Agency – Sioux City, IA

Interviewee – Anne Westra, Economic Dev Specialist

Interview Date – 9/7/16

Outcome – Win

Proposal Bid – $67,200

RSM - Carrie

Proposal - originally dated 8/1/16

Background

• Their current website is hosted in-house and hasn't been updated in over 6 years
• It was 'tired', didn't have the functionality they wanted and was not responsive
• They have a small in-house IT staff, but they are swamped so Anne convinced her manager that they should issue an RFQ
• They received 3 responses to the RFQ - Vision, CivicLive and CivicPlus
• Their review committee scored the RFPs and Vision came out on top unanimously 
• While Carrie gave Anne a demo about 6 months ago, the committee scored the RFPs without having a presentation or demo

Why did we win?

• The committee liked the following:
  • that we go out to the customer base early and do heatmapping (no one else really touched on this)
  • our responsive design
  • our content strategy and that we would help them reduce the number of pages
  • our other customers in Iowa (they talked to Ames and West Des Moines, plus San Marcos)
• Carrie had started talking to Anne about a year ago
• Anne also said that the "biggest pro was working with Carrie!"
  • "she was patient and not salesy"
  • "full of information"
  • "like a friend you didn't know you had"
  • "her approach is excellent"
• Excellent reviews on the 3CMA email list
  • Anne searched the 3CMA email list and found a old thread from last year, and most of the responses were positive; people had positive things to say and no negatives

What could we improve?

• One minor nit was that the IT manager and city manager were a little hung-up on the automatic 5% increases in the annual fee, but Anne did her homework and realized that this is a standard process for most vendors -- and while the approval was on the council's consent agenda, the mayor even brought it up in the council meeting; maybe we need to do a better job explaining the increase during the sales process

Other points

• None

Takeaways

• Keeping in touch with a client even when they're not buying is important (Carrie had been in touch with Anne off-and-on for the past year)
• Customers appreciate a low-pressure, non-salesy approach 
• Data-driven approach and content strategy to reduce the number of pages resonates - and no one else is pushing it yet in a major way 
• Don't have to demo to close a contract