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Ask HN: How do I get more work (sales) for a s/w services comapny?

8 points by tejasm ↗ HN
I'm trying to help a small software services company get more clients (and more work). This company is based in India but solely focuses on the US market. They've been been making money through client projects - mostly magento, opencart, wordpress development and customization as well as making mobile apps for clients.

They never had a dedicated sales guy or BD team. In the past, they got all their clients through SEO and targeted keywords. Since a couple years, they haven't been getting much traction and revenues are down. Cold calls, cold emails and reaching out to old clients isn't providing them any sizable leads. They can't afford a full time sales rep in the US. I thought of trying elasticsales.com but they seem to be booked. Other option would be trying with salesinvaders.com and see if they get any results.

Given the scenario, what would be the best way to help them out? Are there any other cost effective ways of getting more clients?

7 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 29.6 ms ] thread
hnbusiness1
Interesting question... would love to see some answers.
lifeisstillgood
What were their SEO keywords? Since specialisation and niches are the key to knowing who to target I would suggest they start there.

Where they target "magento developers"? Then they were not specialising much - try targeting 500 digital agencies in the USA and offer to sub contract their maintenance work and updates (ie keep old clients happy)

Where they targeting industries? Such as ecommerce for hair products? So start by identifying all the hair websites out there, collate a report on the quality of ecommerce, security vulnerabilities, then cold call to sell that and then follow with your services.

Expand into products - magento addons, etc. if these guys are any good they will have three internally used anyway

Do not hire lead development companies - never heard anything good of them.

Do not hire a bizdev person till the CEO can do the job themselves so knows what to ask for.

tejasm
Thanks for the notes.

They've been using several keywords like "hire magento developers", "magento developers", "opencart developers" et al. Apparently, there were major changes in Google seo policy a few years back which hurt these guys a lot.

Targeting digital agencies and vertical specific companies sounds like a great idea. They've tried this in past but the only issue was most of the email ids they got were that of support or help desk. I'll ask them to try this again and oversee execution.

They're already into extensions for magento and opencart and have excellent rating there. They've also started developing other products for developers and agencies.

Thanks again for the excellent inputs.

lifeisstillgood
Targeting agencies is easier than you think - I got the top uk 100 in an hour from an awards site and then just ran through twitter, companies house and LinkedIn till I got the names of the top people. I followed a couple and then made cold calls based on what I knew - worked ok but I stopped filling my pipeline because I was a fool

It's quite doable

tejasm
Agreed - it sounds doable. Let me try it out and update you about the progress.

Many thanks for the suggestions.