
Making $0 in Sales in 31 Days - MasterScrat
https://medium.com/@florianlaurent/making-0-in-sales-in-31-days-433b1622d0d1
======
MasterScrat
I am working on a long-term project (an app for collaborative voice
translation). Since I will be running out of funding for this project by the
end of the month I tried spinning up an "easier" side business: selling
websites to veterinary clinics.

The idea is that I know well about webdev, and my gf is a vet, so together we
could provide a good quality service to vets.

Turned out, there was nothing "easy" about that!

We discovered about the danger of trying to sell what you are able to build
instead of what people wants. We discovered the pains of cold calling.

It was a quite formative experience so I did a quick write up yesterday.

Feedback is very welcome since we still intend to keep pushing a bit in that
direction before we give up!

~~~
sharemywin
You need to sell the sizzle not the steak. Nobody needs a website. some
business need new business. some need ways for existing customers to more
easily schedule appointments, etc...

Also, the more risk you can absorb the better. don't sell websites sell
appointments. or take a commission.

~~~
amelius
> don't sell websites sell appointments. or take a commission.

But like the article says, they are often already overbooked.

I think you can make a case if your software can replace the assistant who
picks up the phone. But that's probably going to be extremely difficult.

~~~
hedora
Once you get down to one assistant (or a handful), it is not about replacing
employees. It is about helping them help customers by reducing
paperwork/overheads.

For example: Maybe the vet is 100% booked, but cancellations mean they are
idle 10% of the time, or maybe waiting room wait times are above average /
bursty due to poor predictions of how long each appointment will take.

~~~
amelius
But cancellations can be handled by the assistant by a single penstroke in the
appointment book.

~~~
mistermann
Replacing that appointment on extremely short notice could be assisted by
software.

------
devgutt
_We have to use pen and paper for everything._

The doctor probably is saving himself a lot of headaches. I work with
programming for many years, but computers are not made for regular people.
This is a myth. Many times I have to save my wife about something strange
happening in her computer, a WiFi printer not connecting, some virus suck in
and showing popups, screen freezing, internet is not connecting, and this goes
on and on, almost every day. Man I hate Windows. At least when I solve the
problem I can come back to my solid Ubuntu. Wait, one update arrived. Oh god
now my keyboard is not working anymore. I hate computing.

~~~
icebraining
[https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-
sucks](https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks)

 _The only reason coders ' computers work better than non-coders' computers is
coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune
diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad._

------
forgottenacc57
Yeah but there's lots of cat owners who want to read about cats and
(speculating) cat health diet and behavior and maybe show cat photos and talk
cat.

Build a website for them and do the cold calls to cat food suppliers to sell
ads.

Or sell websites to cat owners for their cat - every cat needs a website.

Or make "hot or not" for cats.

Or combine all these into one site.

The internet was mostly made for porn and cats so you should be able to get
the cat thing to work.

~~~
devgutt
Come on, internet is not made for cats.

~~~
_jal
True! The internet is made of cats[0].

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM)

------
j-c-hewitt
There are a good number of specialized SEO and marketing firms that just focus
on vets, dentists, or other broad medical specialties like dermatologists.

One thing you may not realize is that many small businesses -- vets included
-- get spam (charitably called 'outreach') emails from agencies from all over
the world on a nearly daily basis. Because of this, most cold calls and cold
emails will be met with an even colder reception.

100 people is also a tiny list to cold call. I am not really sure that this
was the right strategy for you to get clients. Selling marketing services to
medical professionals is also harder than it is for many other kinds of
businesses because getting more customers is not their biggest problem: it's
often something else that a digital marketing company cannot fix for them as
you noted in your article.

For a portfolio, you should just have a mockup website that you can use to
swap out their information quickly to show them what you can do. It's also not
clear to me that most vets really need a custom website. They would probably
be better served by a Wix/Wordpress/Squarespace setup that has cheap customer
service and would just need help for content, design, and some customization.

