Ask HN: How do you obtain software development contracts?

In my experience, contract software development client acquisition is based mostly on reputation, referrals and personal contacts&#x2F;networks. The biggest risk that clients face is not the cost of the project per-se, but missed delivery and&#x2F;or poor results. So, in a sense, what you&#x27;re really selling is not technical acumen, but trust and reliability.<p>Yes, project failure can often be laid at the feet of the client. But, IMO, <i>good</i> professionals contract developers are responsible for pushing back on vague and&#x2F;or changing requirements. Part of your job is to look underneath what the client says to discern what he actually needs. The goal should be to and deliver something that is both useful and fulfills the client&#x27;s goals. All of this is, of course, easier said than done.

I have been running a company like this for ~6 years, we are only engineers, and, I&#x27;m the only one handling sales.<p>Getting started is the hardest part, like many are saying, its simpler when you can rely on your network.<p>Everything is about trust, by this, start reaching out to people who already trust you, there is a chance that this will get you either a project or a referral. Once you build a portfolio, you will keep getting these referrals.<p>In my case, I have got most of our contracts by sending cold emails, I have got a few customers through the &quot;Who&#x27;s looking for freelancers&quot; posts + many others by just talking to people.<p>Lately, market is flooded with AI-generated stuff and fake job seekers which is causing people to distrust others, it seems harder to get contracts through cold outreach and the referrals we have got have done wonders.

If your firm has been around for long enough, then it will almost certainly have long-standing clients who repeatedly come back for changes, additions, and general maintenance to existing software, as well as new development. Those long-standing clients will also introduce new clients.

I can&#x27;t speak for sales&#x2F;marketing, as we employ zero. But if you&#x27;ve opted to employ a sales team and they&#x27;re not landing clients, it&#x27;s likely them that&#x27;s your problem.<p>Our contracts are literally all self-referred or reputation-referred. My partner and I each have multiple long-term clients, some of whom are former fulltime employers.<p>On that latter point, a very common method is to &quot;quit&quot; your employer and then they immediately retain you as your anchor client before you begin the process of shopping for more.

It seems like these discussions always go the same. &quot;Leverage your existing reputation and contact list&quot;. That is completely missing what the OP asked.<p>How do you start from nothing?

The most effective ones would be leveraging their contacts and being &quot;in the room&quot; when customers are discussing the problems to which they need solutions.

online communities, linkedin, email marketing

Hi codingclaws, I own my eponymous firm, Andrew McWatters &amp; Co. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.andrewmcwatters.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.andrewmcwatters.com</a>) in Phoenix, Arizona.<p>We have bench engineer staff and I am the only one who does sales. I write the contracts, as well as do the design work and engineering alongside my coworkers. I consider us a software development firm, but there are other companies that call themselves &quot;agencies&quot; in the valley.<p>They do a bit more full-service work, while we focus on custom software specifically.<p>The answer is that I work alongside a network of developers who have an established history of contacts here in Arizona, and I&#x27;ve also been in the industry for a number of years and previously worked at a large number of companies doing a mix of professional services work, contract, and full-time employment. That&#x27;s the long way of saying that I obtain business by word-of-mouth.<p>Separately from local contacts here in the state and abroad based on remote work I and others have done, we publish some notes of design work and software development that others do not which garners some attention from clients who acknowledge us as subject matter experts. This is also partially validated by press publications and industry awards.<p>Additionally, we review requests for proposals where we think we can provide a valuable service, and we work on some internal products by reinvesting earnings into developing technologies from research and development efforts. Fun novel stuff that doesn&#x27;t really exist in the open source world. In this wing of the business, we focus on competing technologies to proprietary solutions that exist in the wild.<p>So, it takes some exceptional work to gain enough traction to stay in business, and I think by extension, that&#x27;s why you don&#x27;t see too many of these businesses stay afloat.<p>We&#x27;ve been in business for maybe, I&#x27;m not sure now, 5 or 6 years. Not long. But we do so by doing things others don&#x27;t, or can&#x27;t. So in terms of market segmentation, we address solutions from a premium perspective.