I always wanted to build a software development agency. I have a team of 25+ people, having a stable Upwork Agency profile with the revenue I mentioned above, but I am having a hard time scaling the sales more.
I know if any other US or European agency Acquires us, they’ll have the benefit of getting cheaper labour, having a team which is well trained in talking to clients, closing leads and delivering projects. Plus I have rented and furnished a whole physical office where people come on daily basis to work. So they can have it all.
With the client base they can find in US and even with our already well reputed Upwork profile, they’ll be able to secure a lot more projects.
You ask, why won’t you be able to secure more projects if the profile is that good? Because it’s a Pakistani profile. Not sure how unaware you are from reality, but there exists a certain bias towards India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Nepal. They’ll create their individual US/EU profiles and be added to Agency as owners, and it’ll become a US profile, Top Rated Plus, Expert Vetted, with all good reviews.
What should I do? Should I find someone to acquire? Will anyone be interested in acquiring us and for how much?
Another fact, we have been profitable for every month. The cost is hardly $10k-$18k per month and the revenue per month ranges from $23k-$35k, and that’s in the time when there’s a lot of news of recession.
I hate to get political, but have you tried marketing your agency to entrepreneurs and business folks from ally countries of Pakistan? Chances are that there could be a language barrier, or inability to understand the culture of those respective countries. It makes sense to hire a business development executive from one of these countries (maybe the country that loves Pakistan the most) and start networking with the top 25% of the business community there. Unless you change the strategy and try something out of the blue, you’ll never know. If it works, hire more business development executives from different countries, to reach out to their respective business communities.
I think language Barrier is not much of an issue as all of the team members are pretty good with English. But yeah, a more native accent always helps. As for some offshore business rep, yup, tried that and currently trying as well.
Hired someone from a European country for 2 months, he couldn’t generate any results.
Did a partnership with someone from UAE, it’s been 2 months, no leads so far, but I think it can lead to something good.
Recently hired a sales agency from Netherlands, it’s been 2 weeks, they’ve been able to generate one meeting, we have 5 more weeks left for the paid trial I opted in for.
I am hopeful that partnering up with someone can work. It’s just the matter of time. But I just wanna spend time learning more by focusing on other things. Just feeling burnt out.
Do you multitask? Do you have managers that are capable of being delegated to?
You have to take into consideration that if someone plans on acquiring you, then you would still have to continue working if a lot of throughput is managed by you.
Get someone to do the management tasks for you
Are you open to partnerships in US/ EU or Australia? Could sell your services as local with overseas delivery.
This. Partnerships will help you grow your outreach and revenue, making your efforts much more productive.
Absolutely. Right partnerships are the way to go
Absolutely open to partnerships. Haven’t been able to see any positive results in previous partnerships, but feel free to drop me a message if you think you can help
u/imhashir While I don’t have valuable advice for you one thing which I want to tell you is please don’t give up. We are connected on LinkedIn and I have been following your journey. Do you know the thing I like most about your journey? It is that you have proven to everyone in the Pakistani industry that things can work out even without doing shady stuff(shadow resources etc I don’t know how can people call earning out of them halal). I have been using you as an example in my private circles that things can work out in a purely halal way as well. You giving up will only prove them right. If you want I can drop a message to you on linkdein and we can hold a venting session as well :)
I own an agency on the Marketing side of things, and I’ve been getting more requests for Development and Systems Design type of requests.
I didn’t want to commit to those requests, simply because I’m not that good of a trained engineer to manage these things, however, if we’re talking about acquiring a set of good processes, maybe it’ll work out.
That said, would be good to do due dilligence on both sides. Do reach out if you’d like to talk!
How many projects does your team work on simultaneously?
I been in advertising for 10 years as a designer, strategist motion designer, performance ads and now 3d. I’m burnt out trying to start my own path 🤣🤣😭😭 I don’t have the Energy to get leads I’d anybody is open to teaming up . Let me know 👍
What in 3D do you do?
I started to pick up unreal engine skills. Mainly for vfx virtual production in the future or product demos. I’m trying to find a way to get those skills Ms transfer them to advertising.
