
How to get your first 10 customers - joeyespo
http://danshipper.com/nothing-happens-until-the-sale-is-made
======
namuol
> They conclude that the product must suck and that nobody wants it, because
> Mark Zuckerberg did exactly the same thing to launch Facebook at Harvard and
> look at how that worked out for him

Maybe I'm just sleepy, but I'm starting to get tired of condescending advice
from newly-born entrepreneurs.

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anandkulkarni
Couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, there's a gap between what many lean
approaches advocate (Adwords), what startups think they need (features/press)
and what actually works.

The most effective way to learn is to go out and find the people who should be
using the product, and talk to them.

~~~
hayksaakian
I'd disagree.

AdWords is great for validating B2C products because you NEED the opinion of
MANY people to judge the viability of your product/idea.

In B2B your customer typically has money on the line, and it's quite
straightforward for them to evaluate your value proposition: "Does this make
me money, or lead to making me money, how much?".

In B2C the question becomes: "Do I like/enjoy/have fun with X product?"
typically far more subjective and whimsical. Subjectivity shines in small
samples (<10 people) and shrinks in large samples (>1000 impressions).

I agree regarding features/press however.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
I never understood why everyone suggest that a B2B software MUST generate (or
lead to) money for the client to reason the purchase. For example, what about
security software? It won't generate any money and in most cases won't even
prevent losing money due to security issues (as it doesn't happen SO often),
yet almost every company values security so much they will happily pay a lot
of money for a bulletproof security software.

~~~
rgbrgb
The expected value of security software is how much money it saves via
actually securing stuff and earning customer trust.

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josh2600
Great post. I wanted to pass along the tool rapportive, which is a built-in
email address validator for Gmail with social feeds. It's a killer free tool
that no sales team should omit.

Chrome web store link:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rapportive/hihakjf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rapportive/hihakjfhbmlmjdnnhegiciffjplmdhin?hl=en)

~~~
hanley
Here's a better link to Rapportive's website. They have addons for other
browsers as well.

[http://rapportive.com/](http://rapportive.com/)

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danbmil99
Good post. I think many of us focus on the product and modifying it first
(before questioning sales / marketing tactics) because we are developers, we
know how to code, and in fact we actually enjoy tinkering with our product; it
gives us a sense that we're doing something consequential that could change
the dynamics of the situation.

The unfortunate truth is that early in a product's lifecycle, I suspect the
quality (as programmers measure it) of the product, the beauty (or lack
thereof) of the codebase, and even outright bugs, misfeatures, and poor
performance, are not the reasons the product does or does not get traction. As
OP says, what gets traction is product/customer fit -- the NEED a potential
customer feels for the product. And if the wrong customer is pitched, and the
right customer does not know about your product, all the tinkering and new
features and bugfixes and refactoring in the world will not change that
situation.

TL; DR: Programmers have code hammers, so they just bang the product nail
again and again.

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quaffapint
Certainly agree, but depending upon your market it can be very difficult to...
"Find companies that fit the bill" ...especially when you're more going for
B2C or B2SmallerWebsites. Really for me that's the challenge that brings out
the need for advertising and such - to even find these customers.

~~~
btilly
Strongly disagree for the first few customers.

If you're going B2C or B2SmallerWebsites then you're aiming for much less per
sale, and therefore to get legs you'll need to be able to sell to a lot of
them. So potential sales targets are all around. You won't be able to find
them in sufficient volume to make a difference until after you have
advertising turned on. But you still need to figure out your business. And
talking to people in person is a great way to do that.

~~~
quaffapint
When your customer is anybody from a forum on toyotas to donuts, how do you
find them. I am currently advertising, not with too much success. I'm just
following the points of this article that you don't know whether it's bad ad
copy or product.

~~~
btilly
If your customer base is really that broad, then start talking to random
people. It won't be long until you find a potential customer. Make your
product work for that customer.

Also you should read
[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html).
Pay close attention to the section labeled "Well". Odds are that, no matter
how much you like your idea, you've chosen a poor idea to make a startup out
of. Try to find a more focused variant to start with.

~~~
quaffapint
It certainly would be much 'easier' to have a niche to target.

I spent a year work on a product based on some informal surveys and a lot of
assumption. Luckily it doesn't cost me a lot to run it, so I can keep it going
and continue plucking away, but while it was a good learning tool, I also
learned that trying to find a niche would be much nicer to start with.

Thanks for the link.

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alecsmart1
Am wondering if it is okay to cold email potential clients? Isnt that
considered as spam?

~~~
dshipper
Yes definitely. In general as long as you're not mass emailing 1000s of
potential prospects, you target specific people that you think would be
interested, you tailor each email individually to them, and you're respectful
and up-front about what you're doing things work out fine.

~~~
alecsmart1
Suppose I customize and email 1000s of potential clients. Is that considered
as spam? Would you recommend any nice template/examples to use? Should I send
these emails from a generic email box or from my personal email? If I include
an "unsubscribe" option, won't the receiver think "hey, I never subscribed to
this, let me mark it as spam".

On a side note, I used to contact potential clients years ago and then GoDaddy
marked my domain as spam and made me cough up $199. The email wasn't even sent
from the same domain (google godaddy spam scam). I moved off to
NetworkSolutions. Anyone sending cold emails, please beware of this.

~~~
joshdance
You can't customize 1000s of emails. Sure you can mail merge in their name,
but putting their name in the first line is not customizing.

Customizing would be looking up information about their company, researching
their competitors, talking to people who know them, figuring out what kind of
food they like, and then crafting an email to them. That is not spam. That is
hustle and marketing.

