Maybe you fit the story: you were born a Jedi developer and you’d been doing freelancer gigs ever since, so at some point you brought in your BFF Han Solo to help you out. You have a stable business position, are booked for the rest of the year and your mind is set on one thing: developing – better and faster.
Software development company owners are developers at heart, so I can understand if selling or even hiring more people is the last thing on your mind.
When your development team is full of work and not available to new clients, we say they are running at full capacity.
So if you have enough clients, why think about new ones? Simple: because when the big deal is finished, or the big clients leaves – that’s about 40% – 70% of your revenue stream gone.
Damn… But calm down, don’t go to the dark side.
So how do you prevent that from happening?
When I pitch RightHello’s services, at least 3 out of 10 founders are currently comfortable with the number of clients they have. They don’t believe that they should be thinking about acquiring new ones – their developers are already busy, right?
Wrong!
When your sizable team of developers is running at full capacity, but the market need for your services is still big, you have choices to make:
1) Who Let The Dogs Out?
Your developers are all busy with clients – you have room just for one more. How many potential clients do you need to fill this space? One, right? NO! At least 3! Why?
Let them fight for you! If you know the market needs you, why not raise your price? If you’re only talking to one client at a time, then you’re leaving no space for a challenge. Once you have 3 clients fighting to be that last account – now you have the upper hand. But you need to really overdeliver for your customers, have a trusted brand and start approaching more customers to be worth fighting for.
2) Grow! Grow! Grow!
If all 5 of your full-time developers are busy with clients, convert the 2 freelancers that help you part-time to full-time employees. All 7 are booked for the next 6 months? Hire 2 more developers to handle the clients on the waiting list.
Oh no, you’re full again… No, you are never full! That’s the idea! Hire more to embrace all new clients that your outbound marketing campaigns will bring. Once they are also booked, guess what you should do… HIRE MORE! Easy to say, hard to do.
Here’s what our Obi-Wan CTO Jan Filipowski has to say to that:
The path you decide to take doesn’t matter, as long as you continue investing in acquiring new clients, or at least regularly developing new leads.
I won’t tell you what you want to read but what you should: every technology has a defined lifespan of success.
If in 5 years you may be outdated (depending on your pivoting choices), why would you postpone emerging yourself fully in a sea of clients? They are looking for you right now!
But wait a minute!
Where is your focus again? On Jedi developing. Do you have time to focus on hiring/selling? No. How will you find those Skywalker developers that fit your team? That’s what I’ll tell you in my next blog post.
C’mon, I’m in sales… do you really think I would give everything away easily? In the meantime, check out our case studies. You may find yourself wanting to be on that list list. See you soon… and may the force be with you!
