How to Grow Business from a $200 Deal to a $2,500,000 + Yearly Revenue
Spoiler: this success story started from one cold email with a 100% match
It was 17 years ago when me and my fellow students decided to create our own business. We had no money, strategy, or office. We had only 4 dorm beds, 4 computers, and the idea to start an IT outsourcing company.
We were full of energy and were ready to code all night long. But we lacked legal support and knowledge. We simply didn’t know how to draw up and make an agreement, receive payments legally, and pay taxes.
All four of us came to a friend who was a more experienced entrepreneur. We asked him to take us under his wing. He was imbued with our enthusiasm and provided us with not only a place but also accounting services. So, we brought our 4 computers to the office, completely immersed ourselves in our business, and started earning $100 per project. And it was enough for us. A dream salary for students!
We never worked like the lion’s share of startups when you invest $ 1,000,000 that pays off after 10 years. Our idea immediately began to generate profit.
4 years later, we bought out our partner and turned it into a fully independent company.
Belitsoft currently has 380 employees. 130 of them work in the eLearning domain that generates $2,500,000+ per year. Our clients include mostly R&D centers of big corporations. Nowadays we are designing versatile eLearning solutions from scratch like learning mobile apps, learning management systems, learning experience platforms, talent management systems.
But our EdTech expertise began with one cold letter and a $200 project. We split the profit into four and celebrated a great deal with our dorm friends.
How did we get our first serious client?
In our small team, there was a clear division of roles: marketing, sales, and development. Vladimir Tursin, our today’s CEO, was responsible for lead generation. He used to send out hundreds of letters every week. We were constantly trying to automate and speed up this process.
Eventually, the email that he’d sent by hand, working after hours on Saturday night, scored a big win. It was a standard proposal with a message: “We are a young ambitious company, carrying out web development services, we can help you with projects based on Joomla…” and so on. And we got a match! That was a Danish client with dentist education who wanted to try his hand at the new field of EdTech.
He got interested in our expertise in Joomla solutions. He knew this CMS and was considering the development based on this platform. We managed to deliver him a prototype of the JoomLMS solution in a few months. And this case determined the entire future of our company.
Dozens of businesses, not even startups, have been created based on JoomLMS since then. They generate profits for our clients, and we keep providing development and technical support services to them during all this time.
The top JoomLMS clients earn from $1,000,000 in profit per year.
On average, the annual turnover for our e-learning client varies from $200,000 to 500,000.
What about strategy?
At the very beginning, I mentioned that we had no strategy. We just wanted to help customers in terms of custom software development.
We created the JoomPlace platform with versatile plugins: quiz, survey, eLearning module, flash store, etc. For us, there was no difference in which of them to implement.
Once we even designed a module for the church named “Memorials”. It was a component that helped maintain a directory of famous people and their life paths.
All these small solutions were sold for $29, $69, $99, but they generated a constant flow of orders and covered all the needs of our business.
This allowed us to focus not on survival, but on creativity. During the existence of JoomPlace, I invented and tested nearly 30 solutions as a project manager. We kept a third of them and successfully sold these modules until 2013. Now we are only carrying out their maintenance.
It was only when a Danish client appeared that we accidentally focused on eLearning. And gradually gaining experience in this area, we made it our key domain.
As part of cooperation with the Danish partner, the company now has 2 departments (with 50 people in total) that run 2 large products (inspired by JoomLMS sales, our key Danish investor has been focusing on a new corporate product — Microsoft 365 based LMS / Teams LMS).
How to scale a business with tens of thousands of competitors worldwide?
When we entered the eLearning niche in 2005, interest in online education and eLearning solutions was just beginning. Just compare: only 479 education startups were registered 10 years ago, while now there are more than 24,000. These days, it’s a highly competitive niche with a huge number of players, both vendors, and custom developers. How to stay afloat and fast-paced in such conditions?
At some point, we came up with the Fast-Track strategy. It implies helping clients build a business until it reaches its basic goals such as the first sales, the launch of free courses, or an exit event.
This strategy has allowed us to deeply immerse ourselves in the client’s business and become their partner. As a result, we’ve been working with a Danish client for 16 years.
The Fast-Track strategy allowed us to scale his business to the UK and the USA markets. ELearningForce opened offices in these regions, and thanks to the references, the largest income comes to us from there.
Another serial entrepreneur from the Netherlands has implemented three eLearning projects in collaboration with us in the last 10 years. One of them became an award-winning startup.
A marketing strategy was drafted in the process as well
Most of the new customers used to come to us by reference. The key plus of such contacts is their commitment to collaborate.
In the first 3–4 years of work in eLearning, our client base grew by 500% annually, and the NPS (Net Promoter Score) level reached 9 points. It’s logical that with an increase in the number of projects, the number of references grows, but only on the condition that the NPS is high.
Now the mainstream of leads is generated by the Belitsoft website and content marketing. And we still get 1–2 clients a year by reference with large sums of contracts.
Of course, we didn’t avoid failures
Inspired by the success of Joomla solutions, in 2007 we decided to scale our success by applying the same strategy for another CMS.
The good thing about JoomPlace was that we quickly created and sold modules. But this strategy didn’t work with the new platform. After testing an MVP, we preferred to waive this direction and focus on customization of the already existing product. In that case, it was more rational to invest resources in a solution that is completed, works and brings profit to us and our clients.
This experience has also given us an impulse and understanding of the niche, namely, helping start-ups and new businesses build all processes from scratch — from ideas to marketing and sales.
The second case concerned our product based on Sharepoint. In 2007, we began to receive requests for the implementation of serious enterprise systems, in particular, for corporate training. So we created a .NET team that started developing Microsoft 365 based LMS / Teams LMS.
Initially, we offered our Microsoft 365 based LMS / Teams LMS clients custom development at a fixed price. In the process, it turned out that the project cost was higher. We paid the difference from our budget, and it was tens of thousands of dollars. So several deals became extremely unprofitable. As a result, we switched to a Time & Material model when a client pays every time we deliver a certain function. These days we can estimate the expenses much more accurately to suggest to our clients the model that will be appropriate for them.
What have I learned for 16 years in an eLearning business?
- If you lack clients and experience, knock on all doors and take any orders. Not all startups are destined to become unicorns. But success is measured not only by this. You can just do your job extremely well, grow from year to year and achieve millions (or even billions) in revenue step-by-step.
- Don’t be afraid to test ideas. Don’t be afraid to lose money. It is better to lose less on the MVP test than to waste years spending a budget on non-working products and services.
- Invest 80% of your resources in the direction that generates the fastest and best profit for you. This way you will always have funds for creativity and experimentation.
- Convert your customers into lifelong clients and partners. Grow their business with them and they’ll become the best lead generation channel for you.
- And finally, keep the promise and provide some more than a client has expected.
