How to find leads for outsourced software development projects?

We are a team of Ruby on Rails professionals skilled to create good web applications. What we are lacking is the marketing side of the business and we are looking to talk to people/companies who would be willing to outsource projects to us.

Whats your idea for us to identify possible leads?

Is there any forums or business development companies we can contact?

Thanks

The challenge you might run into is that ROR developers charge a lot more than the PHP or even .NET developers. Its still young, "hip" technology and because ROR developers are in higher demand you run into higher contract rates.

@david is right that you want to sell your experience in creating apps. Most of your clients will not know the difference if something is coded in Perl, CGI, PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP, or ROR. To them a site is just a site. So, you need to sell the the benefits of ROR, letting them know that its MVC pattern makes sure that updates can be done quicker, and performance might be better versus languages that allow for Spaghetti coded techniques.

Sell yourself as a firm, Sell your dedication to service, quality and performance. Tell your clients that you have a vested interest in their success, and that you understand that if you build a web app or site you expect it to outshine the competition. Last, you could offer more channels to attract customers such as Graphic Design, Print Design, and SEO, funneling them all towards your bread and butter, (development)

Best of luck.

Hanging around at answers.onstartup.com and helping others with useful answers might be one good strategy. Go where your potential customers are and make yourself useful. Get a reputation and leads will follow.

I'd recommend "Crush it" book by Gary V if you want more nuianced answer. ;)

Besides going onto sites like Odesk, Elance and so on to participate in a marketplace, you can set yourself apart by providing great content in your niche. Put yourself in the position of prospective clients and ask yourself the types of questions that they will ask; use this information to create the content that will drive them to you. Because most people write content be different and create content by using videos; video interviews, webinars, screen sharing and so on. This way you will really stand out and also be very personable and approachable so that when the leads do indeed raise their hands to work with you, they will already know what to expect from you.

Also do not forget to build an email list so that you can continuously market to them by educating them and answering their questions.

A great company to model for inbound marketing is Hubspot.

Key thing to remember when developers sell, is you're not selling your ability to code in a technology, you're not selling your ability to code "web apps". From your possible customers point of view, they want a domain specific solution. Think about targeting a specific application type or industry(s), maybe something that you have experience in, and market yourselves specifically for that market.

There's also contracting web sites (my preferred as an employer is ODesk), but the competition is very high on those. If you do use a site like that, a careful, short, custom to the job.

The competition is large. Sites like Odesk, Elance and Guru have thousands similar to you.

I would look for a way to make friendships or partnerships with western companies. You need someone who is familiar with marketing on your team.

There is a website which helps IT freelancers and companies by providing project leads and guiding them how to get projects through freelancing portals like upwork, freelancers, fiverr etc. Here is the link to website- www.freelanceitleads.com