Summary: Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:11 - Optimizing your sales and marketing pipeline Lead generation (marketing) Lead conversion Project delivery 08:54 - Follow ups 11:24 - Lead categories Want to work right now Trying to decide Decide against you 12:26 - Closing a client (sales) Not just going for wallets Leads who take advantage/getting something for nothing “Velvet Roping” Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port 15:57 - Client fit Qualifying 17:36 - Marketing Mailing lists Open-source contribution Being active in communities 19:31 - Referrals Where do they come from? 22:05 - Recruiters Responding to recruiters Dealing with recruiters 28:01 - Website traffic analyzation Google Analytics 31:41 - Newsletters Listening vs reading Getting newsletter subscribers MailChimp AWeber Autoresponders 47:09 - What should I do? Where do you want people to wind up? Make it easy for people to contact you/get them where you want them to go Landing pages Comments on blogs 53:31 - Your personal ideal pipeline Picks BrowserStack (Eric) PipelineDeals (Eric) Sad Trombone (Jim) GetClicky (Chuck) AWeber (Chuck) Omnifocus (Chuck) POP App (Jim) Transcript EVAN: If someone takes a poker and makes it really hot and shoves it in your behind, that would be a branding problem. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 38 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: That's me. CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I wasn’t ready! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from a standing desk. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Optimizing Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline. Sounds like a mouthful. So do we want to start with a definition? What is the-- JIM: Is this Ruby Rogues? Did we dial in the wrong place? CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah I kind of felt like-- [laughter] ERIC: Yeah, I would like a definition. CHUCK: Well, my understanding (and you guys can and probably will correct me) that the sales pipeline or marketing pipeline is effectively the process that you put your prospects through basically from the moment that they encounter your website or market message all the way up until you convert them to a sale or to a client. Is that oversimplified or did I miss something? EVAN: I would say “leads” not “prospects”. CHUCK: Leads? EVAN: Yeah. ERIC: Yeah. It basically starts at leads. Like you know, this person might have come to your site like an anonymous visitor or maybe they heard of you or something that was like, “Oh, who’s Chuck?” and that's kind of where they start that. And then it goes to… what is it… suspects? No, actually suspect is fair. Suspects are people that might be a good candidate for your business. Then its leads when they actually kind of contact you… there's also prospects. It’s hard.