To sum up, you will get more projects much faster if:

* You respond to RFPs or job postings instead of cold calling * You build a portfolio or mock portfolio that you can show to vets * You focus your sales pitch on the anticipated results that the vets are going to have rather than just giving them a new website which they might not need all that much * You look at cheaper off the shelf solutions to provide to buyers who aren't ready to get into custom web development project

Finally, it's much easier to sell to people who already want what you are
selling.

~~~
MasterScrat
Thanks for all these good ideas.

> One thing you may not realize is that many small businesses -- vets included
> -- get spam (charitably called 'outreach') emails from agencies from all
> over the world on a nearly daily basis. Because of this, most cold calls and
> cold emails will be met with an even colder reception.

Indeed, multiple clinics told me they are getting up to 3 calls per week
regarding such offers.

> 100 people is also a tiny list to cold call. I am not really sure that this
> was the right strategy for you to get clients.

Do you mean there would be a better strategy to approach clients when they are
so few? Should we try approaching them in person (ie just show up at the
clinic)?

> They would probably be better served by a Wix/Wordpress/Squarespace setup
> that has cheap customer service and would just need help for content,
> design, and some customization.

The big plus we can provide is that by having a vet onboard (my gf) we can
write out the content for them. So they can tell us "we have a behaviorist and
we provide this and that service" and from that we can explain and illustrate
what this means, with no additional work on their side.

I fully agree about the mock portfolio and focusing on results, we'll
definitely do that.

~~~
j-c-hewitt
For people who rely on cold outreach, you'd expect something like maybe a 1%
response rate, and only a portion of those would close. So if you want to
stick with cold outreach, you should be contacting lists of 1,000 or more
people.

If you can offer to show up in person, it can improve your close rate, but I
would not go door to door for the initial contact.

FWIW I don't think 100% cold outreach is going to be an efficient use of your
time at this point. Responding to job ads or going on Upwork to send in
proposals will be more efficient if you just want projects or things to put in
your portfolio.

>The big plus we can provide is that by having a vet onboard (my gf) we can
write out the content for them. So they can tell us "we have a behaviorist and
we provide this and that service" and from that we can explain and illustrate
what this means, with no additional work on their side.

The other thing to think about might be how you can provide value to their
existing patients and get them to come in more often for appointments and to
get highly profitable treatments like flea/tick stuff, fungus creams, and
regular shots. It's not just new customers but getting more from their
existing customers with less administrative overhead.

------
moron4hire
I think you should have driven out to them, rather than trying todo everything
"efficiently": waiting for emails, calling on the phone. If there were 100
veterinarians in a 200km radius, you could have visited them all.

Yes, it would have been hard work. But that's kind of the reason why nobody
else has done it. Easy money is a lottery game. You want success on your
schedule you have to pound pavement and do the hard work that other people are
too lazy to do.

The value of talking to people in person is that you learn significantly more
about their problems and what they want. You can see whether or not they are
lying about their interest in the product. You can see their environment and
infer new information. It's also a lot harder for people to say no to your
face, or to stop a conversation in person. So you're likely to just plain have
a longer conversation, which _usually_ means you're getting more information.

Case in point: my wife writes sci-fi novels. We sell them on Amazon, and they
do okay there. But we do significantly better at book fairs. At a book fair,
if you see a nerdy girl wearing a Dr. Who t-shirt carrying a tote bag that is
already half-full of books, you've got a pretty good idea that she'd probably
be interested in your time-travel book about a strong female character _and_
you can be pretty sure she's willing to buy. All without any tracking cookies.
All without any alignment analysis algorithms. No freely handing over
monetizable data to Facebook, et al.

Being in the Amazon bookstore, you have to compete against literally millions
of books. At the book fair, it's probably less than 100. You can't catch
people's attention as they go by online, but you can call out to people at the
fair. And you can't be sure the people you're contacting online are even in
the market--they likely are not. But people go to book fairs because they
specifically want to browse and buy something new and unique.

Physically put yourself in the places where people are willing to take chances
on new products.

