Holy shit. Sales is hard.
Yes it is.
I've been on Indie-Hackers for a while now and as someone who's worked in B2B / Enterprise sales for the last decade, I'm going to be honest and say its kinda refreshing to hear people recognise how goddamn difficult sales really is :)
But I'm not here to gloat. There's a great solidarity in shared suffering ... and I'm learning a phenomenal amount from Indie Hackers so wanted to give back.
So I put together a blog post / how-to-guide on creating a sales funnel using:
- Hubspot CRM (free)
- Mailshake
- Linkedhub.io
- Zapier
- G Suite
Now don't get it twisted, this won't replace actually talking to customers .. but it will help creating volume outreach that can be run / managed by 1/2 people.
Originally posted on Scalecuts.com: How to create an automated sales funnel for indie-hackers?
Hit me up with any thoughts, questions or sales advice if you need :)
This is really useful. Thanks. However, Linkedin is not as useful for Business to Consumer sales.
Also, it is a relatively small subset of the market, with a lot of professionals without the power to spend their employer's funds. Larger organizations can have really complex and lengthy procurement processes - just like government- so it's important to take into account more parameters than the number of employees.
My platform is being developed to create automated sales funnels for sellers, among other things. The AI interaction system will be able to connect a user to products or services that match their interests.
Interesting take - agree, this sales funnel would be almost exclusively for B2B sales.
Nice one John. It's easy to get lost in a never-ending loop of choices of tools for this setup. But in the end, a simple setup like this is good enough for 90% indiehackers.
Thanks - hope its helpful :)
That could have been my post.
Am reading the “Way of the Wolf” that has some amazing tips and insight. Did some of u read it?
Haven't read it! Sounds like a "how-to do sales" by Jordan Belfort :)
It is! He is a crazy guy with crazy stories. But his sales tips and methods are really interesting
Thanks for this.
No probs. Hope it helps😉
What are you working on?
Just a one man team outsourcing the development of a SaaS for the real estate industry.
You can follow my journey at my blog...J/K..I don’t have time to blog. 😂
But these pointers/time savers really help as I try to automate as much as possible. Thanks!
Hey there, are you looking for a potential partner? Your project sounds cool, and I'm also based where you are, more than happy to chat about it if that interests you
Hey GS. Springs representing.
It’s still early days and I am not looking to add to the team at the moment. I am always good to make connections, though! Feel free to msg/email me anytime.
Hope it helps.
Give me a shout if you need a hand. Interested in real estate tech 👍
I am in sales, for me a technical side is much harder:)
😂👍
Depends what your skills are I guess 😎
If you know what to build it's a case of putting it together. But getting people to give you money for it? That's a whole different ball game!
Indeed, sales is hard. This is the biggest issue I have for my project.
I feel your pain :) what's your project - are you targeting B2B?
Yep, I target B2B. Open Lowcode is a development framework for enterprise software. While it is open-source, it needs to be sold all the same.
My biggest surprise is the low level of interest that many people have for the extremely 'cost-efficient' part of the solution (costs can be reduced from 5 to 30 times).
In entreprise IT, we are always complaining that software is too expensive, and we are captive customers, but it seems we like this after all.
I hear you. Cost savings often don't matter for buyers within a certain range - its not coming out of their pockets! The flipside is, thats why B2B can be great as people are happy to pay more.
I had a quick look at the website and I got the feeling it was Airtable-esque / excel merging type service but had a hard time visualising what I could use it for.
My suggestion: Go into waaay more detail on the use cases. For example: You have a use case from Airbus. As a non-engineer I find it hard to follow, what was the problem they had before, what specifically did openlowcode help them with, how much money / time was saved etc.
If you can, add 2/3 more use cases for how a sales team, customer success team, whatever team .. could use it for. That way you can create an outbound campaign, copy in a link to the use case and ask the question to that segment - do you need to solve this problem?
NIIIIIIIIIIICE :)
This is super handy. Scalecuts.com looks good as well ;)
solid stack! shameless plug for makesales.io since we pretty much cover the whole stack you describe within one platform and we integrate with your Gmail account! We'll also write your first outbound sequence with you :)
Sales is truly underestimated for its complexity!
Thanks for sharing this @fennessy. I am sure this is going to be really help in my building my product, ruttl.com!
Thanks Harsh - ruttl.com looks great by the way :) I saw a similar tool recently: editmode.com
@fennessy that's quite interesting! Can you tell me where you happened to read about it? It will help me in the process of identifying various marketing channels for ruttl as well.
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Nah IH automatically turns text that look like domains into links. For eg: zz.cc will show up as a link.
But I get what you mean. Those who know, know.
Nope. Nothing to do with me. Just a great tool for capturing data from Linkedin to Hubspot CRM seamlessly.