Why building credibility with customers should be at the top of your To-Do list.

I sometimes half-jokingly refer to my customers as my partners. But in a very real sense that is exactly what they are. I work with them and not just for them. They share inputs, feedback, suggestions and comments, they open up about their problems and their challenges. It was this exchange of ideas that shaped SMARTPROJECT and its predecessors, and helped me build my company.

When WRENCH started, our potential customers were very large companies. Getting a foot in the door was hard. But harder still was making them believe we could deliver what we promised. We were a small company going head to head with much larger names so it was only natural that we faced skepticism. The issue was, and still is, Credibility. So I first had to convince the decision makers. I worked with them on small projects like drafting, CAD software sales, modelling, and sold them small applications. I put huge amounts of effort to deliver ‘as promised.’ Slowly, as they saw ‘planned’ become ‘actual’, they started sharing their process challenges with me. I worked with them to extrapolate those challenges into requirements and those requirements into features, and that is how the first version of WRENCH Collab, and in due course, WRENCH SMARTPROJECT came about. As we started to sell to more customers in more markets, these shared inputs became even more precious because I was able to integrate the best practices for each industry into the software itself. This was possible only because customers trusted me enough to share their challenges with me even though technically I was an ‘outsider’.

You see, I’m an engineer selling to other engineers. And we’re not an easily-convinced tribe. We doubt everything, we test everything, we try before we buy. Our trust is hard to get. So take it from me, if you want an engineer’s trust you’ll have to get it the hard way….you’ll have to earn it.