

Ask YC: How to get leads for a startup and how to followup? - mig

Hi,<p>I would really appreciate if anyone could provide their comments/suggestions/expeiences regarding the following. <p>What's the best way to get leads for a startup? <p>We are working on a product for online media companies(popular blogs, online journals, newspapers etc.). This is what I have tried so far.<p>- Meet bloggers from popular media companies in events around the bay area.
- Cold call these companies.
- Email them.
- Email to online networks/newsgroups that I am a member of.<p>
None of it has worked for us.<p>Also what's the best way to follow up once you  get a lead?<p>Thanks a lot for reading this,<p>-Manu.
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skmurphy
I have a couple of suggestions:

1\. Be very clear on who your customer is (who will pay for your product). If
you want your friends or advisors to recommend prospects you are going to need
to get very specific on characteristics (preferably three) of the kind of
folks who will most benefit from your product and the key symptoms (the
prospect's perception of a problem) that would indicate you can guarantee you
can deliver one or more benefits in a very short amount of time (preferably
two hours, hopefully no more than five days). It's often better lead off with
a well thought out question someone can say yes or no to, where the yes means
you may be able to help them. Follow up with one or two clarifying questions
to make sure you can deliver a benefit by which point you should at least have
them intrigued. Here is an example of a bad question: "do you want to save
money on your hosting service?" It's not a pain question.For your application
a potential pain question related to blogging (since I don't know anything
about your application this is only by way of example) might be "Are you
trying to write and publish more than four blog posts per day?" or "Are your
blog posts average over a 1,000 words" Please note that both of these answers
might also be inferred by analyzing the blogs directly, which is another way
to get leads, determine some objective tests based on data you can develop
about a prospect that would indicate your product might be very relevant to
pain he is likely to be experiencing.

2\. Identify what is the key benefit(s)--no more than three--your product will
offer them.

3\. Explain why you believe it's dramatically better in at least one way from
what they are doing now (or competitive alternatives).

4\. Give them a reason to believe: this can be a benchmark, a testimonial,
example input and output.

This is a straightforward formulation you should be able to explain in 60-90
seconds once you have it worked out. Items 2, 3, and 4 are taken from "Jump
Start Your Business Brain" by Doug Hall which is a good resource. Item 1, the
concept of focusing on pain and identifying clear objective metrics for what
constitutes a prospect has numerous sources.

Reach out through your friends and advisors to get introductions to potential
customers. Depending upon the circumstances (often a 30 minute coffee break
can be a good venue for a conversation, or a meeting at their office) be
polite but don't argue if they don't understand. You can explain or elaborate
once or twice (no more) but be careful of wasting their time to the point that
you can't go back.

Probably the best book on the subject is Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the
Epiphany"

We spend a lot of time helping early stage software startups with this issue.
We typically work with pre-A folks who are either pre-revenue or whose product
has been bought by friends or visionary customers and are now faced with
figuring out how to sell it (and do they have the right features).

We recently blogged about questions you need to answer to be able to get
started here: [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/11/05/i-have-an-idea-
for-a...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/11/05/i-have-an-idea-for-a-
software-product-how-do-i-get-started/)

If you have VC or some Angel money you might talk to Virsalent
<http://www.virsalent.com/> SalesRamp <http://www.salesramp.com/> Growth
Process Group <http://www.growthprocess.com>

If you are bootstrapping you should give us a call <http://www.skmurphy.com>

We also help more established firms but our focus is on early customers and
early revenue for software startups.

I hope this helps, please provide some more details if you want some more
specific advice.

~~~
lanej0
Identifying the key benefit is, er, key here (sorry, little sleep last night).
As you've been very vague on what the product/service is -- do you have
competitors? What makes yours better than theirs?

Anyone can be talked into giving something a try if there's no risk (don't ask
for a credit card number up front), and if they can see the benefit to using
it.

Do you have any traction yet? Get some testimonials from existing customers
(if you've got 'em). Name dropping never hurts.

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ALee
Manu, your question could be "How do I get written up in the press?" or it
could be "How do I set up partnerships/sales leads etc.?"

So if it's the first one. My advice is to not be worried about that at this
stage. You should be much more concerned with developing an amazing product
and then empowering your users to blog about how sweet you are. Always more
important to build organically. Trust me, we know from experience.

If it's a question about biz leads. Send an e-mail to someone you know in the
organization or even a cold biz dev e-mail is good enough. We've done those
and gotten to the right person. To follow-up, phone calls are always best
along with another "gentle nudge" e-mail. Phone calls are really important.
They help you set off a small amount of time to speak with the other person
about your product and how you can make their organization and yours sweet.

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dshah
I'd suggest writing a blog yourself and establishing some credibility.

Given your target market, this seems like a good thing.

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joeguilmette
you're probly going to need to be more specific about your product for any
practical advice.

