Selling before you build. From a sales professional.

Everyone says to pre-sell before you build. Most fail to do so because they've never had a plan to help them. Treat it like a science experiment by following the Rule of 100 to determine if your project is worth building.

The Rule of 100

• Decide your ideal customer

• Compile 100 of those contacts

• Set a goal for success. If 10 buy, will I build the thing? If I can't find 10, will I move on from this idea?

"More bootstrappers would succeed if they focussed on sales rather than marketing." - Courtland Allen, Indiehackers

Your ideal customer

1. Who could my product help?
2. Where do those people hang out?
3. How does my work translate into their success? (more on this later!)

These questions are necessary to determine if your target market exists. If so, how can we repeatedly find them? And how do we message them about the benefits they could experience by working with us?

Example: It's a tried and true method of aligning your capabilities with your customer's needs. Let's give it a try for Eamon Keane's Project Rina, a Twitter Publishing Tool.

1. Who does this product help? Twitter users who are trying to grow an audience, schedule their content, and handle multiple accounts.
2. Where do those people hang out? Definitely on Twitter, but maybe there are some communities or conferences we can search for and see what we come up with.
3. How does my work translate into their success? If they used this tool, they could spend less time on the logistics of Twitter and just focus on the content, their secret sauce.

How to find 100 of those contacts - copy my Google Sheet [link] to organize them

If your problem truly exists, there is some group of people out in the wild who are trying to solve it. We can find them by following through on the last step with a simple Google search. We know the tool is to help power-Tweeters. So let's try searching for where they may congregate on Linkedin or Facebook.

Searching "Twitter" on Linkedin Groups returns Twitter Strategies, a 14k person group

The great thing about Linkedin or Facebook is we can now directly message our prospects. The teardown of how to actually message is at the end of this post!

A tool to help

Sending personalized emails to 50 people at once from a Google Sheet.

The best results come from the basics. I use Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM), a free Google Sheets add-on that lets you send 50 emails a day. Though, I like to think I can be more personalized than most. Here's a 2min vid on how to set up YAMM and a personalized email. 👇

Loom vid

A cold-email teardown

You've got your customer list and now you want to sell to them. What do you actually say? Let's start off with what not to say.

What not to say

Here's an email I got from a recruiter yesterday. Do you think they wonder why no one responds?

Hannah, I'm sorry to put you on blast, but this breaks so many rules of good cold email:

• Very long subject line
• Dabbling around the point
• Not getting into the pitch until 50% down the page
• Very dense
• Weak closing in "Let me know if you're open to speaking?"

What to say instead

This is a cold email I sent this week while looking for beta users of a SaaS project.

Do you think it got a response? Because it did! Why?

• Short subject line with their name invites the open
• Starting with your connection (however fickle), shows you're a real person
• Get to the point fast. We often want to send pleasantries, but the best pleasantry of all is not wasting someone's time.
• Personalize your pitch. I wanted her to use a sales tool of mine. So I sent her a link of how it would look on her website.
• Close with confidence. Share any initial results. Give a couple of options for how this conversation could go and let them choose.

Closing

This 1 tip, 1 tool, and 1 teardown is focused on helping you get your first customers for a new or non-existent product.

If you would like (and would pay for) weekly sales advice posts like these, drop me a note! rpdoyle1@gmail.com.