What are good ways (websites/channels) to generate business leads for mobile and social apps development business?
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My straightforward question is that we are small company who have established good skills in software development for mobiles (iPhone/Android) and social space (ruby on rails). We can build high performance, reliable and secure apps faster and easier. We have worked with some large clients (mostly subcontracting) and successfully delivered several large and complex projects. However, now we are trying to go to the "next level" i.e. from subcontracting to start building direct clients especially in the enterprise sector. I have used several website which provide leads (like http://designquote.net/ and http://www.thumbtack.com/) with little to no success. Off course we have good profiles on elance, odesk and few other similar websites. Reality is that these websites mostly get developers or sub-contractors crowd which hardly gets you maximize business potential as in case of direct dealing with end clients. Having a website, presence on social media websites and active marketing while sitting from an emerging economy is all being pursued very actively. So I feel my question is still unanswered as: - How to find hunting ground for enterprise customers? - What will be the best approach to persuade them to work with us (top tips)? I would love your advise on whats the best process for generating sales for small IT services company on a tight budget? Also, I am just more concerned with how to generate a lead and then land an appointment with a prospective client? Does cold calling work and should I be doing it myself or hire someone (did try hiring earlier and got no results)? Any help and guidance is much appreciated :) Thanks, Waqas Pitafi http://www.DevBatch.com
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Answer:
Build a brand, advertise, go to conferences or develop a hit app with millions of downloads.
Samar Singla at Quora Visit the source
Other answers
Sales are driven by leads Leads are driven by traffic (how many people are interested in you) Traffic is driven by the trust Trust is driven by visibility So in nutshell, be visible and build trust (brand) with your potential prospects. How do we translate this philosophy into real actionable items? You can utilize three approaches. 1. Relationship approach: Utilizing existing relationship (trust is already built), easy option for starters Go to your family, ex colleagues, friends, 2nd/3rd degree of each category of relationships. Doesn't matter if they can directly help or not. Ask for their help. You'll find help. This is easiest way to start. 2. Building network approach: Utilize social, meet ups, email marketing, or any other avenue in your easy access. This is obviously going to be more painstaking process than #1. But key thing is to focus on building your brand. People should be able to trust you on your niche. They should consider you a guru. Key would be that rather than selling anything, they should trust that you'll be best person to help on the topic. Unlike relationship approach here you'll need to also popup in from of them every now and then to remind of your existence. Also, invest in , , 3. Short term: focus on paid marketing While approach 1 and 2 are for long term establishment, approach 3 yields results very quickly and that's the reason it's most expensive too. Run campaigns on (Very expensive) or (Relatively inexpensive) or even Twitter or LinkedIn ads You can buy contact leads from various companies specializing in this field Buy qualified leads, as their are several companies around who only get leads from their web and social channels and sell those across (http://www.designquote.net is one that pops in my head) Consider buying premium accounts of LinkedIn to find potential clients
Khan Waqas Pitafi
Cold outbound email - by far the most predictable and scalable sales technique for B2B sales.I'd suggest starting with creating a sales structure. Having a systemized process for lead generation is essential, from using appropriate tools to setting up your sales team properly.Ideally, you'll want a team of inside sales people. Many businesses expect their sales team to do too much i.e. do their own prospecting, appointment setting, meetings/demo's/calls, closing, after sales care. This is a surefire way of capping growth. The most efficient sales teams have a completely broken down process, with team members hired to control each stage of a sales process. A brief breakdown is as follows: 1 x team member for prospecting/lead generation once a warm lead/interested prospect comes through, this is immediately passed over to; 1 x team member for appointment setting this team member simply arranges a date/time for an appointment for your; 1 x team member for meeting/demo's/calls and closing business this team member is tasked with closing business. Once closed, the now new customer is passed over to; 1 x team member for aftercare/customer service/upselling this team member is like an account manager, which handles all customers for whatever they need. Common job title: Customer Success Representative. As you can see, to develop an effective sales team, you need to hire more than one person, because the whole sales process needs to be broken down into sections. This will also allow you to scale properly.Understandably, not all businesses can hire a sales team, so try to break down this process for just one person when necessary, but you have to be very, very strict with planning your day!Some tools to help as well:Prospecting tools: http://linkedin.com/ (worlds biggest network of professionals will help you drill down on your Ideal Customer Profile, and make good connections. Wonderful tool!) http://bit.ly/1nmjjnB (in private beta and is a brilliant tool. This helps find email addresses very easily and accurately on the most part. We're using this currently and is the best thing we've used when taking into account cost, additional features, support, email accuracy etc) Email automation tools: http://outreach.io/ (I believe one of the market leaders, but quite expensive) http://bit.ly/1nmjjnB (does both sales prospecting and email automation, yet not as advanced as dedicated tools. Good if you don't want an expensive sales stack of many tools though) http://replyup.com/ (great little new tool which is free) CRM tools: http://salesforce.com/ (accepted market leader but not great for everyone) http://pipedrive.com/ http://hubspot.com/ (can actually be used for email automation as well I believe but I don't have any personal experience. Can also be used for inbound marketing) http://zoho.com/ http://sugarcrm.com/ https://www.insightly.com/(starting to make a good name for itself) http://bit.ly/1nmjjnB (built in mini-CRM. Good for early stage prospects whilst cold, and then once qualified into hot leads put them into something more advanced) http://streak.com/ (Gmail plug in) http://close.io/ Web Tracking Tool http://whoisvisiting.com/ (will allow you to track business visitors who have come to your website but taken no action. This means that no-one slips through the cracks and you maximize every opportunity that comes your way) This is an outbound B2B sales process. Outbound sales can be predictable, making growth much more straight-forward and realistic and I'm sure will help you with your mobile and social apps development business.
Maxwell Cole
We have been experimenting with lead generation software to find newly-formed business leads and have found it to be successful.Our investigation led us towards trialling a few different products which are available for business lead generation and identification such as http://leadlander.com/which our marketing executives found useful for establishing the ROI of their efforts.http://visistats.com/ is another which our sales team utilized to generate vital lead information.However, they have now decided to use http://whoisvisiting.com/ to enhance their B2B sales, due to the efficiency of its real-time notification feature along with the quality of the detailed reports available to them on their leads. It has made an invaluable difference to sales conversion rate.
Sarah Holmes
Now the next step in value chain is : Start using the tools like http://discoverorg.com, http://www.infer.com These and many more tools for developing quality pipeline of leads and then target each one of them with pitches, eventually you start making inroads.
Aravind Prasad
I would recommend http://bit.ly/1SRyXTX- a tool which identifies companies visiting your website â the unique approach turns unknown B2B website visitors into business leads (that would otherwise be lost). Receive real-time reporting on high potential leads.It enables you to find out: Company name Company address Company website Company telephone Did you know 95% of companies who visit your website do not enquire. http://bit.ly/1SRyXTXis a tool that identifies these âunknownsâ and transforms them into hot leads with all the contact details and insight you need to get in touch.You can discover new opportunities by approaching customers directly on your site, monitor in real-time and react in seconds! Customise alerts and receive notifications of companies that land on your website.The following reports are available: Real time notifications Custom CSV email Companies by Channel Report Companies by Search Term Report I would recommend the 14-day FREE trial to analyse the effectiveness for yourself.
Callum Jenkinson
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