Need advice to create a sales pipeline for web development (x-post from /r/Entrepreneur)

[ray34iyf]

Me and a couple of friends have decided to start our own web development company. While we have years of experience building startups from the ground up from previous jobs, we have yet to find a good way to generate new leads for our business.

We know from experience that referrals are the best way to get new work, we have talked to some of our ex-clients and while some of them might have something for us to work on in the next few months we still want to broaden our network and try and get more work from different people in the short term.

Anyone here have experience building a web development company like ours? What did your first few clients looked like? how did you find them? Did you lower your rates as much as possible in order to get them?

 

[ojr]

@ray34iyf So, I can tell you what worked for me. I'm going to write some direct advice because it's easier for me to write in that style but always bear in mind that YMMV.

• Specialize, specialize, specialize! Go as niche as you can. Become the firm that everyone goes to for websites if they're in the Central American destination weddings business, equine dentistry, or embedded IoT devices for retail supply chain management. Or specialize in a narrow technology: optimize the frontend performance of e-comm websites, implement Salesforce.com for law firms, etc. Which leads to recommendation #2....
• Partner. Whether that be with Costa Rican wedding planners or Salesforce.com. You want to find organizations that could use your help to extend the value of their own services. For example: Salesforce.com is always looking to partner with dev shops. The more partners they have in their ecosystem building Salesforce apps and doing implementations, the more licenses they sell of their product. It takes time to build these relationships and you're going to have to work to get them, but developing a partner sales channel can be huge to you business. Which leads to point #3...
• Get out there and network like your business depends on it (because it does). I have Diamond status on Delta and Platinum status with Marriott because I travel so much. In fact, I'm writing this post from a hotel room in New York. I'm on the road visiting partners, visiting customers, attending/speaking/organizing conferences, etc. When I find myself for a few days, I'll reach out to my network and find people in the area to reconnect with over lunch or dinner. Or I'll randomly drop people on LinkedIn a line. If I still can't find anyone, I'll head over to meetup.com and find an interesting event or two to drop in on. I make meeting people my number one priority.

To answer some your direct questions:

• My first few clients were nearly as broke and cheap as I was. I found them via Craigslist and working my (much smaller back then) network.
• No, don't try to win business by being the cheapest bidder. Someone out there will always be cheaper than you. However, if you specialize and network correctly, eventually you can get to the point that very few people in the world are better than you.

 

[lee220187]

@ojr Love this advice.

 

[ray34iyf]

@ojr Amazing, thank you.

Already calling everyone on my network simply to reconnect and submitted a few proposals to conferences all over.

Thanks again for taking the time.

 

[nnamaries]

@ojr Starting out, were you doing this work for yourself or were you already working with someone else? What about now?

 

[ojr]

@nnamaries Starting out it was just me doing everything. Now I employ almost 30 full-time people.

 

[timq]

@ojr Solid advice! I will put this to use as well. I've heard the specialize recommendation from multiple people now.

 

[christad]

@ray34iyf I'll be interested to hear as well. Just completed my first year of mine and we did about $56k revenue and $33k profit.

 

[taranmicheal]

@ray34iyf Hi there, I run an SEO and Web Design company in Vancouver, so we rank for local terms. I also use Trello as a way to visualize/manage my pipline. Here's the link:
https://trello.com/b/aPFI7CqI/template-sales-pipeline

 

[neysonclark79]

@ray34iyf I developed this post:

Cold Calls: How I Went From Nothing to $120k/Year Solo

On the entrepreneur forum about 2 weeks ago. It is now the 6th top post of all time on that forum. I'd highly recommend reading through it, as I sold websites, and I developed a marketing agency out of my results there

 

[naomif01]

@neysonclark79 Brass balls, my friend.

 

[ray34iyf]

@neysonclark79 I actually read it the day you posted, have your script handy and will probably put it to good use next week. Thanks for that.

 

[neysonclark79]

@ray34iyf Aha got it! Let me know how it goes

 

[neysonclark79]

@ray34iyf Cold calls for my first 6 clients, and then I found a professional referral organization called BNI, and that really helped catapult my referrals. I'd highly recommend looking into BNI! Now, we get a lot of referrals via networking relationships built over time and calls from SEO/Yelp, but in the beginning it was all cold calls and BNI.

I have scripts that I can share with you and strategies that really worked well for cold calls. I had a 2.5% closing rate per call, which is really high (5 new jobs per 200 calls). On my phone now but I will get them later if you want them.

 

[david143]

@neysonclark79 Hey I know this is a old post but Im trying to work on some scripts for a start up im working for, do you mind sharing some of what works for you? also how much did you pay for BNI?

 

[neysonclark79]

@david143 It's your lucky day, aha. I actually wrote an extensive post about cold calls, my process, and my script!

Here is the link to the reddit post (#4 of all time on Entrepreneur subreddit):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/43r36x/cold_calls_i_went_from_nothing_to_120kyear_solo

Also, for BNI, there are 2 costs - Breakfast dues and a yearly membership. Breakfast dues typically range from $10-20/week depending on where you are located. For me it's $15/wk so $60-75/mo. Yearly membership is $345, with an application fee of $100 for the first year I think. Total is ~1100/yr with about half of that up-front.

 

[david143]

@neysonclark79 oh awesome, thanks for the info..you are awesome!!

 

[neysonclark79]

@david143 Aha no problem. Let me know if you need anything more!