Everything I've learnt about lead gen in 4 years of selling software services

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]I've been selling software services for the past 4 and 1/2 years and in this video I'm going to go through basically everything I've learned about lead generation through several attempts, most of them failed, and some recently starting to work. Also, having been close friends with people who have sold software and made a lot of money. And I'm just going to break that down for you. So, first things first, everybody thinks outbound is a great idea and it's just going to like create clients out of thin air. You're just going to set up a campaign on Instantly and money will rain into your pocket. Unfortunately, that does not happen, but this is like the classic place to start for most developers. They think that, you know, I'm going to start outbounding with like this website that is amazing and that's going to get me clients. Very tough.

[00:00:32]Second thing, most people selling software services, especially, do not think enough about what result am I trying to create and they're just selling kind of like I do programming.

[00:00:39]There's no amount of lead generation hacks that are going to save you from the fact that you have no idea who you're actually trying to sell. You will come up with really kind of generic offers. I have seen some people like grind it out by just like doing events, meeting random people, and just telling as many people as they can I'm doing software services, but this is not really going to scale very well. On the flip side, you can sell something extremely basic. Like you don't have to do have some crazy offer. You need something people can understand. If I tell you, I will sell you a website with a sick 3D design. Like you understand what that means. If I sell you an AI implemented business workflow. Like what the [ __ ] does that even mean, right?

[00:01:09]Like stop pretending that that's a thing that people know what that means. Is it a website, a Slack channel, a Telegram chat, a mobile app? Another big lesson is in-person relationships build trust way, way faster, especially if you're selling into older industries and you are somebody who's younger than the people who you're trying to sell. I think in-person relationships work extremely well. I've seen this a couple times now, but I've got some friends who are like in their 20s and they sell to retirement homes or or like hedge funds and things like that. They do loads of events. Generally, you're going to go like going to conferences, going to business networking events, they are very effective, but you also you have to know what you're doing. If you're just going to like Luma AI engineer meetups, like you're not going to find your people there. Also, going as an attendee only works if it's like a a group that's going to like make you meet other people and stuff like that. If you're going to an event to like listen to a talk, that's not lead generation. However, if you are speaking at an event about something, even if you're only speaking to like 30 people, that will do lead generation for you. I hosted an event, I got some great leads out of it. I got invited to speak at another event leading a round table with entrepreneurs who all do like a million plus. I got invited into be a guest at this like little BNI event. That has generated some great leads for me. Just speaking from my experience. Bear in mind that has only happened once I got specific about what I've been selling and I was basically an AI agent implementation into like physical goods businesses with a very lengthy sales process. So like construction, furniture, this kind of stuff. When it comes to content, content is a really important part of lead generation, but it's lead nurture. It's not lead generation. Like you're not going to get random strangers who are highly qualified to immediately message you after you've made 10 LinkedIn posts.

[00:02:38]Like you have to think about doing this for a year before you you get anybody who comes from your online profiles. The better way to think about it is like this will just create more trust with the people you meet at these events and and conferences and whatever else. It does grow the relationships that you have already. And it just keeps you top of minded. This is really important. If you are going to do outbound, make it very specific and try to show, don't tell. Don't tell me that you can get me leads or whatever. Show me a demo of what you've built or like what you did for somebody else or something like that. This is an increasingly important idea. I spoke about this briefly in another video, but I think right now there are much bigger expectations around getting free value in the market before any paid engagement. Because of stuff like free content online and the freemium business models of a lot of software companies, the amount of [ __ ] you can get for free is so much. And so if I get a cold email from somebody, they need to prove to me that they can deliver some sort of value cuz I don't know them from anywhere. I've never seen their content. And just knowing the fact that there's so much valuable content out there already, I have no trust with this like random stranger. So if you're going to do outbound, send people demos, send people results, send people something valuable. I've got a friend in the US who's a pretty big sales guy.

[00:03:43]He's basically just done sales his whole career. He's running this campaign to help out this company that was basically trying to host events. And I saw his his outbound email and it was like, "Hey, you know, I I'm I work with this venue that has hosted like David Guetta, all these like famous people, and I want to invite you to be a VIP at our next party." Like, it's a lead magnet. Do you see how like it's not going in with a pitch? It's not saying, "Hey, I want you to host events here." And he got the head of partnerships at Canva to engage with him. It's very important that your first contact provide some sort of value. If you're going to do outbound, it can work, but like who are you speaking to? Can you provide me value?

[00:04:16]If you can't figure those out, look closer around you. Who can you build trust with in in the fastest way possible? That is who do you already know? Are there any local events in your city that you can go to and and find one person who's like in a business context and do something for them? If you have to start online, if you have to start with content, and you have like zero other opportunities, which I think is rarely the case, try and get in touch with people and make friends with them with no business expectations, and do a free case study, and generate results before you start asking to get paid, basically. If you're wondering about paid ads, I haven't run them myself. I run this group of like developer founders, and one of the guys is actually about to start running some paid ads, so I can I can report on those results, you know, from him later, but I haven't personally run them, mainly cuz I believe that I need to have a more specific offer. And the offer that I'm running with right now is very targeted, and so doing the events that I'm already doing, and compounding these relationships into good case studies, and like getting referrals from them, is just going to be much more powerful than trying to to get into ads and creative, which I don't know how to run it like I haven't done before. And the learning curve is just going to be steep, and and I'd rather stick to what I've already been doing and and that I'm good at, which is showing up and making friends with people at in-person events. Most developers trying to sell services just really struggle with that first part of like defining what outcome they're trying to create. The most important thing is like can you create some sort of outcome that actually drove some kind of cost saving for somebody or generated additional profit or something like that? If the only thing you've done is like MVP development, that is a niche. I have seen people make money in it. It's tough, and I don't know where that's going with AI because you're now competing not with like cheaper teams, but you're competing with like Replit and Lovable and all these kinds of tools, and they are getting better and better at the moment. For that kind of offer, I definitely would do more like content and some kind of like community marketing funnel because it's it's more of a prosumer kind of offer, right?

[00:05:58]Where you got a lot of like people with low purchasing power who are interested and you can like help them maybe some learning or coaching or something like that before they they go into full development. But yeah, if you can find one person in your network or something that you could do a free case study for that that is a business, I think that's also a very interesting path to try and go down. And that will um give you an opportunity to create one concrete result, and then you have more of a niche instead of just doing like MVP services or like development services or something like that. So yeah, that's basically my my two cents on everything I've kind of learned and tried over the past couple years. I really hope this helped. I really hope you found something useful in it. Hopefully, I'll see you in the next one, too.