Survey for IT freelancers: How do you approach marketing and sales? – The results!

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Ten days ago I published a survey for IT freelancers asking various questions about how they approach marketing and sales. As promised here are the results of the survey. Thanks a lot to everybody who participated:

The survey was filled out by 31 freelancers, 22 of whom came via a link both posted on several forums and emailed to personal contacts directly. 8 participants clicked on the survey on Facebook while 1 filled it out on this website. Save for the last 2 questions the questions were answered by all of the participants. The final 2 questions were answered by 27 people.

So, without any further ado, these are the results (please click here for static image versions of the charts):

1. On average for how many clients do you work per year?

The answers to the “More …” option further split up into:

2. Which tools do you use for marketing your services? (multiple choice)

The “Other …” option is mainly accounted for by personal contact (2 mentions) and word of mouth / referrals (6 mentions). The other – also quite interesting answers (each given once) were:

  • SEO
  • Local professional association membership
  • Cold calls

3. Do you work with recruiters?

4. Do you give talks about your area of expertise?

5. Do you do coaching gigs?

6. How do you create bids and proposals?

Options mentioned under “Other …” were:

  • Custom software that hooks into CRM
  • Sage software package

7. How do you create estimates for your services?

The answers for the “Dedicated estimation software” option included:

  • Custom software that hooks into custom CRM
  • Process based on MS Project
  • Wave Accounting
  • Sage software package
  • Sixth sense …

8. Where do you spend most of your time other than working for clients?

9. What’s your biggest hassle around organizing your business?

So, paperwork appears to be the biggest hassle by a large margin. The answers to this option can be further broken down into:

I hope these results are as useful to you as they are to me. If you’d like to hear more about my thoughts and ideas concerning marketing and sales for IT freelancers please stay in touch and drop me a note at [email protected] or sign up for the newsletter:



Please click here for static image versions of the charts in this article.

About the author: Bjoern
Independent IT consultant, entrepreneur

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