Sales for Founders
Learn how to do sales & build a profitable business
Over the past two weeks, a lot of founders have been reaching out to me with questions like...
"is now a good time to start a new business?"
"how can I find my first customers in a downturn?"
"my sales aren't working any more, how do I work out how to get back on track?"
"I'm seeing way more customers churn - how can I keep them onboard in tough times?"
These are scary, unpredictable times.
Many indie hackers will decide not to start businesses they should have started. Others will lose out on growth, customers, and maybe even their entire business - completely avoidably.
I don't want you to be one of them.
So I've made a free, actionable video course on how to use sales to navigate the next few months successfully and 'pandemic-proof' your business.
Lesson #1 (of seven) drops today.
👉 Get it here 👈
Today is the day...
After spending almost a year teaching 200+ founders how to get 'just good enough' at sales to find their first customers and build a profitable business, the evergreen version of my Sales for Founders course is now live! 🎉
What does that mean?
- It's now possible to enroll in the course straight from the landing page (no more email waitlist)
- I brought back the 'coaching track' of the course (alongside the self-serve track) after quite a few people emailed me asking about it. It's now cheaper and shorter though.
- It's now possible to preview some of the content before buying
What have I learned?
So, so much.
When I started S4F, the focus was too broad. I was great at sales, but bad at courses.
Over the past 3-4 iterations, I've worked out exactly what sales stuff founders really struggle with, and the best format to help them move forward.
I underestimated the value of community and 'just in time' learning, for example.
I'll hopefully write a post about that on IH soon.
But - for now - I'm just glad that anyone can head over to SalesForFounders.com and become good enough at sales to find their first customers and grow to $10k in MRR. 🎉
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Hey Louis, Congrats. I'd be interested to learn why you chose to make the coaching track "cheaper and shorter"
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Thanks!
I'd be interested to learn why you chose to make the coaching track "cheaper and shorter"
The pricing used to be $970.
That's out of budget for many founders who could have really gotten a lot of value from the coaching track.
So I reduced the pricing so that I can help them too.
I can only commit so many hours/week to coaching, so I had to reduce the number of hours as the price decreased. Now it is 4 sessions instead of 8 - which is where I was providing the most value anyway.
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Thanks, Louis 🙏
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Cool! I bought it a few months ago and have been meaning to really put some time into it over the next month or so. I went on a pretty crazy Black Friday course and book buying spree I'm still working through, which is the only reason it's taken me this long.
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Awesome!
have been meaning to really put some time into it over the next month or so
I didn't communicate this well back when you bought, but the content is supposed to be consumed "reactively" - ie when you're doing sales and get stuck. Think of it more (with the community) as a Stack Overflow/Documentation for sales, rather than a linear course.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
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With the S4F course, I want to make it as easy as possible for founders to grow a profitable business. So I worked hard to put together partnerships that give participants access to big savings on 80+ SaaS deals.
For example, you benefit from:
- A free copy of The Mom Test ebook
- $1,000 credit on AWS
- $2,000 credit on Airtable
- $2,000 credit on Freshworks
- 12 months free on Sendinblue
- 12 months free on Sendgrid
- 6 months free on Hotjar
... And much more worth up to $50,000!
I'm really excited to be able to offer this as a bonus to founders who take the S4F course 💪
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Nice, how does one go about finding deals to offer?
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What I did was...
- Look at tools/resources I used and reach out to the providers
- Ask participants what they use/need and reach out to providers
- partner up with services that already collate useful discounts for founders
I've been saying for aaaaaaages that Indie Hackers should have deals for (maybe verified) founders. Would be such a quick win and a great way of getting more people to the site/providing value :D
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@valsopi invited me on to his podcast to share some advice on early stage sales, bootstrapping, and how to move his project Claritask.com forward.
Some of the things we talked about were:
- The difference between Sales and Marketing for early stage bootstrapped startups
- How to go about finding leads
- Does it matter "who" is behind the product
Last Friday I opened up earlybird enrollment for the course to people on the waitlist.
My goal was to reach $20k in presales before the course starts on September the 9th...
And I reached it at 5:13am this morning! 🎉
Honestly, I thought it would be an impossible goal because I introduced a new, much cheaper version of the course that I thought would cannibalise sales of the more expensive, coaching-track course. But it turns out both were about equally popular, so I ended up with fewer sales but more revenue than expected.
Earlybird enrollment (with a nice discount) is still open until September the 9th. Now I can just get my head down and focus on making it an amazing experience for everyone who is waiting for the course!
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Congrats hitting that big milestone dude. Can't wait to start posting my milestones post-launch for my product!
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Congratulations on hitting your goal, that's a huge accomplishment and will inspire you to make sure the course is great.
I'm in the process of a course launch at the moment. What were some of the things you did in order to prepare yourself to reach the $20k goal?
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Thanks Nathan!
I'm going to write up some of the more actionable stuff as soon as I get a chance.
