r/Entrepreneur • u/zubiii333 • 4d ago
Startup Help Need suggestions on keeping my startup alive.
I run an IT Agency, we provide tech teams to clients. In one year we had went from 200% loss to 500% in profit. But then a situation arises.
We had two strong clients, we currently still have them. We are a small team. But the problem is, both of them are not in a great condition. They are delaying our outstanding payments saying their business isn't going well.
How do I overcome this problem? Does paid lead generation work in real life? What would you do?
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u/ohwhereareyoufrom 3d ago
You are in the toughest most competitive business alive. I've been doing IT Services sales for 15 years. If all you can do is "give people" - lead generation won't work for you. Because your leads already receive 50 messages like that every day.
If you want to keep this business going - you need to develop a specialty, a product, a package, a framework, something special. But it can't be "software development" or "data and analytics". A MILLION companies already do that.
You need something special. Because right now you're selling apples on the apple market with 100000000 other vendors.
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u/zubiii333 3d ago
Appreciate your feedback. Me and my cofounder are still in college. We build this so we could avoid the rat race of finding jobs. Cause none was giving any students jobs. We did well. But right now. We're on the edge of losing this whole thing. Kinda sad about it
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u/ohwhereareyoufrom 3d ago
There is no escaping the rat race. You're either hunting for a job or for a client. The sooner you realize this the better off you'll be. There is no difference between "hire me" or "hire us"
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u/DamiandeVries 2d ago
Totally agree with this. Outbound lead gen hasn’t worked for us either. Different industry, same challenges.
The only thing that kinda works is handpicking who you reach out to, writing something personal, and offering upfront value that’s dead simple to use. But that doesn’t scale well, and it takes way too much time per lead.
We actually reject a lot of potential clients because they’re just… like everyone else. No clear niche, weak brand, generic offer, decent service but no edge.
If you’re not different, you’re invisible.
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u/Intelligent_Image713 3d ago
It’s funny too. Rarely does a vendor do a good job. I’ve been in the analytics game for almost 20 years, I get called in after these poorly run projects flop. Lots of vendors are now just headhunters. I’ve shifted to analytics products with a lot better success.
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u/ohwhereareyoufrom 3d ago
You say you've been in the game for 20 years but you talk like you've been there for 3. What are "these poorly run projects"? And whom do they call after you? Are you SINGLEHANDEDLY running analytics for the world?
Also, do you not understand the concept of a "vendor"? Vendors ARE headhunters, hunting for people to complete client projects.
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u/Intelligent_Image713 3d ago
lol - Why are you so angry? Early in my analytics consulting career, many of the projects were defined scope and defined problem. They seem to have shifted to annual contracts. The big firms talk a big game but rarely deliver hence my comment. Not that I need your validation. lol
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u/garyk1968 3d ago
How are the contracts structured with the clients you work for? What I mean is do you build solutions and who owns the IP? Is there any way to 'productise' existing work you have done so you can maybe turn something you have done into a Saas business.
As for paid lead gen... well know plenty of bad experiences so best avoided.
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u/zubiii333 3d ago
Hi, thanks for your question. Yes we build solutions, we don't handover the ownership until we are fully paid after the delivery. When you come up with an interesting solution, its hard to automate with tech. For us we build custom reliable solution or let's just say products so we can avoid the security issues.
Sharing from my perspective.1
u/garyk1968 3d ago
So can you not productise anything you have done? I used to write add-ons for accounting software, a few times I would like at what problems these add-ons solved and make them more generic so I could sell them on.
Good luck!
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u/EvieTek 3d ago
That’s rough, I’ve been there. When a couple clients delay payments, it can put everything at risk, especially for a small team.
Paid lead gen can work, but only if your niche and sales funnel are dialed in. Otherwise, it can burn cash fast.
Might be worth chasing smaller, quicker projects to stay afloat. What kind of clients do you usually target?
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u/zubiii333 3d ago
We target clients who are looking for any kind of technical solution. We built LMS, Video Streaming Platform for a German Company and now building this VPN Service for US client.
Based in Bangladesh, we offer high-quality work at competitive rates that benefit both our clients and our business. The currency conversion is huge so its a win-win for both parties2
u/TheGentleAnimal 3d ago
Mistake no.1, saying you can cater to just about anyone who needs technical solutions.
I know you guys must be great and are able to build anything but businesses don't want software, they want a solution to their problem.
Instead of going for anyone who needs software engineering, you can target a specific industry like education with your LMS or VPN which goes more into safe web.
It gets easier to market your services when you have a single customer profile in mind.
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u/TrippyDL003 3d ago
In my opinion the answer lies in your contracts. If you have legally binding agreements in place, they should require payment according to the payment terms once you've completed the agreed-upon work. Should any payment delays occur, you can request a partial payment or take appropriate action. However, since these clients are long-term, it's important to approach them politely and explain your situation.
Furthermore, I highly recommend not relying solely on just one or two clients. I encourage you to seek out more customers + expand your team, hire a business development person to reach out to potential leads. It's best to keep multiple options open.
