Ask HN: Where do you find clients? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do you find clients?

54 pointsbendtheblock31 comments

I am the co-founder of a company that provides software to established and rapidly developing organisations that wish to introduce modern web working-practices. Think e-commerce apps, large Joomla-based sites, social media features, clean and functional design etc.

We are just getting started but have managed to find some leads mainly through our professional contacts. We’ve also tried websites such as http://www.supply2.gov.uk/ but I’ve found these to be of limited use. Getting clients at this stage is critical to us as we need to increase our portfolio of work.

My question is for those that do web development for a similar audience; where do you look for potential clients, RFPs etc? Do you hit the streets? Hold workshops? Attend ‘networking’ events? Search online?

Note that I am based in London - although it would also be interesting to know how this works internationally. Thanks all.

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If you're looking at the higher end of the market, perhaps 10-20k per project or more, referals and relationships is where it's at.

Think about how you would select someone for a project if you had £50k to spend on a project. Would you search the web and pick the company with the nicest website or most blog articles?

Or would you reach out to your contacts, see what other companies have done, seeking referals. When you're spending a lot of money, nothing soothes a buyer more than sound recommendations from people who have used you before.

I'm not saying the website isn't important. It is, as your 'shop front' and public image, very important. But it's a small part of the whole package.

So networking might the most important activity you can do, as you never know who you might meet.

I think you are right - we need our website for potential leads to check out our work/testimonials but the sales will only come from initial 'real-world' interaction. To get referrals we need previous work, which is the problem really. The question is for this type of project (~£50k), how do we assure clients we can deliver a high quality solution, without a long list of previous clients. I think we need to find a couple of projects that we can undercut the competition on and deliver a superior solution. From there, we can build a reputation. It’s finding these initial clients that is the problem.

Thanks to everyone that's posted so far - every single point has been useful. We actually have a brand for lower budget websites that already uses some of the points here successfully. We can’t use these sites as ‘previous clients’ for the other service since they tend to be for small creative businesses rather than medium/large companies.

Even if the creative business are lower value than the business you now want, the work still demonstrates what you can do.

If one of your existing websites involved a web application, e-commerce etc, this shows your capabilities.

If you don't think you can jump straight in at £50k, go up to the next price bracket. That way you can use your existing portfolio as a reference. Then just keep leapfrogging up to the bigger business.

Don't forget that you can likely charge medium to large business more than you can a small business. If you're quoting based on value to the customer, the value is likely to be higher for a larger business, so you can charge more.

So what might be a £10k job for a small business, ends up being a £20k job for a larger company.

I once worked for a company that did an e-commerce site for a large plc. They charged £750 per day for development, and the overall cost for the site was in excess of £100k.

But if you were freelance, you would likely charge £250-300 per day for the same. However, this large company was used to paying those sort of rates, and we were a 'consultancy' which can make a difference in price!

This is all great advice - thanks. Totally agree on the end-user-value-based pricing. Leap-frogging is certainly a strategy that could work since the design element of the smaller sites is good and we've a couple of e-commerce sites in the pipeline (for the smaller clients)

I have very limited experience as a consultant/independent worker so take this with a grain of salt.

Have you considered doing a number of smaller projects while building up your reputation? If you are having trouble finding ~50K look for ~10K or even ~5K and then deliver far more value than they are paying for. At first you may be working more for reputation than money, then that will invert later.

I'd be very careful about the lower budget brand. It can easily affect the perception about your big budget brand. If it was me, I'd run the lower cost brand as a different business unit, with different name and sales team. If practical I'd share the back-room processes but in a way that it doesn't "leak" to outside parties.

On a related note, look at how much trouble Toyota went to when launching the Lexus to avoid it becoming an "expensive Toyota". Hyundai have tried introducing upmarket models, but to people it's still "just" a Hyundai. The website market is no different to the motor vehicle market, they are both more about perception and branding than the underlying technology.

