So, I’ve been talking with many software agency owners lately. A common theme in these conversations was always “How do I acquire new clients?”, “Why are prospects not listening to me? When we talk about software development, software developers can relate. They want to work with us, but decision-makers don’t care.”

Can you relate to this? Have you seen this too?

I think it’s essential for you to as well to develop these new customers, right? But what should you do when decision-makers, the C-Level Suite, is not listening to you? 

Why wouldn’t they want software development to be an essential topic in their organization?

Let’s examine this. Other Software Developers listen to you because you speak their language. You can relate to their challenges, how hard it is for them to deliver, how messy deployments are, and that it’s about time to establish more best practices across the team.

But still, why do C-Level folks not care about this? They benefit from that too! Correct. Indirectly, they benefit from more best practices, such as pair programming or code reviews. Indirectly? Software Developers have specific goals. To deliver the new release, fix bugs, and set up reliable workflows. All these goals pay into the overall mission of providing value for their end-users and ensuring its success.

On the other hand, C-Level folks have the same overarching mission, running a successful company, but their concrete goals are different. Whereas a Software developer may measure success based on metrics such as feature work completed in a sprint, or new bug reports per month, the CTO’s and CEO’s look at a different dashboard.

For them, metrics such as ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), decreased costs, and increased team efficiency without hiring new people are essential. That’s how their success is measured.

Now, my question for you is: How do your offerings relate to these metrics? If a CTO wants to decrease costs, how much money can you save them over a quarter, half a year, or a full year? How can you help a CTO to be more successful?

You need to take your current product or offering and tailor benefits for different personas to answer these questions:

• How does a developer benefit from your work? 
• How does your offering relate to business metrics?
• How can you help CTO’s to influence their business metrics positively?

Then, next time you conduct a discovery call or meeting with a prospect, ask for everybody’s position at the company so you can tailor your arguments and benefits toward their roles and concerns.

So you will demonstrate to your prospect that you understand them and their business as a whole.

Was this helpful? I’d love to hear from you how this strategy helped you in your business. If you need further support with crafting the right messages, get in touch via https://work-with-jan.com! I’m looking forward to hearing from you!