------
glenra
A bog-standard strategy for bootstrapping a new business is to take on your
FIRST client for FREE (or nearly so). Pick a business nearby that you like -
perhaps your OWN local vet? - and talk to them _in person_ to see if they'd be
willing to allow you to make them a website. Make it clear that you're doing
this for two reasons:

(1) to better learn the business - you expect the experience of building
_their_ site will help you learn how to meet market needs.

(2) To build a portfolio - you want to have some real sites done and in-use to
help sell to other customers later.

Do both of those things. Focus on making ONE key customer happy, learn
whatever you can about their needs, and only THEN do you try to sell the same
service to other customers.

------
gottlos
Consider a simple online booking system, backed with google calendar or speaks
ical. Importantly, something that lets their customers pick a time slot, send
reminders, etc.

A number of healthcare providers locally do something similar; benefit to the
vet is lower admin costs (answering phone etc), potential of online payment to
secure the consult, and easy ways to reach their customers for follow up
(vaccination reminders for example could be triggered by adding people into a
mailing list package, email details gained at time of original booking).

Those are harder to build, but offer clear value and ongoing revenue
($1/booking fee x 5 vets x a year starts to make it look attractive!)

~~~
MasterScrat
But then there are two options:

\- We have to integrate with the system they are currently using. This is a
lot of work that may not be reusable for other vets, if they don't use the
same system.

\- OR We have to change the system they are using day to day, which I expect
means fighting some strong inertia

Both are doable but will require a _lot_ of mental bandwidth, which makes me
uncomfortable for a side project.

~~~
gottlos
Thus the 'spits out ical' \- if you can offer them calendars on phones,
outlook, etc that's a compelling use case; and the is a chance the existing
system can consume it

------
IanDrake
Classic example of starting with a solution and looking for a problem.

Consider going to another set of potential customers with no product at all
and just interview them. It's much easier to get their time if you're not
selling them something.

Ask what their business problems are. These could range from annoyances to
serious revenue issues. Ask them how much it would be worth to make the
problem go away.

Once you've gathered this information from several potential customers, find
commonality and figure out a solution.

Then, without building the solution, pitch it back to them and ask for them to
sign up. If enough say yes, then you have something worth building.

Consider getting the book Four Steps to the Epiphany.

------
rasmus1610
Interesting article. I have a similar business (websites for physicians). I
was very lucky to get some introductions and leads through my personal network
(being a med student myself, my parents having a lot of physician friends).

A thing a was quite successful with, was redesigning existing old websites.
More building a new website than just redesigning. But most of the clients I
worked with had already a website that was just ugly or outdated or both. That
made sure that they at least see some value in being found on google

~~~
MasterScrat
> A thing a was quite successful with, was redesigning existing old websites

Ah, that's an interesting idea. For each vet in the area we checked if they
had a website or not, so you can imagine we saw a _lot_ of such website. And
indeed a lot of them are terrible. Reaching out to them could work.

------
Gys
> They want to see a portfolio. It’s tough to get off the ground because of
> the chicken and egg problem. Vets who were showing some interest always
> wanted us to “provide some references”: the problem is that no one wants to
> be your first client.

So why not give one away for free ? In exchange for a good reference (if they
are happy).

------
nthcolumn
Okay it is quite unlucky that you chose that particular segment. Becoming a
vet is very expensive, the setups are very, very expensive and the margins are
very tight. Most vets accumulate into vet practices and would be better off
financially stacking shelves at Walmart so if I were looking for rich clients
these aren't the clients you were looking for - you may well have lots of
pictures of cats but maybe some other segment might be more open to you. Even
a charity for cats might pay better than a vets. How about pivoting into pet
boarding? Plenty of scope for fun there and quite lucrative?

------
droithomme
It's good to see that he analyzed the problems to see why his client base
wasn't interested. The reasons had nothing to do with him, which is good data
to have.

The veterinarians I've seen are booked from dawn to dusk, so "too many
clients" is their issue. Why advertise when you are already booked solid.

Those retiring and those who want no tech are also valid complaints and little
can be done about either.

He focuses on the fourth reason he can do something about, they want to see a
portfolio of their sites done for other vets. That is a reasonable move.

