Best Practices For Managing a Webdesign (Drupal) Company

Managing a proffesional Drupal company, or any webdesign company is definetely a hard task. There are always many ways where things can go wrong and one day you can realize that your succesfull company that you dreamed about has disappeared in the mixture of unhappy employees, not satisfied clients and a shame from doing things simpy wrong.

Learning from the experiences of others can be very beneficial if you are willing to learn and make changes to the way you do things. There is a saying in my country that a wise man is learning from mistakes of other people, while a fool is learning from its own mistakes.

I was lucky enough to be one of the few hundred people that were able to squeeze in to a fully packed room on a DrupalCon San Francisco session where owners, founders and managers of some well established Drupal webdesign studios shared their experiences, things that they did right and things that were completely wrong.

Here is a list of responders with their Twitter account, company name and amount of people they manage

Glenn Hilton – @glennhilton – ImageX Media – 12 employees

Dave Terry – @mediacurrent – Mediacurrent – 12 empolyees

Jeff Walpole – @jeffwalpole – Phase2Technology – 32 people

Jon Clark – @juaneclark – Aten Design Group – 6 members

Eric Gundersen – @ericg – Development Seed – 15 employees

Ben Finklea – @benfinklea – Volacci - 60 person firm

What was the best decisions you have made

- moving a Drupal to first place, focusing on a single solutions for our products

- allowing telecommuting

- focus on getting team „dance“ well together

- create an effective in-team communication

- Read good books: Good to Great and Getting to Yes

- using Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology

How, where do you recruite employees

- start with a vision and culture for your company, then hire people

- try to hire people that you know or are reffered to you from a trustworthy source

- follow people on Twitter, Linkedin, see what they discuss, how they act, what is their attitude

- network like crazy

- have the job post on your website allways open

- read the responses to open positions, see if they included what you required (references, portfolio links, cover letter…) see if their response is general or targeted (with your name, email)…

- be enormously picky who do you work with, working with a wrong person can make more damage than not working with anyone

- read a book called „Who“

- remember that finding a good employee is like finding a needle in the sand

How do you attract or keep your team together

- go snowboarding, have fun, spend time doing different things together

- make sure they are self motivated and that an internal communication is healthy

- real client work will point out the best people out there

- work with a fix priceing solution, based on the hourly rate

- Be stubborn with clients. If a client always likes you something is wrong, be a pain in the ass, when you talk to client, don’t try to be kind all the possible time

- direct the relationship with employees – owner vs contractor – do not necessary be friend with everyone on team

- send people to DrupalCon, DrupalCamps, let them get a Drupal or design book, but get them to share the knoweledge they learn

- make a culture where employees can talk to an owner with trust

- have a regular meeting where team members give kudos to somebody else on a team

How do you get sales

- you must create relevant fresh content – write blog posts, publish white papers…

- get known in a community by contributing modules, themes, time, knowledge, or by organizing, sponzoring or helping with DrupalCons, DrupalCamps, meetups – giving back to the community is a great way to promote your services and get huge publicity

- outreach to larger firms to get smaller projects, get reffered – alliances are critical for creating outstanding projects

- you want to look good – be that hot chick on the high school;) – be the one that has the best website, most creative stickers, swags, goodies, be the one that others are looking to

- when you respond to RFP – make sure you deal with client individually, make sure you have read all requirements, that you are not talking to random client but insted let them know that you really care for their need

- do a good SEO, be active on social networks

- find a niche an be a possibely best company that exist in that niche (Volacci – SEO, Lullabot – Drupal training, Acquia – Drupal commercial support)

- some niche examples – bankrupcy attorneys, legal websites, church websites, realtors, service sellers, music bands… – find a good fit and make it your “another company” – legalwebsites.com, realtorwebsites.com etc…

- the more narrow your reach will be -> the more successfull you will be

- top brands, products, services are the best in their niche, that is why they are sucessful – read the book DIP

General advices

- develop a partner program for your services

- always look how you can do things better

- as the owner find the right ballance between being thinker and doer

- do not do same mistakes again

- don’t do what you do not have time for or what does not align with your vision

- say no to the wrong fit client/project

- crystalize your processes soon enough

- make things simpler, try to cut the scope,

- read the Rework book by 37signals

- aim for 75% billable time, spend rest on contributions, do not primarily focus on margin

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