I have a similar business, we're nearing our third year. We've found most of our clients through word of mouth and referrals, but don't let that discourage you. You'd be amazed how many people need web work and haven't taken action because hiring a web firm is so intimidating, and its hard to know if you're getting ripped off. Its like how finding a good, honest mechanic you trust is worth its weight in gold - web shops are the same way.

Make sure to tell everyone you know what you do, and you'll find work. In the mean time, try craigslist. Its tough to get clients from craigslist but it can be done, and you'll get a lot of great experience winning clients competitively. In our early days, we landed a white-label development gig via craigslist that provided an invaluable source of steady income during that make-or-break time.

For building your portfolio quickly, you've got 3 options as I see it:

1) Make your own side projects and add those to your portfolio.

2) Lower your rates for your initial clients. Be upfront that they're getting a great deal because you are just getting started, and charge full price for support contracts.

3) Make a fantastic website for a local non-profit. You don't have to worry about "cheapening" yourself, and you'll almost certainly get some good PR out of it. Most importantly, the boards of many non-profits are composed of business leaders in the community. You'll gain invaluable connections if you execute well.

If you give free or discount work, its imperative that you treat it with the same respect as a fully priced client. Think of it as a marketing budget, and make sure its having the maximum impact.

Most importantly, don't die. Figure out how much you can survive on, and skip the fancy office for now. Even if its slow, you will build momentum if you make a good product.

This is not a "put food on the table tomorrow" strategy, but it does work: start blogging how you solve the problems of the people whose problems you want to solve. Continue blogging for a few years, gradually building up a reputation for yourself as a topical expert in the community.

You'll have to beat off offers with a stick.

On a related note: get speaking gigs at conferences or support events that your target customers attend. It will take some work to establish yourself as a domain expert, but once done it's likely to bring you a steady stream of prospects.

True.. I've been seeing something similar by uswaretech whose django posts (found on HN) are informative, showcasing their knowledge/expertise

Good call. Back in the day, my family's business started through direct mail, at first with letters and later with colored flyers. The flyers worked better. We found mailing lists from funding agencies and other public or quasi public sources. This was exceedingly difficult and time consuming, but it worked.

Nowadays, a lot of our clients find us via Google and our blog at http://blog.seliger.com , but that takes more time to build. Still, we try and put a fair number of likely keywords in the titles of posts, which helps. We started ours after the Wall Street Journal ran a story on that issue, and it was like, "Why didn't we think of this earlier?"

I wrote this article, and found these strategies to work for me.

http://procnew.com/10-cheap-ways-to-get-clients-for-freelanc...

The new way to find clients is by following the below principles ...........

1.Start a blog

2a.Write the content which showcases your expertise

2b.Identify pain points and share your expertise in those areas

2c.publish the interviews of various persons who are (experts / kind of popular ) in the area in which you are doing consulting.(or) any good content which will of interest to target audience.

2d.in above way you will be building the audience and trust.and people will referring you to their friends if any need arises.

3.Make sure your content is very good/remarkable so that people can share..........

4.As your content spreads you will be known to many people and inturn they will ask you /your company to help on their project.

5.And also develop tools which will be helpfull to target audience.( A good tool spreads like any thing which inturns spreads your company name)

6.Participate actively in various online groups (related to the area in which you are doing consulting) .

you will be suprised when people are contacting you...........

7.Keep an eye on SEO as search engines are driving huge traffic to sites.(good landing page, blog will help in improving the SEO)

8.Adwords (spend some amount on adwords for good targeted keywords to attract diverse audience)

The above is popular referred to as inbound marketing (i.e you will not shout/beg at your prospects for getting leads inturn prospects are coming to.........:))

Important blogs to follow:

1.http://blog.hubspot.com/

2.http://www.webinknow.com/

3.http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

Important book to read The New Rules of Marketing and PR (awesome and excellent) http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books.htm

A lot of the above seem quite passive to me.

Agreed. You (or a salesperson) needs to be shaking hands.

Are there brokers who specialize in matching clients and customers in the $50k-$500k web space? Any in NY in particular?

Conferences are great - we've had a lot of success nailing clients in tech/industry conferences. Of course, you should be selective on the ones you choose to attend (avoid the high price/high BS ration ones).

