisory for businesses on some infrastructure models, solutions architecture and project governance.

One of the individual/business owners that our Principal Consultant has done a project for, decided to recommend him to his friend who happens to be the administrator of a construction firm and they reached out saying they would be looking at setting up their mail service infrastructure. This is the tricky part, based on the experience we have in the team, we could easily have provisioned email service for them via any of the generic hosting platforms that we have out there, however because of our vast understanding of Microsoft 365 technology, particularly in this scenario (Microsoft Exchange), we were able to deploy this for them.

Now, as at this time, most of the team members have experience ranging from Software development (JavaScript, C# ASP.Net, PHP and DevOps), Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365, so we should not have been able to deploy the mail service, however, one of the things we did as a team was also give attention to the infrastructure side of things from Microsoft 365 set up, Exchange setup, Azure Active Directory set up and all of that.

So it was easier to have a proposal prepared for the organization. And we were able to, during the proposal, pitch effectively to the business what is required. We were also able to pitch effectively to the business what is expected in terms of mailing services, security around mails and everything needed. And this was very impressive to them because what we were saying to them was possible, as they have a sister company in the diaspora that already was using Exchange. However, we were able to explain and break down Exchange for them on a larger scale and that gave them more confidence. A lot of questions came up around security, a lot of questions came up around mail maintenance, mail storage, storage spaces and all of that and we were able to address all questions.

Couple of months into them using the mail service after deployment. We then showed them more capabilities of the Microsoft 365 Business Standard license we bought for them initially. We showed them the seeded licenses such as the Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, SharePoint, OneDrive, and other features and how those things can also be valuable for them as a business. And from there we delve into other things like building Power Apps applications, setting up Power Automate flows and building reports with Power BI.

So, we started from just a simple mail configuration and we moved into other possible technology processes that are valuable for the business in this case. And it’s been about four years now that we have been doing that for the business. It’s been back to back renewal licenses, back to back maintenance for the business, process management for the business and all of that.

Now, if you look at our journey of retaining this particular client, you will notice that even though the core strength of the business is Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics and Software engineering, but the knowledge of the infrastructure side of things was one of the things we made sure we give attention to, and that became the entry point for this particular client. This is how we really secured this client. Because if we could not deliver on the project of setting up their mailing service, we would not be able to move forward to start building other processes that are really core to our own business.

So it is good that as you learn and as you stick to a technology, make sure that you learn holistically, look at other things that has to do with that technology and learn them effectively, know them, be informed about them, because they might, in turn, become how you wow a client, or how you encourage your clients later in the future to engage with you.

That’s our journey. That’s how we secured our very first client who became a retainer four years ago and we have added to the list after them.

Alright, thank you everybody for reading, I trust this was insightful for you?
Bye from us here at STRINGIFY.