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exo_duz
Very interesting concepts and ideas. I was looking for something like this for
my startup.

Especially the bit about "Shut up and listen to them". I had the same
experience the other day at Start Up Weekend, where the best advice was when
you listened to the mentors.

Thanks Dan.

------
xarien
I'd also recommend looking at local resources such as chambers of commerce.
Join them (or just attend some of the events), meet their members
(businesses), establish yourself as an expert (and trust) by giving free talks
at events, and then proceed up the sales chain.

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unono
There's always something 'wrong' about tech people wanting to meet face to
face. What is the point of the telecommunication tech YOU created? Did you not
do a good job?

There's a better approach than what the blog outlines - imagine that you have
infinite wealth and begin to build what you personally want.

In most cases you will not be able to create the whole thing, but you can
tackle a piece of the problem.

Example - you want a flying car. Imagine that you have 1 trillion dollars at
your disposal. What would you do? Hire engineers. How would you hire them?
What software is required. Look around, if it does not exist already, that's
your first product. If it the hiring problem is already adequately solved,
look for the next thing. How do those engineers communicate? etc.

These series of questions will lead to finding niches of opportunity, and it
is always a software problem (organizing workflows).

~~~
dshipper
You can definitely talk over the phone. But real business seems to happen more
quickly in person, even today. Email certainly doesn't cut it.

The problem with the thought experiment is that it assumes infinite knowledge.
It's very hard to imagine what things would actually be like if you had a
trillion dollars and you wanted to build a flying car. You can definitely come
up with things that you think are likely, but I've found that often times you
know much less than you think, and the actual problems are MUCH less obvious
than they seem.

It's kind of like a non-engineer imagining what problems he would run in to if
he had to build the Golden Gate Bridge including design and construction. You
can definitely foresee certain things, e.g. you need a lot of materials, pens
and paper, but there's still a ton of uncertainty and real gritty problems
that only come out when you're in the thick of things.

~~~
larrys
"But real business seems to happen more quickly in person, even today."

Cost and time tradeoff and also what you get for closing and how often you
have to close a sale.

You can send out more emails than you can postal letters.

You can do more postal letters than you can phone calls.

You can do more phone calls than you can in person cold calls. All depends of
course on the product you are selling and the situation.

In any case going for the low hanging fruit to start (say sending an email to
the IT manager at a university) doesn't mean you can't send a postal letter or
a phone call or try to setup a meeting in person. But it makes sense in many
(not all, many) situations to start with the easiest thing you can do and work
your way up.

Example: I just closed a deal with a guy who has a reality show and all it
took was an email which he replied to because he was interested in what I was
selling. That's only one example I've obviously done the other things as well.

Lastly, negotiating in person also has it's drawbacks. Personally I prefer to
negotiate by email in most cases. Depending on the other party and your own
skills an in person does't always work out the way you would like.

Just another perspective.

~~~
mindcrime
_Lastly, negotiating in person also has it 's drawbacks. Personally I prefer
to negotiate by email in most cases. Depending on the other party and your own
skills an in person does't always work out the way you would like._

I think it totally depends on what you're selling, who you're selling it to,
and many other factors.

For example, a guy emailed me one day about a domain I owned, and wanted to
know if I'd part with it. None of the domain appraisal tools rated it as
having any significant value and I wasn't emotionally invested in it, and had
no specific plans for it, so I emailed him back and offered to sell it. He
made an offer, I accepted, and told him to Paypal me the money, and then I'd
transfer the domain to his GoDaddy account. No "escrow", no face to face
meeting, no weird stuff, just email and two strangers trusting each other over
$100.00 and a domain. And if F2F had been required, it would never have
happened, since I was in NC and he was in Canada. So, totally an appropriate
case for doing everything via email.

Now... our startup is in the business of complex, B2B enterprise software
solutions which will sell for 10s (if not 100s) of thousands of dollars for a
subscription. This stuff will need to integrate with existing legacy systems,
and - if successful - will have big implications for the way people get work
done. We are not going to get anywhere without some serious face time when it
comes to selling this stuff.

Of course, those are two extremes, but I think there are a lot of cases where
the higher bandwidth of face to face communication is still very valuable.

~~~
larrys
"None of the domain appraisal tools rated it as having any significant value"

Well first let me tell you that means practically nothing.

Especially on the end of "no significant value". Although I've seen more
errors with domains with value being said to have "no value" than I've seen
with domains with clear value "having no value". (Can't off the top see if I
mean "false negative or false positive" but you get the point.)

"He made an offer, I accepted"

In general, in any deal to sell there always needs to be some "kickback".
Otherwise someone might feel they have left money on the table. General rule.
Kickback doesn't have to be "more" or "less" money. It can be as simple as "ok
but only if you..." (some non monetary item that makes the other party feel
you are borderline on their offer).

"trusting each other over $100.00 and a domain"

Easy because the total amount at risk is $100. (Would you do the same if you
had a domain and someone offered $20,000 for it and that was the value?).

"We are not going to get anywhere without some serious face time when it comes
to selling this stuff."

Agree.

Let me know if anyone ever approaches you to sell any other domains.

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chrismorgan
I am and have been getting 403 Forbidden for the entire domain. Any idea what
could be going on? I'm using Firefox Beta for Android and have tried to access
it from a couple of different IP addresses in Melbourne, Australia.

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ssreeniv
Good post with useful tips & tools. It describes exactly what the title
states. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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tzury
regarding email address guessing, rapportive turned out to be quite useful at
this (xobni's smartr perhaps as well).