But honestly, I think most of the success can be attributed to quietly running two cohorts of the course already (over the past 5 months). Also, I've given email/phone/IH help to ~30 founders each week with early stage sales stuff for the past few years.
Good luck with your course!
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Way 2 go Louis! I signed up just now cause I was curious, you don't have any pricing info nor do you say you are going to charge anything so was wondering how that works. Was this intentional?
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Thanks! The pricing is in a comment below :)
But yes, originally I didn't include it on the website or the first email because I simply wasn't sure what the pricing would be yet. I wanted to make it as affordable as possible, while still being able to cover my costs.
If you just signed up, you'll get an email tomorrow with pricing and your discount code.
When the course is properly live, I'll update the website to include pricing and some snippets from the course. But right now, I want to spend my time on making the content as actionable as possible!
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Gonna check out the podcast, then sign up for the $99 version, but totally open to the higher coaching end if all goes well! Is there an upgrade path?
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Awesome!
There aren't too many spots left for the coaching version. I'm limited to about 3 per day at any given time to keep the quality high!
But - assuming there are some spots free - you can just shoot me a message in the Slack group and I'll give you a discount for the amount you already paid.
There's also an option to get just a one-off call, if you prefer to test it out that way. But you'll have time to check that out if you sign up, and I'm very approachable in the Slack community :)
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That's great to know! Thanks, and congrats on the launch!
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Congratulations, Louis!
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Congrats on all your hard work @louisswiss!
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Sweet! Nice job
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Congrats on hitting the milestone @louisswiss. Would love to hear the story behind this ;)
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Hopefully I can do a write up soon :)
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Congrats!!! Soooooo... How'd you do it?
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congrats!
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Congrats on your achievement Louis, that's pretty fast!! Your course is going to be really useful to people like me who are trying to get their foot into the market.
Does the course cover the phase after reaching a certain MRR, I mean how to go about growing the business after having a good start?
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Thanks!
Does the course cover the phase after reaching a certain MRR, I mean how to go about growing the business after having a good start?
My goal is for the course to be a great resource covering everything you need to know about sales to get to $10k MRR.
Hopefully it carries on being useful afterwards, but we don't cover any inbound marketing topics (SEO, CRO, paid advertising) that many companies tend to move to once they have their first customers and are trying to scale.
Is there a sales/challenge you're working on that you have a specific question about? Feel free to shoot me an email as well :)
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Thanks Louis, I'm working on building a product for developers around the world and I don't think I'm at the point where I need to start focusing on sales however I thought of asking what's covered in your course so in future when the need arises, I can opt for it.
I'll surely reach out to you if I have any questions.
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Congratulations! That's an awesome milestone :)
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Fantastic, congrats!! How did you collect the pre-sale money? Just curious.
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Mainly PayPal and Stripe via the course tool I'm using (Podia).
After the first two days I shut off PayPal because it was costing me so much money and freezing all incoming payments for a month.
Also had some people in Europe ask to pay by bank transfer etc with an invoice for the more expensive coaching track, which was fine too (but more work, wouldn't do that for cheaper products).
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Congratulations!! Props for 5:13am and passive income
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Awesome! Im also thinking about opening up signups 4 weeks before I launch my course (nocodemvp.com), still working on the content (half finished) and think putting a date out there when it should be live (and hopefully some sales) will be a great motivator! May I ask what the price of your course is?
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Thanks! Was a really nice surprise, but very focussed on the next steps to make it great :)
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No?
It's still open until the 9th of September. You should be able to sign up over on SalesForFounders.com ...
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Today I had an important realisation.
One of the biggest killers of early stage startups and side projects is a gradual loss of motivation followed by a sudden loss of momentum.
Most indie hackers don't shut down their businesses with a bang, but a fizzle.
And today, I realised that I'm in danger of the same thing happening to me with the Sales for Founders course.
The earlybird enrollment weekend went well. I'm well on track to reach my goal of $20k in presales before the launch in September.
So I should be happy. But in my anxiety to keep momentum going and deliver an amazing product for my new customers, I haven't taken any time at all to reflect on how well things are going and enjoy the journey. So I'm in danger of losing motivation.
In case you're in a similar situation, let this be a friendly reminder to stop and smell the roses when things are going well :)
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Thank you for sharing.
I have been in the same situation, both the motivational part and the momentum part.
What has helped me a lot here was reframing these doubts and fears. A loss of momentum is a chance to dig deeply into a problem. A motivational shift allows me to look at things differently, and at different things. I noticed that if I reframe these things in terms of curiosity, I can use them in a positive, helpful way.
As founders, we are responsible for our own perspective, and we are the ones that make it a joyful or a painful experience.
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What do you recommend people do to "smell the roses?"
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Not sure I can generalise.
But for me it's deliberately planning a day/afternoon/evening where I'll just enjoy myself. Maybe go out with friends and treat myself to a nice meal or something.
It also helps (me) to compare myself with 'past' Louis once in a while. Normally I'm comparing to 'future goal' Louis (who is awesome and intimidating).
