DirtyInformation

Missed Chances

15 Aug 2014

I have been spending a month and a half looking for new clients. It has been very hard on my psyche. I make calls and send emails all day. I saved many months of money so that I would not have to worry. I’m in no way in danger of running out any time soon, but I’m still having a hard time getting my head into the situation I am in.

The progress of sales can be very hard to measure. Conversations can seem to speed very quickly and then grind to a halt. Therefore it is extremely difficult for me to feel accomplished until a sale is complete. What can we do make sales go faster?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do have some ideas on when to concentrate on sales. Always! At the beginning of building my company I was constantly talking to potential customers, and marketing my services. I spent months telling customers that I had no current availability. I began to feel bad for always saying no. I thought it would hurt my chances of working with these potential customers in the future. I stopped advertising and marketing.

Stopping my marketing was the worst thing that could have happened to my pipeline. When I finished two contracts at once I was left out in the cold with no work. I had to start over at building new relationships. Many of the old relationships are still there, but they are not as strong as they once were. My contacts were not constantly hearing my name and thinking about my services. Now those contacts are just remembering what I have to offer.

Now I need to find ways to keep my name and services on their minds. Right now I’m going to spend some time looking into email marketing. I need something that won’t take as much time as handshaking and making phone calls. The more time consuming the marketing the less time I have to get to the work I enjoy. If you have any ideas I would love to hear them.

The Past

• Testing Named Agents 03 Feb 2017
• Two Duplication Refactorings in Elixir 18 Jan 2017
• B is for BigDecimal 24 Sep 2014
• A is for Abbrev 02 Sep 2014
• Missed Chances 15 Aug 2014
• Style Guides are Failures 15 Jun 2014
• What is BDD anyway? 15 Apr 2014
• An Agile Contract 31 Mar 2014
• What Do I Want 23 Mar 2014
• Just the Tip 16 Mar 2014
• Important Partnerships 11 Mar 2014
• Lost in Translation 03 Mar 2014
• Story Splitting Revisited 23 Feb 2014
• Let your yes be yes and your no be no 16 Feb 2014
• Lethal Injection 09 Feb 2014
• Smaller is Better 02 Feb 2014
• A Second Time 26 Jan 2014
• Introspective 20 Jan 2014
• Self Reflection for the Win 06 Dec 2013
• Why? Why? Why? 30 Sep 2013
• A New Gig 18 Sep 2013
• Exceptional Comments 15 Jun 2013
• Role Objects in Acceptance Tests 30 Apr 2013
• Open Closed Ruby Woes 28 Apr 2013
• Write Something 12 Apr 2013
• A Great Cast of Characters 06 Mar 2012
• When is the Release Party? 19 Aug 2011
• Single Responsibilty, How Did I Forget You 12 Apr 2011
• Change Classes not Styles 05 Nov 2010
• My MongoDB Cookbook Recipe 20 Jul 2010
• Agile Says What? 05 Nov 2009
• Inject & Me - BFFs 07 Sep 2008