How to get the first clients for my software agency?

[eric#2323]

I'm a software developer and I want to start my business grabbing small projects instead of working for a company (as I don't have much cash). I tried to start writing proposals through Upwork, but until now I have written almost 90 but none were answered. I'm thinking about which way would be the most efficient (considering that the cash is low and needs to be saved for unforeseen situations). I thought about hiring marketing agencies, but their cost plus Google Ads costs would cost an important part of the cash. I don't have much network as I've only been working for 2 yrs. Have any of you guys ever worked in the commercial sector of a software house?

 

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[NVaz]

I'm a software developer and I want to start my business grabbing small projects instead of working for a company (as I don't have much cash). I tried to start writing proposals through Upwork, but until now I have written almost 90 but none were answered. I'm thinking about which way would be the most efficient (considering that the cash is low and needs to be saved for unforeseen situations). I thought about hiring marketing agencies, but their cost plus Google Ads costs would cost an important part of the cash. I don't have much network as I've only been working for 2 yrs. Have any of you guys ever worked in the commercial sector of a software house?

@Lex DeVille has much content here on the forum & on YT about how to write killer proposals.

oh, and welcome btw, don't forget to introduce yourself here and read this thread on GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE FASTLANE FORUM!

 

[SurfRider]

Hi Eric - have you considered cold outreach? Good old-fashioned sales prospecting can go a long way in the beginning phases while you're building your book of business and don't have a marketing budget to test with on ad campaigns, etc.

I run an outbound marketing company - our books are closed but if you need some help with the basics I'd be happy to give you some advice for phone and email sequences, software, data, etc

Good luck!

 

[Choate]

What service are you providing / what problem are you solving with your software agency?

 

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[eric#2323]

What service are you providing / what problem are you solving with your software agency?

The purpose of my agency is to develop custom software for companies that are not satisfied with the existing off-the-shelf software

 

[eric#2323]

Hi Eric - have you considered cold outreach? Good old-fashioned sales prospecting can go a long way in the beginning phases while you're building your book of business and don't have a marketing budget to test with on ad campaigns, etc.

I run an outbound marketing company - our books are closed but if you need some help with the basics I'd be happy to give you some advice for phone and email sequences, software, data, etc

Good luck!

I would be really happy to have help with the marketing basics. My plan is to cold reach a lot of marketing analysts and propose them to work as freelancers, but it's always good to know what they will be doing. The sales prospecting idea is interesting, the main challenge of this approach is to discover who needs custom software (which seems a hard challenge). I don't have any idea how much I would need to invest in Adwords, but I know that I only need enough for a single client and then I can reinvest creating a snowball effect

 

[eric#2323]

@Lex DeVille has much content here on the forum & on YT about how to write killer proposals.

oh, and welcome btw, don't forget to introduce yourself here and read this thread on GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE FASTLANE FORUM!

well remembered. Done!

 

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[SurfRider]

I would be really happy to have help with the marketing basics. My plan is to cold reach a lot of marketing analysts and propose them to work as freelancers, but it's always good to know what they will be doing. The sales prospecting idea is interesting, the main challenge of this approach is to discover who needs custom software (which seems a hard challenge). I don't have any idea how much I would need to invest in Adwords, but I know that I only need enough for a single client and then I can reinvest creating a snowball effect

So you're reaching out cold to find freelancers and build your team?

As far as the sales prospecting side, it might be a good first step to create some hypothetical profiles of what companies look like that would most likely be your customers. You should look at industry, services offered, markets served, tech stacks being used (especially where you might have a solution), size of company in terms of revenue, etc.

After you have an idea of what your ideal customers look like, you want to understand who the decision-makers are for your offering. i.e. what are their titles

I personally use seamleass.ai for 60-70% of my data these days but whatever I cannot get on there, I have teams overseas in India and PH that will manually scrape email, phone, contact for me. You can start building these relationships on Upwork.

As Dark Water mentioned, you need to understand what problem you are solving and for whom. That's the best place to start with any campaign - you can make adjustments as your company grows and you work with more clients but to start - you have got to make some assumptions. Try to be specific and test test test.

Lastly, don't underestimate being courteous, professional, and showcasing the fact that you're not trying to waste anyone's time.

I'm sure if you called/emailed into your target markets and simply explained your value prop in a conversational/concise manner - you could have conversations with some of these decision-makers about what their procurement process is like for working with companies like yours, etc. And as you get more data from conversations you can make bolder assumptions that get you closer to actual sales meetings.

Couple notes for this type of marketing -

a.) cold email is funky right now - google and outlook are both stepping up their spam protections so make sure to warm your email address properly and set up dkim, spf, dmarc, etc
b.) set aside an hour to make cold calls or sales prospect every day to start
c.) phoneburner is pricey but a great software for cold calls. You can easily do 40-50 an hour with most scripts

Let me know if there are any other specific questions you have. Happy to try my best to answer or hop on a call for a few minutes with you.

 

[Alessandros]

Eric, my suggestion is that you read TFM and learn the CENTS-modell. Is your agency such a CENTS-thing? I don't think so, because you don't have much control and what about the scale?

So there are some fundamental issues you have to tackle when you want to go fastlane. And furthermore: just programming things other people want to have - that could be extremely difficult, because you may need very specific knowledge.

 

[eric#2323]

ut

Eric, my suggestion is that you read TFM and learn the CENTS-modell. Is your agency such a CENTS-thing? I don't think so, because you don't have much control and what about the scale?

So there are some fundamental issues you have to tackle when you want to go fastlane. And furthermore: just programming things other people want to have - that could be extremely difficult, because you may need very specific knowledge.

Indeed it is not the most ideal business model in the world. But there are some advantages of starting this way. The most notorious is that it doesn't need R&D investments. The second is that it will allow to identify market needs and possibly make partnerships to turn projects into SaaS, pivoting to a SaaS company in the future. Do you have any other idea of how to discover a market need? I saw several people that dream to be an entrepreneur and keep waiting forever because they simply keep expecting the ideal (CENTS-like) business, model. Another idea was to copy an existing SaaS business model, but it is even more doubtful because I would start at disadvantage

 

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[Alessandros]

Do you have any other idea of how to discover a market need?

There is a story about Henry Ford, he said: "If I ask people what they want, the answer is faster horses. But nobody want a car." (or similar)

How you discover market needs is described in MJ's books. Look for not satisfied users of any products, look for complaints about products/services, look for not happy people and ask yourself, how you could make them happy.

Such market research is not easy, but it is part of the Fastlane process.