Past Louis is much less impressive, and comparing myself to him makes me feel good ;)
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That's a great insight. Thanks for the reminder!
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That's so true Louis, I'd say just hang in there and enjoy while you work on your greatest creation.
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A very good life lesson for sure. I've felt my self in this situation recently with https://trackmylift.app after a few late nights in a row etc.
Took a day to reflect at how far I've come with a simple idea that sparked my startup idea and how close I am to release date. I was able to calm my mind again!
Somehow today snuck up on me... early enrollment for the course starts today.
Only people on the earlybird email list will have access, and the course itself doesn't actually start for another few weeks.
But this gives me a chance to assess demand for the different packages, and there's a discount for everyone who is on the waitlist and signs up before the course begins.
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Good luck on the early enrollment,
My release date 31st August is creeping up on me too for https://trackmylift.app
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thanks!
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Thanks!
They won't be too big today (although hopefully I do get some sales) - it's more of a gradual roll out :)
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The new S4F course is launching soon, so I finally managed to redo the landing page!
The major changes are...
- A new testimonial video in the hero section
- Reworked the text to make it slightly shorter
- Added testimonials/screenshots from the Slack community
- Added some information to reflect changes to the product (mainly addition of outside experts and new self-serve option)
Excited to see what effect this has on conversions!
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Hi Louis! Sales for Founders looks great so far (I myself come from the sales industry). I have signed up and received my first emal: "Lesson 1, what's your goal".
The content is good, and I could not agree more with you.
As a tiny piece of feedback: I signed up for the "early bird discount", what is the price of the course? I could not find it anywhere.
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Thanks!
what is the price of the course? I could not find it anywhere.
The simple answer is I'll tell you on Friday because i haven't 100% decided yet!
There are two versions of the course (just the content, and content + group membership + mentoring).
The content only version will have a full price of about $100. The earlybird will be lower.
The 'full' package will be more expensive. About $1000.
But again, the earlybird will have a significant discount.
Out of interest, what are you hoping to get out of the course seeing as you already come from the sales industry? Or did you sign up more just out of curiosity? :)
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Hi Louis,
No rush, of course!
Firstly I was curious, but if it's an affordable price, and judging by the initial content - I am also interested in the learning.Best,
b.
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Awesome, thanks for the feedback!
I see you signed up for the earlybird waitlist, so you'll be the first to get an invite link, with the price (and a hefty discount) as soon as I know it!
If there's anything your particularly struggling with in the meantime, just shoot me an email. I love helping founders :)
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Oh dear, that's not what I'd hoped for.
Mind if I ask a few follow-up questions?
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Are you the person I wrote this copy for? (new founder, doing $0-~5k MRR)
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If the answer to 1) was yes, are there any bits that resonated particularly poorly with you?
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EDIT: Don't worry, I checked out your Twitter/previous comments and you're definitely not who i wrote this for. Really appreciate you taking the time to give your opinion, but don't worry about the follow up questions :)
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Thanks for the honest feedback!
It might sound weird to you, but I'm genuinely super happy you responded negatively to this bit...
"you're more interested in pushing your (maybe terrible) product onto the world than building a profitable business "
Part of the problem with my original landing page is it did a great job of converting people to becoming a customer, but a not-so-great job of filtering out people who wouldn't be a good fit for the course.
I actually added this bit in there to do exactly what you described, so it's awesome to hear it worked.
And just to be clear, this isn't some attempt at a subtle insult or anything. It doesn't say anything about you other than that there's a low likelihood you'd respond well to the content of my course.
Thanks again!
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Thanks a lot!
If you're struggling with something business-wise feel free to shoot me an email - even if you can't or won't end up taking the course :)
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Appeared as a guest on the Unemployables podcast to talk about the S4F course and my weird and varied background as a founder.
If for some reason you want to find out more about me, my previous businesses and what's up next for S4F, give it a listen!
A few weeks ago I put up DoINeedALandingPage.com to help founders work out if they should build a landing page (yet) or not.
Proud to announce that now over 1000 founders have used the tool and I've saved them over 6500 hours they would otherwise have wasted building useless landing pages 🎉
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6500 hours? I was one of 1000 founder who used the tool, the tools sugessted to not build a landing page, but I still build it anyway.
My landing page help me to get my first paying customer, you don't save my 6,5 hour but wasting my 10 minutes to taking the test😂
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Ha - well I suppose even a broken clock is right 2x each day... 😉
I'm happy for you that you got your first customer though. Congrats!
Out of interest, can you remember what question you answered "no" to?
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Question number 2, but I apreciate your effort to help fellow indiehackers learn to sell, because I know, a lot of them was scary to sell, and love to hide behind their computer with their growth hack strategy which never they do😂
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I love this page and will share it with lots of folks that are getting started. Great guidelines.
Now, just need IamIReadyToBuildAProduct.com :D
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ha!
That URL would just redirect to ShitIsoldThisProductToCustomersNowIGuessIHaveToBuildIt.com :P
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Thanks Ricky, really appreciate the kind words!
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Simple & to the point - nice!