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How To Find Your First Clients For Free

This is geared to people offering B2B services.

Cold Email is my favourite way to generate clients and I believe it is an underrated channel when used correctly.

The only issue is that you need a lot of tools to get started. The good news is that cold email software is a very competitive industry, this means that a lot of tools offer a trial version. We will take advantage of that to get started.

  1. The first step of your lead generation process is to source & filter an audience. You'll need the LinkedIn Sales Navigator (= the premium version of LinkedIn). The good news is that they offer a 30-DAYS trial version (cost = $0).

  2. Second step will be to extract your lead searches from LinkedIn to some Excel/Google Sheets. You'll need a tool such as Phantombuster to do this at scale. Once again, good news: they offer a 14-DAYS trial (cost = $0)

  3. Third step will be to get the email addresses from your leads. Kleanleads let you do that and they offer a 7-DAYS trial (cost = $0)

  4. Once you have your list of email addresses, you'll need to verify them to ensure that the emails are valid. EmailListVerify allows you to verify 100 emails for free. Zerobounce also. Same for VerifyBee, TrueMail and any other tools included here: https://www.coldiq.com/tools#verification

  5. Now you want to insert your clean list of email addresses to a sending tool that will automate your email sending and follow-ups. Use Woodpecker for that. Alternatives: Klenty, Reply, Lemlist. They all offer a 14-DAYS trial (cost = $0)

  6. Finally, you will want to warm up your email address to make sure you don't land in spam. Use Warmupinbox for that. They have a 7-DAYS trial (cost = $0)

The only costs will be to set up a domain and an email address from which to send. This can be done for less than $20.

That's it for now. For those who wish to get started with Cold Emails, I recommend the Cold Email Mastery (paid) course from Cold Email Wizard. I also heard some good things about Alex Berman but haven't had the chance to go through his content already. If you don't have any money to spend just yet and are looking to learn for free, check this list of free resources I curated here: https://www.coldiq.com/.

  1. 3

    Thank you. Harped me to get a better grip on email marketing.

    1. 1

      You're welcome! Thanks for the feedback.

  2. 2

    Sick post, it was a foreign topic for me so it was nice to get a step-by-step guide for it! Big +1

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot, Alex. Means a lot to me. Don't hesitate to reach out if you need some help to get started!

  3. 2

    usebouncer.com offers 1000 email verification each month for free :)

    1. 1

      Wow, I didn't know. Will add it to my toolbox page. Thanks for the information!

  4. 2

    Thanks a lot for sharing. Very useful content. I want to know other than cold emailing and calling what all things can one try if he is aiming for first 10-20 customers?

    1. 1

      You're welcome.
      You can reach out to people on LinkedIn as well. In some verticals, it might work to reach out on social media (Instagram, Twitter).

      Other options include registering to freelancer websites (Upwork, Fiverr).

      If you have money to spend, running ads can be a great client acquisition lever as well.

  5. 2

    Great post Mich. Thanks for sharing

    1. 1

      Thank you for the feedback Jesús!

  6. 1

    Thanks for sharing this 🙏

  7. 1

    Awesome post. Please do one on B2C businesses and how to grow and get users would really appreciate it :)

    1. 1

      I can try doing that! Thanks for the feedback :)

  8. 1

    Thank you! I will try out these and report back my findings and experience.

    1. 1

      Please do! Curious to hear about your experience :)

  9. 1

    Isn't doing stuff like this basically equivalent to sending spam?

    1. 1

      Depends on the way you go about it. If you're sending the same generic message to everybody, it is spam.

      Now, if you're sending relevant personalized messages to a highly targeted audience that can profit from your product/service, it's another story.

  10. 1

    I love how clear your workflow is. I notice a tendency in a lot of other advice forums where they will just tell you vaguely how to do something, but this is very clear, concise, and someone can easily replicate these steps!

    1. 2

      Yes, I tried to describe my workflow in as few words as possible. Thank you for the feedback.

  11. 1

    Thanks for sharing. Bookmarked.

    1. 1

      You're welcome. Thanks for the feedback!

  12. 1

    This is great. Thanks

    1. 1

      Thank you for that. Appreciate the feedback :)

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