How to boost an IT company
In this article, we will answer the question: “how to boost an IT company” because this is one of the most crucial issues to be solved by the owner of an IT company that has existed on the market for several years.
Here are some useful tips to help you “reboot” processes in your company and achieve the desired result:
Review the purpose of the company
First, you need to correctly define the purpose of your company by asking yourself a logical question: do I want to have a company of 50 people or earn $50,000 a month? After all, these are entirely different goals, the achievement of which requires different marketing positions and channels.
For example, you can have 50 Java or .NET developers and earn the expected profit or have 18 Salesforce consultants with a $150/hour rating and earn more. In both cases, the choice of marketing strategy is completely different but leads to the same result (during different periods).
Employee skill development and training
Continuous learning is critical for any IT company looking to stay competitive and boost growth. Investing in robust employee training and skills development should be an integral part of your strategy.
First, implement regular training sessions to teach new technologies and methodologies. As frameworks and programming languages rapidly evolve, it’s essential that staff skills keep pace. Sponsor certifications and credentials in high-demand areas like cloud computing, cybersecurity, and AI/machine learning.
You might also incentivize self-directed learning by offering tuition reimbursement or study bonuses when attaining new skills. And be flexible in allowing time for employees to upskill. The more trained your talent pool is, the more valuable your services become.
Secondly, nurture mentoring and knowledge sharing internally. Pair junior and senior team members together. Encourage presenting work in “lunch and learns”. Enable shadowing across different roles. This ensures expertise gets passed on and all benefit from each other’s experiences.
Not only will ongoing training decrease turnover by boosting engagement, it will equip your company to take on new types of client work. The result is expanded service capabilities without solely hiring new talent. Investing in your existing team’s growth is key for an adaptable, thriving IT business.
Reconsider the "philosophy" of your sales
You can earn more by having the same number of developers in the company as before only by reviewing your sales approaches.
How it works: the company has a PHP developer. You have the opportunity to “sell” them to a Western customer in 3 ways:
- as developer/company time – $30/hour;
- as an expert’s time at Magento – $45/hour;
- as a consultant’s time, which can, after listening to the client, fully configure e-commerce processes and integration in the customer’s company for $100/hour.
Thus, the main advice is to properly position your company in the market with the help of marketing tools. It will significantly improve your ratings and make you earn more without even increasing the number of developers.
Analyze the available "stack" of your technologies
Maybe, you should think about a partial change or focus on more popular areas.
The easiest way to find out the popularity of technology is to analyze the number of push and pull requests on Github – the world’s most popular platform for online code storage. For convenience, they have created a Github – a subproject, where you can see all the trends, charts and analyze the popularity of certain technologies.
For example, in Europe, Drupal developers are quite popular, but in the US, you have to explain to the customer what it is because they probably have never heard of this CMS.
Change focus countries
When preparing your new marketing strategy, it is better to re-analyze the countries in which you want to specialize, taking into account the following factors:
- the presence in your portfolio of projects created for clients from specific countries;
- having links and customers who can recommend you or leave a video review on your website;
- rating for developers in a specific country;
- the difference in mentality;
- time difference;
- the size of the gross domestic product;
- development of your domain (examination) in a specific country.
Taking into account the combination of the above factors, you can count on improving the efficiency of your IT business.
Portrait of the client
After selecting the focus country/countries, you need to update your Ideal Customer Portrait (ICP). For example, if you used to focus on providing services to Western IT companies and your main “product” was your developers’ time, reviewing your strategy and focusing on finding customers in specific domains and specifying countries will increase the rating and move the company to a higher sales level, offering customers expertise or consulting services.
Increase the number of platforms on which you are represented
If you have a small IT company, then most likely you started at Upwork. By discovering new channels of lead generation, you will be able to increase your sales and, accordingly, achieve the growth of your IT company.
Examples of channels for lead generation using marketing tools:
- Freelance exchanges (Upwork, Freelancer);
- Social networks (LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook);
- Email marketing;
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
- Directories (Clutch, Good firms);
- Participation in webinars (as an expert or participant).
Hire experts
Do not be afraid to delegate your company’s activities to the professionals: by transferring some of the responsibilities as a company owner, you can focus on developing other areas.
We hope this article helped you take a fresh look at the growth opportunities of the IT company you own. Our experts are ready to help you develop a new marketing strategy in 1 month. Here you can see our prices in detail.
