When I tell people to go buy a tool instead of hiring me
Go buy the tool if your work moves in one line, the way most sales pipelines do: lead comes in, you quote it, you win or lose it, you deliver. That's what these products are built for. Build something custom when the shape is different. A client on a twelve-week program with check-ins every two weeks, a renewal conversation at week ten, and a downsell if they say no. Products don't model that, so you end up tracking it in a spreadsheet next to the tool you're paying for. Also worth pricing a build if you've already had two tools not stick, or if your plan caps at fifteen users and you're hiring.
I build custom internal software for a living, so weigh what follows accordingly. I still end a decent number of first calls by telling somebody to go buy a subscription.
That took me a while to get comfortable with. It's worth explaining how I decide.
Buying is a good deal, but people skip past it
Off-the-shelf software is cheap for what it does. Most tools in the CRM and client-tracking categories run $50 to $300 a month. Somebody put thousands of hours into that product and you get all of it for a card number.
You can also have it this afternoon. No scoping call, no prototype, no three weeks of building. If a tool covers your process, go buy it.
What I've watched go wrong with buying
The tools work. The question is what the tool thinks a client is.
Most of them think a client is a deal. It opens, it moves through some stages, it closes, and then it's done. If that's your business, great.
But say you run a coaching program. Somebody signs up for twelve weeks. They get a check-in every two weeks, an upsell conversation at week ten, and if they say no there's a lower-tier offer to move them to. Then they renew and it starts over. That client is never done. There's no closed-won date to put anywhere.
So the person doing the work opens the CRM, can't find anywhere to put "check-in three of six, due Thursday," and puts it in a spreadsheet instead. Now you're paying for a tool and keeping a spreadsheet next to it. I've watched that happen more than once. Nobody decides to stop using the tool. They just quietly stop opening it.
The thing that tells me the most
What you've already tried. If you bought two or three tools and stopped opening all of them, I take that seriously. Usually it means the thing you actually needed to track wasn't a field in any of them.
Same with the abandoned internal project. The spreadsheet somebody was going to sort out. The build a developer started and never finished. When I hear one of those, I know the budget exists and I know the off-the-shelf path already got tried.
Run the numbers over three years
In month one a subscription wins and it wins easily.
I put this comparison together often enough now that I have a sense of where it lands. The build usually comes out cheaper over three years by a few thousand dollars, which by itself is not enough to decide on. What moves it is the user cap. A lot of these plans include a set number of seats and change shape above that. If you're adding contractors or staff, every hire costs you more every month, forever.
A build gets paid for once. Hosting costs money, and hosting scales on how much data you keep rather than how many people you hire.
- ·Your work moves in one line, start to finish, and nothing has failed yet. Go buy something.
- ·Two or more tools you've stopped opening. Worth pricing a build.
- ·You're hiring and your plan charges per seat. Do the three-year math before you renew.
- ·The way you run the work is part of why clients pick you. Don't flatten it to fit a product.
The option nobody brings up
Do nothing, on purpose. Sometimes fixing it costs more than the problem does and you can live with this for another year.
I've told people that and it's a fine outcome. Better than buying something in March that nobody's opening by June. Just decide it on purpose instead of letting another year go by.
How to work it out in an afternoon
- 1.Write the process down end to end. Where a client enters, what happens next, who decides, what the exceptions are.
- 2.Count the places where you'd have to say "except when..." out loud. Two or three of those means go buy something. If you can't get through describing it without a dozen, price a build.
- 3.Ask yourself what you've already tried and what happened to it.
- 4.Price the subscription over three years at the headcount you expect, not the one you have.
- 5.If it's still close, buy the cheap thing first. A $200/month experiment that fails teaches you the same lesson for less money.
Most people don't run this because it takes an afternoon nobody has. Which is the same reason the project has been sitting on the list since spring.