Story: How to make your first sales!

The old saying, build it and they will come, is just that. Old. Outdated.

• Give me a company with a decent product, but great distribution and I’ll show you an ATM.
• Give me a company with a great product, but decent distribution and I’ll show you a zombie.

Distribution is king.

What does great distribution look like? I’ll tell you.

A solid mix of outbound sales, inbound sales, partnerships and marketing - marketing is made up of paid marketing and earned marketing.

Alas, let’s start by getting our first sales;

What you need first is leads - not a ProductHunt launch or an AppSumo campaign. That’s for later.

Here’s a number of ways to find leads;

• Builtwith.com (Find leads using specific technology)
• Lusha.com (Find business-leads with email and phone numbers)
• Trustpilot.com (Filter on categories and use number of reviews as a size-metric)
• Similarweb.com (Filter on categories and use their traffic as a size-metric)

To get our first 1000+ leads, we are going to buy the annual Premium plan at Lusha.com for $528. That grants you 1,680 leads. That’s enough to get us started.

At this point in time - you know which industry or type of company would buy you product. But probably not who. Who? That’s right.

Who’s is going to be buying your product? Who is going to be making the purchasing decision? Is it the finance manager, HR manager, marketing manager, customer support manager?

When you have made your best guess. That’s all it is at this point. A guess. You find 1,680 decision makers at your target industry, size of business and type of business. Make a spreadsheet with all of the leads; first name, last name, job title, email, phone number.

Now, a couple of less fun things.

You can’t send a lot of emails from a new domain. Spam-filter guaranteed.

• DKIM, SPF, DMARC. Set it up from day 1 in your DNS settings.
• Use Gmass to warm up your domain for free. It takes 14 - 21 days. Start early.
• Get a backup domain. Not a subdomain, but a different one. Could be the .io .so .co. It serves as insurance for when your main domain would start landing in spam. (also warm it up)

It's like the immigration visa of email, if you don't have it, you're not getting in.

Tip: Follow @JaapVergote for tips on outbound email.

Okay. time to craft our first emails. It’s early. We most likely want feedback - is our product solving the intended need and pain. It’s also a softer ask - everyone wants to help.

How do we craft a great sales email?

AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Attention - This is your subject field. Your words need to draw attention. With 41 characters.

Example 1: Save $$$ on your AWS bill
Example 2: Recover sales tax on bad debt
Example 3: Stop scams in your Discord server

Interest - The first couple of lines of the email. It also shows in the preview. You need to create interest. Get the person to keep reading.

Example 1: Let us handle your AWS with rightsizing and auto scaling to save 50% on your bill.
Example 2: You can recover all your sales tax on bad debt. We help you get your money back.
Example 3: There are thousands of scammers on discord. We help you stop them. While keeping your community safe.

Desire - The body or main part of the email. You need create a desire for the outcome of using your product. Nobody cares about your product. They care about the outcome.

This section various heavily depending on the product and company, so it’s hard to give a specific example. Head over to goodsalesemails.com. They are sort of weak on Attention and Interest, but got great examples of email body.

Action - Make the next step easy. Don’t let them figure out what to do. Highlight what you want them to do.

Example 1: Could we get your thoughts and ideas on a quick call?
Example 2: What would it take to have you try it out?
Example 3: Would it be possible to get your ideas and guidance on a call next week?

Now we got one email. Or more. We need to be realistic. Not everyone will read it. Or reply. Here’s some sample numbers, so you wont give up too early.

We got 1,680 leads. So on average.

Open-rate: 20% (336 will open and read it)
Reply and Demo-rate: 3% (10 will reply or book a demo)
Close-rate: 27% (3 will buy your product)

This obviously various by industry. The price of your product. Your sales abilities. Your products capabilities.

To improve our odds. We make a sequence of emails. An automated chain of emails. Displaying our different value propositions. Hitting different pains.

Go to Lemlist and sign-up for their $59 per month plan. Find a freelancer on UpWork to help you get the first batch out and set up the sequence of emails. You can find skilled Freelancers at $30/hour. They need a maximum of 3 hours to get the first sequence out.

When you get your first demo/meeting, you need to ask the right questions. We are trying to understand their interest and their problem/pain/opportunity;

• What’s the problem or pain they are trying to solve?
• Why were they interested in your solution?
• What key features or abilities do they need in a solution?
• Who will be using the product?
• Who will be making the purchasing decision?

And. Always ask for the sale.

“Is this something we should move forward with?”
“What would it take for you to move forward with our solution?”

It’s uncomfortable. But it works.

After this entire process, you either have a couple of customers or you have some clear features/pains that your product should resolve. You could also end up with a big fat nothing burger. Abandon. Find something else to do.

Follow me on Twitter at @bernardmbaruch_ for more stories about growth.