How many of you are struggling to grow Sales?

hey @brunor let's jump to my slack workspace - https://join.slack.com/t/sesamint/shared_invite/zt-f2tlermo-WaBC8jYfaPC8fl5nP3snrQ. Happy to continue the conversation there.

@gordon you're welcome! Here is how I went about getting our first customers. As a starter it was difficult for me to bid for keywords, get on top of search engines or any review platforms.

I went to conferences (not a possibility anymore), I did feet on street sales in my city (might be tough, but doable), I hung out in community forums and participated in the conversations (time taking, but useful to understand users) and lastly shortlisted 20 potential customers based on the persona, found their email using tools like voila norbert and cold emailed them (this is quick, doable)

Here is an example, let's say you built a software that creates an exclusive community for restaurants to help them retain customers.

I would immediately go to all the restaurants in my neighborhood and install the app or software that magically turns the incoming orders via UberEATS into a customer community. Show the restaurant owner the possibility of giving exclusive deals for the community members and retain them.

If I'm building a software like @rrttalv did. His software boosts sales using social proof. I will first narrow down an e-commerce category that has least trust for online purchases. In my opinion categories like Florists (I spent 1hr to find a trusted florist to send flowers to my girlfriend, I couldn't find any social proof but took the risk of using a particular florist), a new D2C brand, home made crafts like art etc has lost trust and I usually look for social proof before buying products from these categories.

I will first order a product from them, write a review and write an email to the business owner of how they can use my social proof using Social Oracle to boost sales.

Once you have 10 customers always focus on getting referrals. Referrals are the social proof. People buy from people.

Get the first customer you will get the 10th customer, get the 10th customer you will get the 50th customer, get the 50th you will get the 100th customer.

I hope this is helpful. Let me know your thoughts.

Best,
Sandeep

Its not, its just people are doing it plain wrong. I spent 8 years in sales and email + LinkedIn are my top channels with 90% response rate.

The reason why people are not getting answers from potential clients like you is as you said but in one word: "RELEVANCY".

You don't care about their offering and you are not the right stakeholder to approach in the first place.

Simply said, they are playing the volume game, but they should play the quality game.

I agree with your point, but the only difference between sales and spam is that the former is targeted to the recipient and the latter is pure broadcast with no real targeting.

That's the whole point of 'sales' - you reach out to people who are neither looking for a solution right now, or are not aware of the problem they are facing and convincing them to talk to you. It is an annoyance when the seller does not get their targeting right.

So it's likely that the people who have annoyed you with their spam have essentialyl not targeted the recipient right or have not got their communication correct.

Sales cannot happen without outreach.

@steban happy to help you.

I liked the simplicity of your product. But I don't know why I should use your product. To make work simple is not a value proposition. There is trello, basecamp, asana, jira. Why should some use your tasking product?
Is it built keeping specific persona in mind? Like for freelancers who work on multiple projects.

Can you tell me the three problems simpletasking is solving for a user?

How many users do you have?

I'm happy to help. Can you DM me on twitter?

Thanks
Sandeep

You're welcome :)

@Sj20 kudos for putting this course on the first 5 customers. Where do your potential customers hangout? Who are the folks who are currently doing social media ads? Are these freelancers who are just getting started by selling their services?

here is how I would think about it - target a small niche (could be anywhere between 1000-5000 people), go to the place where they hangout and start sharing one tip a day, start engaging actively on those discussions for the next 60 days. Periodically brag about your course. Soon people will discover your course.

In addition to this whenever someone buys your course, ask them to write a review on social media and reshare that as social proof.

@orliesaurus

I cannot imagine a World without sales. I see that sales have been portrayed as some form of trickery performed by a person wearing a suit. Forget wolf of wall street. Forget the jargon. Forget Jerry Maguire for a moment. Forget psychological tricks. Let's get to basics, that is my 0-to-hero template.

Sales is an art and science of transferring feelings and solving problems.

