BENEFIT/X

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief growth officer of a startup networking and accelerators company. We invest in early-stage companies and I’m responsible for running sales, marketing, and anything related to revenue acquisition. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BENEFIT/X?

I was leading an engagement to develop a new software product for startup sales teams, so we hired BENEFIT/X for their services. We went with them to develop a website to help us market our new product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

BENEFIT/X provided us with marketing, design, and web development services. The scope of the agreed-upon terms was broken into a two-week sprint. We first worked on our brand identity, which included designing a logo, finding a color scheme, and deciding on the typography and illustrations. We then took the work we did there to Figma and once that was approved, we translated their designs into a Webflow marketing website.

The website they developed was fairly simple and straightforward. It was only four pages, and it was going to be delivered over a two-week period for $3,500 USD, as per the contract signed by both parties.

What is the team dynamic?

I worked with Ajay (Founder) and Mike (Head of Design).

How did you come to work with BENEFIT/X?

I found them through Webflow’s expert directory. It’s a marketplace of different design agencies that you can contact to get started on a project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $900 USD with no deliverables.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with BENEFIT/X in October 2021 and terminated the partnership that same month.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

We did one design check-in in the first week, as promised — the work was pretty early-stage, so I gave them some feedback to help improve it. Based on the progress I saw, I asked if we could schedule an additional check-in before the next one, which was going to be in about a week’s time.

It was a very simple logo and there wasn’t that much work done after that, aside from taking the content and basic layout that I’d already created for them as a starting point. I then told them at the supplementary check-in that we weren’t making progress at the pace we’d need in order to hit the deadline that BENEFIT/X set. They had proposed the scope, and I didn’t make any changes to the timeline.

Things slid downhill precipitously during that conversation. Ajay and Mike expressed that they’d underpriced the project and didn’t feel that they should continue to invest a whole lot of time in it. They basically told me that what they’d done thus far was about the amount of work they were willing to do — we could’ve done another check-in, but the outcome or deliverable wouldn’t’ve changed a whole lot from what we were seeing at that moment.

I told them that the design wasn’t usable and it wasn’t something we could put out to the public to represent our brand, so we were left without anything usable out of the engagement. They then said that they weren’t going to do any other work on the project because, by their own admission, they’d scoped and priced it incorrectly.

That was when we moved to discuss the terms of terminating the relationship. They then proposed the scope to which I accepted without any push back. They didn’t think that any other work on the project was merited, based on how it was priced, and they were unwilling to invest more time into delivering quality work.

In terms of time, the project set us back by about three weeks and lost $900 — time and money are what we’re out of, basically.

How was project management handled?

The process they initially set out was actually fairly good. They used a tool called “VideoAsk” to collect more of the qualitative feedback and requirements for the project, such as sites that I liked. Their process allowed me to give the project requirements in a kind of spoken video form, and to work with their project team asynchronously.

We set up structured check-in calls at the start of the project and they were pretty fast in replying by email — overall, I’d say that their project management structure was very good.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

When we discussed the project, BENEFIT/X was pretty good at helping provide some thoughts on additional tools and plug-ins for Webflow, to help us with lead generation and acquisition. They definitely know Webflow pretty well, which I found to be helpful.

In what specific areas can they improve?

Accountability is an issue they could improve on. They refused to acknowledge that what happened was a result of their own mistake. As the client, I couldn’t have changed anything about how I interacted with them, but I was still left with incomplete work and lost time and money.

Additionally, they weren’t proactive in communicating the issues as they saw them — they left it to me to raise the fact that the work product they were wanting to turn over was not of acceptable quality.

They also didn’t deliver the results we wanted. If I’d gotten a refund, or if they were willing to make up for the lost time, I might’ve had a better experience. There was a fundamental lack of any type of result from the engagement, and that was incredibly frustrating.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

I would tell them to break out payments in multiple different milestones and set up regular check-in calls.