I hate sales, cold calling, and intro emails
I just wrapped up a session with 2 new founders of a SaaS company based in New Mexico.
Awesome product that helps property managers and landlords market properties for high risk tenants.
They showed me over 19 Business Model Canvasses. They had way over thunk it. From that, they told me 1,000 reasons why their product would fail.
Their mission was to ask for an intro to a VC. Not to generate revenue. Had to break it to them, no VC would touch it unless proven in the marketplace.
- Number of new outbound calls they had done since January? ZERO
- Number of prospects locked and loaded in their CRM? ZERO - they didn't even have a basic CRM!
- Number of outside lead gen resources? ZERO
Lesson #1 : Don't be afraid to start making calls today. Top Bay Area SDR's are cranking out 150-200 calls per day for SaaS products. Use technology to ease the pain when able.
Lesson #2: Being shy with your product is not going to move the needle. Shout from the rooftops or get someone to help you make the noise.
Lesson #3: You are not a sales person - I get it. You are a product maker, a designer, a doer. At the very least, have an ICP, ideal customer profile for direction on who to call on first. If necessary, purchase leads to get started from a reputable source.
What is keeping you from calling a prospect now, or before the end of the week?
You got this!
interesting take! been talking to members of this community for 5 months now, and I do relate to what you're saying. There's no silver bullet. It's not outbound or nothing or inbound or nothing. But consider including at least 3 acquisition channel in the mix.
you don't have to start with cold calling, chances are right now it's the worst way to use your time. but consistently move forward, think about the "dormant water" as we say in French.
Excellent idea @watus. I like the reference to dormant water.
Great source of information @elpramirez. I agree with you.
From my experience of building ruttl.com, I can surely say that reaching out to the ICP is something that cannot be skipped in any manner. It's highly crucial to at least build a proof of concept for your product.
Great feedback @harshvijay!
Great read, thank you!