Here is what should a founder or a Indie hacker do?

Make Sales function the centerpiece of everything in building the company. It has a multi-fold impact. Below is the new way to look at sales.

When you are building a product, you are building it with your unique insight about the problem. You never know whether that is something people want. You need to validate it. Sales empower you to put the product in front of real users (potential paying customers). Forget about landing page, forget about positioning, and all the jargon out there. Write down what is the ONE pain point your product is solving. Solving that ONE pain point is your value proposition. If there are existing solutions, then speak about how you are solving the pain point better than the existing solutions. Here is a simple template for the founders or sales folks to reach out to potential customers.

Email Outreach template:

Hey {{first_name}},

<Who are you><build rapport>

<why are you reaching out><what is the pain point you are solving (value for them)><why should they take action now (show them what they are losing out because of inaction)><have one clear call to action>

Best

Sandiep

Most of the time you wouldn’t see replies coming in for the first email. Usually, you should have 7 email cadence before giving up.

This outreach will help you validate your product, get those first paying customers, and give your race car the necessary tires.

In the early days of building the company, Sales and Support are the same. One of the founders does both these activities. Both these functions feed each other. I have often seen that the language or the level of transparency the customer displays before (evaluating the tool) and after (becoming a customer) is different. Being in support or onboarding the customer will help you understand why they choose you, and what does success mean for them. These insights will help you sell better.

There is a lot of buzz around growth hacking and most of the founders spend a lot of time reading about it. But one of the key aspects to figure out even before growth hacking is “positioning” of the product. Positioning is tricky and it is always a work in progress. It takes quite some time to get the positioning right. Positioning is key for building a brand using marketing. The inputs to build positioning will come from sales.

April Dunford, Author of Obviously Awesome says -

"If you have enough customer traction positioning could be as fast as a couple days."

During the sales process, you should ask prospects - where do you search for solutions to solve your problems, where do you hang out most of the time to discuss your problems, who else in your networking are facing similar problems and who are some thought leaders I should follow. In this process, you will find the potential marketing channels, the language they are using to describe their problem (this will become your website copy), and the kind of conversations they are having.

One common mistake we did is to build features that we thought would make sense for customers. Every time we pushed a new feature we only saw that there is insignificant usage of it. Later we tweaked the process of building new features or product improvements. We prioritized product improvements based on the inputs from prospects during the sales calls. The continuous feedback from sales calls will help you build the product roadmap.

Sudheesh Nair, early sales team member of Nutanix (a public company) and currently CEO of ThoughtSpot says -

"The sales function is no longer about just sales, this function is a centerpiece to make the product better. Selling-understanding customers-improving the product-Selling again. Different motion altogether."

How to sell SaaS?

Anyone can learn sales. Unfortunately, no B-school or University has a course. I did a search on platforms like Lamda School, Upgrad, etc but even they don’t have any courses. For the starters in sales, be it a founder or someone trying to sell SaaS here are some key pointers:

1. Write as you speak & concise emails
2. Focus & follow-up are key to win 80% of the sales
3. Get comfortable on the phone or talking to strangers
4. Learn and iterate from every interaction
5. Listen as much as you speak
6. Talking to users is sales

Again no tricks, no jargon. Just keep it simple by understanding your customers and solving their problems. Hope this is helpful.

@rrttalv Hey Rico, looks like you have a good product there. I have questions for you:

1. Who are these 4 real active users? I'm trying to understand the buyer persona - type of business they are running, title of the person who made the decision to use it etc
2. How do you define active users?
3. What were their sales before using social oracle? What are the sales now? Is there a growth in sales that can be attributed to social oracle?
4. Today if you want to get 10 customers, whom will you target? e-commerce businesses (fashion, groceries etc), online restaurants, B2B SaaS products etc
5. Here is another product I found in similar lines - https://fomo.com/
6. What are the three pain points you are solving for these 4 real customers?

I'm happy to help you further. You can DM me on twitter.

Thanks
Sandeep