I hear what you’re sating Patrick, but this is the thing I’m trying to understand. Intuitively we understand that cost competition is not sustainable, and we would think that the buyers would understand that as well – I mean, do they expect the developers in India / China to work on one or two bowls or rice a day? – but they don’t seem to. While we think that competing on cost is not a clever thing to do, they (and I could be massively) wrong here) seem to make buying decisions based on that.

So, the thing we have to do is to start showing them (being the clients) what value we offer them, when they work with us.

For example, we’ll often work with a client on an RFP or a pitch, augmenting their sales ability with our specific knowledge. They like this as it means they have more people on that prospective piece of work, and we like it because if we help them land the work, we get to do the dev side of things.

But that’s one example, what are other people thinking / doing?

Do you have a fixed methodology / process?, and are inflexible when working with new clients and adopting their processes?

Do you opt out of engagements honestly, when you know that someone else could do it better, but offer to help the client get the most out of that engagement?

Gareth

1. Do you offer a better service?
2. Do you offer discounted rates for longer engagements?
3. Do you do prototype work for free?
4. Do you sit on your arse all day?

that two of the four are based on price. Price is never a sustainable competitive advantage.

Dodd