Would have loved to partner up but I don’t work in the areas you mentioned. But happy to help any way possible
Partner with a US based partner
Hard to find partner. Tried a few times but no luck. Still trying and I have some hope, but nothing so far
What are you looking for in a partner? Do you have a website for your company? There’s quite a few companies on my area with similar structures
I came looking for booty.
Anyone who can bring in more sales through their network. Yeah we do have a comprehensive website and LinkedIn presence.
Hey, although I don’t have any advice for you at the moment but I would like to follow your journey. I run a small consultancy, hopefully I can learn a few things from you. Could you share with me your social handle where I can follow you?
I own an agency and we acquire other agencies. Feel free to DM me. We’re US-based and really strong in the sales department.
Great success, Hashir! Your Paki bhai here.
Have you tried outreaching and offering to become a partner agency of successful ones in the UK, US, Europe etc … You have got a strong Upwork profile that you can use as a proof.
The reason I’m suggesting this idea is because an agency I’m currently working with (I’m a copywriter) does this.
And it seems to be working pretty well for them.
Thanks Bhai!
That’s a good idea. Tried that once and went great for us. Haven’t been able to find any good partners after that. Planning to try again and actually reaching out for past few weeks as well. Will be trying more as well
Good luck bhai wish you more success!
Outreach is a numbers game.
Try to relax and be on it.
I would say do you want to sell because you actually want to or is it because you are burnt out
If it’s the former
1 look at your daily tasks and see how you can delegate to a person or a team
2 start to systemise your tasks that it runs without you
3 hire excellent talent who can do more
4 look at incorporating Automations and VAs so that when you are sleeping work is still getting done
It’s more than about me burning about. I want to actually learn more about business and running companies.
Probably wanna get hired in some US/EU based Agency and see their sales cycles, work among some bright minds myself, before I start the agency again
Looking at your comments - you are running too close to breakeven. Thats too lean. Either double your rates, or half your staff.
You should be aiming for at least a 30% profit so that you can put 10% back into emergency fund, and 5% into company growth - marketing, employee benefits, parties, etc. The last 15% is your ice cream.
UPDATE: Looks your staff are sitting around. No bueno. You should have a 100 item list of things people can do when there isn’t work. Make tiktoks, publish a blog post, etc etc. Ideally your team should be so busy that people have to wait to become your customer cause you can’t take on any more.
Upwork is great but its also terrible for long-term reliability. Main ongoing work should be from existing customers - work hardest on this. Next work hardest on building an excellent brand and site and then find joint venture partners - guys like me that do product, leadership circles, designers. Then #3 is other platforms for work. Then government. Then SEO, etc.
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I am totally against the approach of occupying your team on in house products/projects. It just makes it look like the team is busy and you are doing a lot of work, when in fact, they are just busy on things which are not generating any revenue at all.
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I keep the team members who are free, occupied on different trainings, but not on in-house products, except for a few times. I wanna make sure we are not dividing our attention on things which are not generating revenue for us.
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About reducing the team size or doubling my rates, answered that a few times already in the thread, but if anyone doesn’t find that and need an answer for that, let me know and I’ll edit this one
Points taken. I think generally speaking when you have “bandwidth” in house there are tonnes of things your team may like/want to work on vs you wanting to keep them busy. Not everything has to be revenue generating. There are adjacent activities like contributing to open source, hosting meetups, helping non-profits, etc. Lots of things that look time wasting but have the end result of helping you win new business.
Maybe ask your team what would they like to work on during off peak times and see what they say. There might be a SAAS app sitting on the shelf that some of your team might love working on that could later become a huge business (eg: gmail for google)
Agreed. I have started encouraging people to do personal branding, write blogs and improve our company website. We have done some events in the past, and planning to start doing that again soon.
As for the SaaS, it’s one thing stuck in my mind for a long time now and I have started worked on it. This might be a direction we’ll start taking our team towards.
Really appreciate the thoughtful response 🙌🏼
Cool. One thing to pivot them from working on their own stuff vs stuff that gives you skin in the game is offering them to work offpeak on some startup idea in house. Make a list of 20 things. If it takes off, share the spoils with the founder(s) and spin it off. Track using slicingpie.com. Could be anything from an info product to a full saas.
Basically incentivizing company benefitting activities vs “do anything you like” stuff. They will all end up doing Tiktok videos if you let them decide lol.
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As a Software development agency owner myself, this thread is gold to me.