This week we discuss Ian’s health update, how Scribbbleton handles synchronization, moving, coworking and working from home, real estate business, discussing revenues, vote for us on iTunes!
http://bootstrapped.fm/bootstrapped-episode-52-dead-mans-switch/
Ian, I’m curious about the sales process with HelpSpot. You said you don’t have any official sales people except for yourself and another person who takes on the role. Are your only sales channel inbound from leads generated somewhere? Have you considered dedicated outbound?
It’s interesting as it’s a decision I will make soon and I’ve been wondering how software companies handle sales if they are B2B. I see many probably do some sort of marketing and take incoming calls and email queries but not doing cold calls or other outbound lead generations.
This episode mentioned it and it was on my mind so I’m asking here. Maybe I should have asked on a new thread.
I’m going to have a lot more to write/say about this n the coming months. But for now, pretty much like I said on the podcast we’ve always just kinda went with the flow.
SEO was my main thing back in the day. Since then, it’s been that and referrals from existing customers primarily. No outbound sales, though I have some ideas on that for the future.
In general, we’re going to start to get more organized about our sales process coming up here. I never really needed to before, though I’m sure if we had been we’d be much larger now. It’s a mistake I’m trying to fix over the coming year 
I’m definitely interesting in hearing more on the outbound/inbound sales topic. I’m just getting started with Jiffy Events, but I’m doing a ton of outbound. I’m getting a process dialed in, and getting good results. My plan is to keep that going forever, but I can see where once the inbound leads start flowing, it’ll be easy for meto lighten up, respond to the inbound, and feel like that’s enough.
@ian, glad you now have a handle on your health issue.
Coworking as a business seems pretty tough unless you have some way to handle dips in demand. I wonder if it could be a profitable sideline of commercial real estate companies, turning empty offices into coworking spaces and back to ‘real’ offices upon demand.
Yeah, just learning about this outbound stuff Should have a variety of interesting topics to discuss over the coming weeks/months on a number of different initiatives I’m rolling on.
Yep, coworking is a rough business. The ones in big cities seem to have enough demand to level out the ups and downs, but in a small town if you lose 2 of your desk renters that’s probably going to drop you into losing money. It’s tricky.