~~~
glenra
> The veterinarians I've seen are booked from dawn to dusk, so "too many
> clients" is their issue. Why advertise when you are already booked solid.

Websites aren't just advertising, though. They can also _reduce_ support costs
by providing info effectively. If people can reliably get lots of relevant
info from your website (hours, directions, prices, policies) that should
reduce the workload on the secretary/admin. People who can't easily find what
they need online have to call and talk to someone about it, which means your
phones are busy, which makes it harder to deal effectively with incoming
customers.

(that said, I suppose it's conceivable yelp/google maps/whatever is already
adequately providing the low-hanging fruit)

------
seiferteric
I am in a weird situation with a few friends that we made an appointment
scheduling application for a client who tried several others and found nothing
they liked and kept reverting to using google calendar. Now we built them this
perfect app that they love, but we can't seem to sell it to anyone else. It's
looking more and more like we spent six months developing an app for
essentially one client (technically we have three, one client has two shops,
and one employee that left started his own and uses it).

~~~
almostarockstar
I've had the same issue. I built a web based cash register / stock tracking
app for a customer a few years ago with the belief that there were hundreds of
business operating in her niche in a small, easily accessible area.

She loves it - but nobody else has the time of day for it. Learned a hard
lesson about market validation there.

------
zebraflask
The problem here is that you're trying to sell a website that vet clients will
generally only look up when their pets are sick, and probably not in the right
frame of mind to appreciate your web design skills. The idea has inherently
unpleasant connotations right from the start.

You'd get a lot farther if you found a novel set of pet toys, or premium food,
or something that the average pet owner would enjoy spending money on. Vets
stock those things, people buy them, I'm sure you get the gist of the idea.

------
icedchai
You picked the wrong niche. Accept it and move on to something else.

------
tixocloud
The key to success is to follow-up on cold calls. The first call is to
establish the relationship and let them know who you are as well as you
learning more about them. Figure out how you can help them (potentially for
free) to build that trust. It's our human nature to be skeptical about being
approached and we immediately go into self-defense mode.

------
martinald
One option instead of making them a website (which they probably don't care
about) is selling them leads (which they probably do).

Instead of them saying they don't like technology, you just say that you'll
send them leads for $x per go.

You then build the sites and bill them for each contact that goes through (or
phone call - bit more work).

~~~
ssharp
This is a very smart way to do things in certain industries. This scales
fairly well with local businesses because what you did for one homebuilder in
Topeka, you can do for another homebuilder in Billings and not run into too
many conflicts of interest.

The vet space is a bit different though. Vets are often times well-booked but
would like to see more revenue per booking.

------
haburka
Cold calling might not work for the first few customers. Instead, you should
find friends or friends of friends to sell to at first, because even if you
have the best pitch, and they would use the product, it might be that they're
very overworked and they don't have time to speak to you.

------
TheRealmccoy
hello Master,

one issue with pitch is that, for doctors who are not versed with web
technology, your offer is more of a paid liability, than a solution.

who would maintain the website, when you have sold them?

the vets, probably neither have the time nor the inclination to maintain it,
and so far they have been doing without it.

Why dont you offer them, website and with just a marginal yearly cost, free
maintenance also, with which they can always keep their website updated, by
just sending you text and photographs by email?

this is like a complete peace of mind offer.

in fact, you can make it one offer, website with free maintenance (hosting,
domain, updating content etc) at a flat yearly free.

You have a SAAS product in offering now...

------
notjustanymike
If you're making vet appointment software, please considering pivoting to the
petcare appointment business. Our dog walking company uses an absolutely
craptacular app called Leashtime, and any replacement would be welcomed.

------
luord
I agree with TFA on the "making yourself sound bigger than life" thing. I
always think I sound ridiculous when I do that so I prefer to focus on what I
know.

Not that I've had much succeed either, though.

------
paulcole
Vets are like doctors that don't make any money. Most vets in the US just
don't have the marketing budget for this kind of thing. There are better
niches out there.

