Unlimited sales and marketing budget ? Congratulations. This may be useful to consider if you're of more modest means, though.
If you're a small UK IT or Digital company reading this - congratulations, you're still here. It's been a rough couple of years.
As a matter of fact, in 30 years of IT (including 20 in IT Sales and Marketing) I can't remember a couple of years like it. At last, we seem to be seeing some vague signs of recovery, but the rest of 2024 and the start of 2025, most likely, is going to be rough, with business opportunities few and far between.
Most of the UK IT development industry is small - companies with less than 10 people - with little commercial expertise and without the budget to employ a dedicated Sales and Marketing manager or CCO.
With that in mind, let me give you a very brief guide on how to develop leads as efficiently and easily as possible.
Sales and how to get them.
- Forget "Sales and Marketing"
Conventional wisdom says that, in any B2B business, you should expend about 20% of your revenue on Marketing. In B2C businesses, you're expected to expend up to 30%.
Even if you could afford to do this, which you probably can't - what does it achieve ? Simple. It theoretically gets you higher up on a search engine. In theory, "people come to you."
Except they don't. The way search engines work is easy. Whoever pays the most to Google gets a higher ranking, so all your Marketing strategy can be trounced by someone with a more open wallet than yours.
- Forget relying on location
You might be in a prestigious location like Manchester or London, and think people will search for "local companies". Ah ah, well. Yes, theoretically, but your myriad competitors have got around this by either creating landing pages on their website to show they're in Manchester / Leeds / Sheffield / the Outer Hebrides, or they've paid £20 a month for a virtual office - just a correspondence address - which gives them a Google Map pin. Sneaky, eh ?
- Really, "forget the internet"
Here's where I get radical. Since the late 90's, the idea has taken hold that you can do everything via the internet. Yes, you can run a business over it, you can speak to people in different countries, you can find customers and sell your goods and services..... and so can everyone else. Who you are in competition with. And to win the competition, you have to be more visible than everyone else and therefore spend more money on advertising, branding, sales outreach and 1001 other considerations.
File under "saturation point." If you attempt to compete with everyone else, you are merely lengthening the odds of success. So. Logically, you have to do something novel to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
- Anyone can easily ignore your efforts
E-mail. Cold calls. Pay Per Click. Paid ads.... all these can easily be ignored by your target audience. You can find any number of providers out there who'll run a PPC campaign for you... at a cost... most likely to their benefit and not yours.
- Business is personal
Here's where I get radical.
What's the point of Sales and Marketing ? Well, what you're attempting to do is get to decision makers. The bottom line of getting business is that you speak to the people with the clout and the cash to commission software or services from you. The logic above is that the internet provides you (at a cost) with the medium of reaching these people from afar. The reality is that you're merely attempting to do what everyone else is doing.
By "everyone", in the IT industry, I mean the entire world, from Kettering to Kuala Lumpur. Global village, remember ?
- Occam's razor time
If you are trying - essentially - to get close to decision makers then the easiest and most foolproof method of succeeding is actually get physically close to them. Remove all the uncertainty of internet marketing - meet the decision makers, "press the flesh" and get your name and reputation out there. "Old school, baby !!"
So. How are you going to achieve this seismic shift ?
- Out with the Little Black Book
Realistically, you can do everything below alongside your conventional marketing efforts - "suck it and see."
If you've been in business a few years, you'll have a list of people you've done work for. Hopefully they'll have been happy with you. Ring them up.
Most companies now are getting either work or future leads from references. Go through the little black book.
- Ask how your former contacts are doing
- Were they happy with the work you did for them ?
- Can they give you a hand ?
Ask what professional events they're attending this year, and can you tag along and be invited to them ?
A word about networking, here. As you've probably noticed, most generic business networking events are useless. If you attend a generic networking event, you'll find it full of life coaches, apprenticeship providers and probably even dog walkers, all trying to pitch to you. Forget generic networking events completely, there's a one in five chance you'll end up talking to anyone even vaguely useful and probably a one in five chance of a converted lead. Don't waste your time on generic networking - use your time much more wisely.
Give your contacts some incentive to help you out, whether it's decreased support costs or adding some extra features to their existing app cheaply. Or an "intro fee". Or just buy them lunch.
Remember: people work in their own self interests. Give them something to be interested about. This will probably be above and beyond a McDonald's Happy Meal.
For future reference - in any contract, make sure you put a clause in saying that you reserve the right to include references for Marketing purposes. After a job is done, you can spend three months trying to track people down and get them to sign copy off.
- When attending events
Excuse me if I tell you things you already know here..... I've seen too many people making fundamental errors at events.
Important, time for the italics - Don't try and "sell" at networking events.
A networking event is not a place you try the hard sell. Everyone is standing there, having an enjoyable chat and suddenly, someone turns up in 1950's Vacuum Cleaner Salesman mode and puts everyone off doing potential business with them.
You're there to meet interesting people and convince them you're reliable, knowledgeable, professional, easy to communicate with.
Now, regarding "knowledgeable" - here's an important point. Knowledgeable doesn't mean go technical on them. If you're technical, then strongly consider taking someone along who is well versed in Sales - the art of communication. Most important point - you don't sell software. You sell solutions to problems. If you corner someone and talk about the minutae of software and frameworks. You may be interested in the subject, they may be "less so". Geekery puts buyers off. You need a non pushy "people person" there who can steer contacts towards becoming business prospects.
And really, you have all the advantages. You are in a room with a decision maker. The opposition isn't. You have reference sites, someone to vouch for you, and you can start generating business. However.
There's a tendency for people not used to Sales and Marketing to regard an event as a success or failure based on "coming away with work". What normally happens in any Sales situation is that you'll get someone saying "It's something we'll be looking at in the next six months." Leads are gold dust. Don't expect instant results, do expect your face to get known. That won't happen via e mail.
Finally: don't turn up like an idiot without a business card with QR codes to your website on it. You'd be amazed how many people turn up utterly unprepared. Connect with your contacts on Linkedin or professional forums and stay in touch with them and use them to develop more contacts. Spread the news about the work you've done for <person x> at <company y> - more contacts, more news, more chance of leads, more chance of business.
Get out there and spread the Happy Word.
About the author
Dave Francis has been in IT "since IT", nearly. With 10 years as a high level IT professional working for blue chip companies and 20 years in IT Sales and Marketing, he's ate the pie and worn the T shirt.
Interested in hearing more ? Drop me a line at hello@davefrancisconsulting.com - and good luck, everyone.