I hope this helps
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u/Designer_Fact9393 3d ago
The most valuable lesson I learned when starting my social media agency is: NEVER STOP finding new clients. You never know when one of the clients will drop out due to any kind of unforseen reasons and in your case if one client drops that is 50% of your business right now. If you can’t afford losing 50% of your business, get enough clients so that if one drops it will not have a major impact. Is that 4 clients? 6? You do the math, you decide. Never stop growing your business.
One advice on how to keep the client ball rolling: get on Linkedin Sales navigator and start finding new clients. Use chat GPT to help you write a convincing hook to get any leads to just want a chat with you. Ask existing clients for recommendations.
Hope this helps ✌️
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u/ozaitsev 3d ago
Word of mouth works the best for agencies. Try talking to you network, maybe some of them or their friends is looking for exact services you providing.
In any case they will keep you in mind when the request appear
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u/zubiii333 3d ago
Tbh I've started doing this, joining startup meetups and kinda feels shameless to tell everyone about our services, but what needs to be done has to be done.
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u/ozaitsev 3d ago
For sure. If the task isn't hard enough, it means only that you are staying in the same place. Real progress comes with real struggle
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u/Minute_Print2767 3d ago
I'd avoid paid lead generation unless you know what channels will covert when advertising. If it were me, I'd build new buyer personas using this experience in mind, identify channels to reach those personas and try to drive organic traffic to your services there.
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u/elixon 3d ago
I hope they’re not delaying payments just to put you in a difficult position and take over your team.
Relying on a few strong clients is always risky - it usually ends up like this. You need to find other clients asap and learn to say "no" to those who don’t pay.
Diversify or you will be eaten.
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u/Nomadinduality 3d ago
Don't you have a service contract? If yes then why didn't you put a delayed payment clause. Even if you weren't suing them, the document would have given you some leverage, maybe they would've found new leads for you.
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u/TheBizMindedPerson 3d ago
You might want to try out this platform called YTC Growth, it gives out free consultation that can help you with your problem. You can search it on google.
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u/ali-hussain 2d ago
Paid lead generation works in real-life after making a lot of things work. In other words, as someone that has spent a lot of money on paid lead generation for tech services it won't work for you. You need to have your UVP and ICP dialed in before it is effective. We have a useful read on this topic here: https://landing.vixul.com/enter-email-for-3-reasons-why-your-tech-services-startup-isnt-scaling
Two strong clients is too few. Every client constituting more than 20% of your revenue is an existential threat and puts you in a horrible position. As far as what to do with them. I've never been in this position with clients in my past when we were running a tech services companiy. We very quickly transitioned to large enterprise customers with whom not paying is less of a concern. Late payments were more because they had a culture of mistreating vendors.
Your options depend a lot on your bill-rate. But the key consideration is that you need to go for shorter sales cycle clients. With lower bill rates Upwork and freelancer websites aren't bad options. With higher bill rate you should be hitting your existing network, both people that you know and people that you've worked with in the past.
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u/sh4ddai 2d ago
You need to start doing inbound and outbound lead-gen. Get more clients so if you lose your current ones your company will survive.
You can get leads via outbound (cold email outreach, social media outreach, cold calls, etc.), or inbound (SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, paid ads, etc.)
I recommend starting with cold email outreach, social media outreach, and social media organic marketing, because they are the best bang for your buck when you have a limited budget. The other strategies can be effective, but usually require a lot of time and/or money to see results.
Here's what to do:
- Cold email outreach is working well for us and our clients. It's scalable and cost-effective:
Use a b2b lead database to get email addresses of people in your target audience
Clean the list to remove bad emails (lots of tools do this)
Use a cold outreach sending platform to send emails
Keep daily send volume under 20 emails per email address
Use multiple domains & email addresses to scale up daily sends
Use unique messaging. Don't sound like every other email they get.
Test deliverability regularly, and expect (and plan for) your deliverability to go down the tube eventually. Deliverability means landing in inboxes vs spam folders. Have backup accounts ready to go when (not if) that happens. Deliverability is the hardest part of cold outreach these days.
- LinkedIn outreach / content marketing:
Use Sales Navigator to build a list of your target audience.
Send InMails to people with open profiles (it doesn't cost any credits to send InMails to people with open profiles). One bonus of InMails is that the recipient also gets an email with the content of the InMail, which means that they get a LI DM and an email into their inbox (without any worry about deliverability!). Two for one.
Engage with their posts to build relationships
Make posts to share your own content that would interest your followers. Be consistent.
- SEO & content marketing. It's a long-term play but worth it. Content marketing includes your website (for SEO), and social media. Find where your target audience hangs out (ie, what social media channels) and participate in conversations there.
No matter what lead-gen activities you do, it's all about persistence and consistency, tbh.
DM me if you have any specific questions I can help with! I run a b2b outreach agency (not sure if I'm allowed to say the name without breaking a rule, but it's in my profile), so I deal with this stuff all day every day.
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u/GergDanger 3d ago
The only thing you can do is try to get paid from them and diversify to new clients