Also, cold e-mails can work surprisingly well if you can lead with a warm-ish intro. Follow them on twitter, read their blog posts, quote their CEO, whatever.. Just something so that the recipient appreciates that this is not a generic email and understands that you've put effort into it.

Very good suggestion. It takes effort to maintain personal, specific and valuable communications ... but it's worth it. The bland, generic stuff really taints the brand.

In my experience conferences are rarely attended by the real decision makers. So you'll need to accept that the people you network with are possibly several steps removed to the ones you are really trying to reach. Which means that you need to tailor your communications to suit at each of the levels so that the people along the chain of command gain from your interaction with them.

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/freelance/a/clients_8ways.htm

Good rule of thumb: You should be meeting at least two new people every day. And for every person you meet, you should be making three introductions. Figure out who the 5 best superconnectors are in your city, and then have them each introduce you to thirty of their friends. Then have each of those 150 people introduce you to three people, and you'll be set.

hmm well I suppose networking would be crucial. At least for me it is. I sometimes do some web development/design work and all of my clients recommend me. How I found the first one was simple, I did it for a friend...you could offer a free version to someone, etc?

I suggest you read Seth Godin's website. For God sakes the man is a marketing genius! :)

Best wishes with your venture.

I agree with the comment saying that for the type of work you do, it's all about word of mouth & referrals. From what you're saying about getting leads through your professional contacts, it seems like you've already figured this out.

You should probably be quite open about giving anybody who brings you a paying client a hefty commission of 10% or more.

The only problem is that getting the word out there can be pretty hard work which involves periodically calling up everybody you know and reminding them of the fact that you're looking for projects.

To plug a venture I'm involved with: I believe a lot of these referrals and recommendations can be made much easier using online tools & that's what we've been trying do at http://www.venzen.co.uk - the visitors of the site are mostly London based SME owners looking for service providers such as yourself.

Good idea re: commission. Your site looks like a good starting point for us - will check it out in more detail later.

have managed to find some leads mainly through our professional contacts

Good. Keep doing that. Then get referrals from your referrals. This has always worked well for me.

RFPs I never do. You have little control and have to compete. Look for opportunities where there is no competition.

hit the streets? Absolutely.

Hold workshops? These can be very effective for prospects deeper in your pipeline, but they can also be quite time consuming.

Attend ‘networking’ events? Every one you can. You'll soon learn which are worthwhile and which are not.

Search online? I haven't found much success doing this.

Agree on RFPs/Tenders. If you suspect that a company has had help with their tender from a preferred supplier, unless you're desperate for work or have a lot of spare time, run away.

A common strategy is to engage a salesperson who has worked for similar companies, get them to use their book of contacts to sell your services. If you advertise for the salesperson, you should be able to find someone who will work on a freelance/commission-only basis.

I've heard this, but I've also heard that we should do our own sales. Does anyone have any info on where to find London-based IT sales people that will work on commission only?

Agreed that personal contacts and relationships are your best bet.

Beyond that, we use Google Alerts to RSS feed + LeadNuke for a continuous stream of new client leads. (disclosure: I developed LeadNuke expressly for this purpose)

I think the true purpose of an advisory board is client contacts. You can build a top notch virtual salesperson with the right board with no financial cost and only a small equity cost.

For the company I work for we build websites in the 100k - 500k range. Our first clients came from a professional relationship my boss had before he started the company. Then gradually as the company did work we gained a reputation for the sector, and in the products of our core compentencies. Now we have more leads then developers to finish them. They come from referrals of other clients (everyone in the sector seems to talk to each other) and a large part comes from our business partners (the companies that built our web platforms) referring us.

This is exactly where we want to end up. It's all about building reputation, you and a couple of others have pointed out that word-of-mouth is by far the most effective way of gaining this. For initial clients, we are just going to have to continue promotion in our own professional network.

I get most of my clients via the Web. Far to many of them for me to handle. They find me on the Web due to my SEO or they notice me due to my blogging and social media participation. Also clients refer new clients.

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