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Growth roadblock: SaaS co

We're building Slack for Sports Teams (https://wildkard.io). We've taken a consumer approach to a traditional B2B market.

Thus far, we've acquired customers (teams) via referrals. We're now getting into email marketing. Our open-rates are high (50%+), response rates are OK (<5%), and conversion rates are dismal (1 trial customer with 500 cold emails) even though Wildkard is free to use.

We've discovered that the buyer (i.e. coaches, coaching directors, club presidents) is pretty jaded from 20 years of crappy undelightful software (Oracle complex). We're small, so hiring sales reps isn't viable.

Any growth ideas would be appreciated.

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    hello @rainbowdash, 5% reply isn't so bad so don't be too hard on yourself!

    You're saying that this industry has been jaded by big firms in the past. What's your sales process like? Are you talking to your prospects before closing them or are you solely relying on online?

    I'm a firm believer that outbound outreach is your #1 channel when it comes to controlling your own growth (and costs), but it might be that your issue is bigger than just the outreach part.

    happy to jump on a call and help you with your overall sales process as we're shipping out V2 if you're interested

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      Thanks @watus. Happy to walk you through our sales process. We're doing outbound outreach (email). Our message isn't as much "sell" but it's "partnership" and "knowledge-sharing" oriented. Would love to get your opinion on where we can further optimize. Let's coordinate via email? [email protected]

      I just saw your startup's website. Would love to hear more!

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        sounds good, I just sent you an email, let's do this!

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    If a major stumbling block is coaches being traumatized by hard to use software, why don't you create short videos that show how easy your tool is to use? This reminds me of Dropbox back in the days...other file upload tools were pain in the a*, and they've just created a very simple tool where uploading a file is as easy as "dragging that file into a folder."

    1. 1

      Great idea! I'm going to noodle on how to create a short-form, compelling demo video and attach that to my next campaign. Tanks @zerotousers

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    Hey Rainbowdash, I totally understand the pain. We're going through the same thing right now - I wrote a quick post about it. Maybe some helpful stuff in there?

    https://www.indiehackers.com/post/our-approach-to-cold-emails-d501132251

    The first thing I'd recommend would be to approach them a different way. Maybe ask to meet to "learn" from them rather than to sell. We found that people were much more open if it was a knowledge-sharing experience and then from there you can work on building the relationship.

    There are also some good tools from Close.io to help with overcoming specific objections. Here's a good page I like to visit to remind myself: https://blog.close.com/sales-objection-handling/

    Hope it helps!

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      Just downloaded the Close.io startup sales toolkit. Thank you!

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        Awesome resource! Good luck!!!

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