Don't Recommend Laravel!

Why?

As developers we often tend to look at things technically and how they can help you build something. The joy of building something meaningful is why we choose Laravel over any other Framework.

The problem with this approach is that this is not enough for your Clients or so called Management. They just want to use the latest buzz word so it looks good on their presentations / reports. They don't know the pains of being a developer and honestly, some of them don't even care.

We need to tackle this problem differently.

We need to explain, more importantly reason with them:

• why Laravel is a great choice for them?
• how they might even save a lot on development budget and time by using Laravel
• how it will be easier to scale later to achieve business objectives even faster

How?

Now that you understand the problem, it's time to take appropriate action over it.

You must understand there is no magic phrase that can compel your clients or management for using Laravel. I've been fortunate enough in convincing my clients for Laravel but their have been times where it was a very close call and a few times I did Fail too.

Although, there is no single way of doing this but still their is one thing very important that will actually help you in great lengths i.e. being a great listener. Just like being a great listener is good for your relationship with your partner, it's also good for your partnership with your clients/management too.

Start by asking them these simple questions

• What is your product about?
• How will it help your customers/users?
• What features have you thought of so far?
• Are you aware of any tech requirements we will be needing?

Then just relax and listen to everything they have to say and take note of things that you can use later for explaining how Laravel will help e.g.

• If your client says he wants to run some tasks in background so that the users don't have to wait, you can tell them about Laravel Queue's or Scheduled Jobs;
• if they need payment gateway integration, tell them about Cashier;
• if they need social integration, tell them about Socialite;
• if they need API's, tell them about Passport or ApiResources

There are so many ways Laravel helps us in quickly developing our application that if we can just explain a few of them properly, they will agree with you and may even understand why we love it.

Bullet Points ( If Needed )

Mostly by following the above steps you yourself will be able to come up with points you can make for explanation but if you are short on them, you can use any of the following:

• Laravel can help reduce the cost & time of development

  Explain and show examples how you or your team will be able to build more using the pre-build features or the extensive range of packages made available by Laravel Community

• It save's development time for the most basic features

  You can show how Passport & ApiResources combined can help in building API's in days instead of weeks, or how using Cashier can have you up & running with complete billing system within a day, or how Mail can help you setting up important emails for your users in matter of minutes.

• Ease of finding new developers & on-boarding them

  Your client / management always have to prepare for the next thing even before you start your development and having some assurance that scaling the team will be easy is a great thing for them.

• Can be scaled to highest levels without much hassle

  Explain how all the features in Laravel are optional and how they come batteries included. Explain them how you can simply chose to use sync in local environments, beanstalkd for development and RabbitMQ for production environments, or can integrate any other queue service provider very easily for higher scalability. It can be done mostly by just editing a config file and on top of that most of these drivers come with best in the market paid options & also with free options which also means saving money for management or your client.

• Laravel has a huge active community

  One of the best things about Laravel is that it has a great community that is willing to help new commerce up-to speed and get the best out of it. This has been a big reason for Laravel's success and it's developers too, so you can simple say, whenever I get stuck I'm sure that there will be someone who can help.

Conclusion

There is not secret sauce for getting your client to believe in you and just trust you blindly, you need to be reasonable enough and see things through their eyes. You must understand what is it that they need or are worried about the most and propose Laravel as a savior. This has worked for me through my many ventures and hope will also workout the same for you too.