Grow your business

How good are your sales? Think about a change?

Most ISV are one-man-show, they’ve been in business for 4 years, the average download rate is 3000 per month, at a conversion rate under 3%, and a median 2000-5000 $/month sales volume.

This is the result of an opinion poll filled in by 95 ISV companies, conducted on Neil Davidson’s blog - thank you Neil for this valuable survey! My own reading of the data is that there are way more opportunities for independent software vendors to reach higher revenues, and they should take them. Not surprisingly, according to the study, the biggest issues that Micro ISVs face are time, marketing, and sales:

I will not argue about time because it really becomes an issue especially when you are coding or writing specifications after regular day job. The only solution is to give up that day job and turn into full time, self managed business person – I suggest reading Selling your own software vs working for the man.

“The amount of time people spend working on their mISV varies, from almost nothing to over 80 hours per week. The average (mean) is about 25 hours per week”. There are ways to make more money in less time, but only after you spend some good hours planning how you promote yourself, how your website looks, how easy your shoppers can get throughout the checkout process and where to look for more shoppers.

Here is some advice:

MARKETING

Most independent software vendors and especially micro ISVs are technical people who know how to design great products but have little experience and no time to promote them. Try not to wear too many hats, as Bob Walsh puts it, and outsource. Outsource is good, especially with promotion, because:

1. you benefit from an outside, objective look. Very often you get too attached to your product and fail to see threats or even opportunities on the market. An outsider can have a wider view of the context, sees you just like your shoppers see you and can come with valuable strategic guidelines and messages.
2. you put your image in the hands of professionals. Just like you (and your team) know how to design a great software product, the partner marketing or PR team you choose will know how to make your product visible: write eye-catching announcements for pay-per-click campaigns, efficiently manage these campaigns to save you money, write news worthy press releases and send them directly to editors interested in covering the subject or writing a review or placing your product on the cover CD/DVD in their magazine.

Remember, online is the most handy promotion channel, but do not disregard the offline promotion in printed magazines and, very important, at industry events.

SALES

Products do not sell by themselves; you need people, resellers, and presence 24/7 on local markets. How can you have all these and still not pay any extra personnel, right on spot, without training or never ending meetings? Centralize and focus on business development instead of accounting paperwork. Outsource what can be outsourced, use partner relationship management tools, and automate order, delivery, and payments.

It’s already a fact that most time is wasted on bureaucracy; no matter how small the company is. Bureaucracy means also having 3 people working on 3 different report templates, probably in 2 different document types (excel, word) and definitely in 3 (or more because one is never constant with himself) different data tables. This means at the end of the day you have to centralize not by “merge” but by “copy & paste” – a never ending task that leaves you and your team no more time for research, development and market scouting.

Try using a partner relation management system or reseller management system, establish procedures and default work templates. We think such a solution is very important for the success of a software business and we have designed one, Avangate Reseller Management System.

The next step is to spend as much time as possible watching the market, understanding your buyers’ needs and developing the right tools, extending your reach and your income.

You can read all the data and Neil Davidson’s interesting findings.