How to get clients for a software development company

This article is for small’ish (less than ~100 employees) software development companies that have been around for quite a few years. If your company is just getting started, you might be more interested in How to bootstrap your marketing – for early-stage companies.

The three main things you need to do to get clients for your software dev company are:

  1. Build a marketing machine.
  2. Do a good job selling.
  3. Keep a pulse on where software development is headed and evolve.

While this approach sounds relatively straightforward, the details are complex, situational, and a moving target. Don’t assume that you can do these three things well just because you want to.

Building a marketing machine

At a basic level, you need SRLs (Sales Ready Leads).

To get SRLs, you need to engage and build enough trust with people to the point where they want to discuss how you can potentially help them solve their problem.

Here’s a high level process / framework for building a marketing machine:

  1. Select niche(s).
  2. Select marketing method(s).
  3. Start experimenting.
  4. Track progress.
  5. Iterate / evolve / optimize.

Check out How to generate leads for software development projects for more on this.

Do a good job selling

There are two main pieces:

  1. Do a good job selling to potential clients.
  2. Do more for a subset of your existing clients.

When selling to potential clients

Sales is exciting, scary, and frustrating. It can make you feel anxious, uncertain, and question your abilities. Fine. If you’re feeling these things, that means you’re paying attention to yourself.

Your goal should be to interact with potential clients in an energetic, yet methodical manner.

This is early-stage relationship building. Move slowly. Not so slow that it’s frustrating to your potential client, just slow enough that you can think through where you’re trying to guide the ship.

Don’t think that just because you know a lot about developing custom software that that means you know how to do a good job selling custom software. Doing sales well is its own discipline. Treat it as such. Become a student. There are quite a few good books and articles out there on how to do a better job selling. There are also a lot of bad books / articles on selling.

The key is to look for books / articles that:

  1. Match your personality,
  2. Give it to you straight,
  3. Live in a reality that’s somewhat similar to yours.

You develop software, maybe for startups, maybe for smaller companies, maybe for SMBs, maybe for large enterprise level companies. Keep an eye out for tips that are applicable for your scenario. Your scenario has these attributes:

  1. Complex sales
  2. B2B
  3. Service-based (as opposed to product)
  4. For small companies (as in, your company is small; you can’t afford to employ some of the sales methods that a 10,000 person company can).

Check out these articles for some sales-related info that should align well with your context:

Do more work for your existing clients

Yes, you should be doing this.

Actively.

And yes, this is a sales thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s driven by a person whose primary job is sales. It may be driven by your project leads.

So why should you be actively selling to existing clients?

It’s a leverage thing. You’ve already put a ton of energy into acquiring and building a relationship with them. You’ve essentially got a bunch of potential energy built up. Convert it to kinetic energy by doing more work for them. That is, of course, assuming they’re a customer that you want to do more work for.

Check out How to sell to existing customers for more on this topic.

Keep a pulse on where software development is headed, and evolve

Software has some amazing benefits. It’s:

  1. portable,
  2. scalable,
  3. extensible,
  4. and easily updated.

These impressive benefits have combined to create challenges for some software development companies, especially those that are largely generic.

So how should you respond?

You should steadily refine and evolve where you want to head as a business. This will likely include narrowing down into one or more niches.

You need to chip away in the direction you want to move toward. You should be:

  1. Building capabilities in your domain(s) of interest.
  2. Learning new tools / languages / platforms that align with your direction.
  3. Gathering feedback from your customers and potential customers.

Check these out for more:

Where to head from here

If you’d like to help on your journey, check out RocLogic’s services and reach out to chat.

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