I think you are right - we need our website for potential leads to check out our work/testimonials but the sales will only come from initial 'real-world' interaction. To get referrals we need previous work, which is the problem really. The question is for this type of project (~£50k), how do we assure clients we can deliver a high quality solution, without a long list of previous clients. I think we need to find a couple of projects that we can undercut the competition on and deliver a superior solution. From there, we can build a reputation. It’s finding these initial clients that is the problem.
Thanks to everyone that's posted so far - every single point has been useful. We actually have a brand for lower budget websites that already uses some of the points here successfully. We can’t use these sites as ‘previous clients’ for the other service since they tend to be for small creative businesses rather than medium/large companies.
Even if the creative business are lower value than the business you now want, the work still demonstrates what you can do.
If one of your existing websites involved a web application, e-commerce etc, this shows your capabilities.
If you don't think you can jump straight in at £50k, go up to the next price bracket. That way you can use your existing portfolio as a reference. Then just keep leapfrogging up to the bigger business.
Don't forget that you can likely charge medium to large business more than you can a small business. If you're quoting based on value to the customer, the value is likely to be higher for a larger business, so you can charge more.
So what might be a £10k job for a small business, ends up being a £20k job for a larger company.
I once worked for a company that did an e-commerce site for a large plc. They charged £750 per day for development, and the overall cost for the site was in excess of £100k.
But if you were freelance, you would likely charge £250-300 per day for the same. However, this large company was used to paying those sort of rates, and we were a 'consultancy' which can make a difference in price!
This is all great advice - thanks. Totally agree on the end-user-value-based pricing. Leap-frogging is certainly a strategy that could work since the design element of the smaller sites is good and we've a couple of e-commerce sites in the pipeline (for the smaller clients)
I have very limited experience as a consultant/independent worker so take this with a grain of salt.
Have you considered doing a number of smaller projects while building up your reputation? If you are having trouble finding ~50K look for ~10K or even ~5K and then deliver far more value than they are paying for. At first you may be working more for reputation than money, then that will invert later.
I'd be very careful about the lower budget brand. It can easily affect the perception about your big budget brand. If it was me, I'd run the lower cost brand as a different business unit, with different name and sales team. If practical I'd share the back-room processes but in a way that it doesn't "leak" to outside parties.
On a related note, look at how much trouble Toyota went to when launching the Lexus to avoid it becoming an "expensive Toyota". Hyundai have tried introducing upmarket models, but to people it's still "just" a Hyundai. The website market is no different to the motor vehicle market, they are both more about perception and branding than the underlying technology.
Thanks to everyone that's posted so far - every single point has been useful. We actually have a brand for lower budget websites that already uses some of the points here successfully. We can’t use these sites as ‘previous clients’ for the other service since they tend to be for small creative businesses rather than medium/large companies.