You need to set up a methodical go-to-market process.
You can automate some of it, but it's good to start manually and learn the ropes first.
You need to understand who your ideal customer is and what channels are they on.
Linkedin is a common one for b2b sales.
If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
It is extremely hard at start, especially for engineer types (like myself)
Fortunately, it's a skill like any other that can be learned.
I teach AI and have around 18k Instagram followers and about 9k on LinkedIn. Do I need to connect with Instagram influencers for a collab? Is it a good way?, just curious. Btw linkedin cold message gives conversion?
Want to clarify that lazy and ai spamming on LinkedIn is lame, especially for non-tech sales people selling technology.
Also, b2b sales can be foreign to most people - when i've done b2b sales on linkedin it's mostly about just building a relationship. The 5% of the market that is ready to buy will always self identify if they are looking for help.
I'm saying this as someone who has ba background in technology and helping companies purchase software.
There are better ways to use LinkedIn to earn interest and attention of those small percentages that move forward.
Knowing your stuff and how to apply it and not confusing talking for doing is critical.
Influencers who sell courses on topcs they are new to themselves might think introducing people to topics is a cashflow stream, but most will move on and it will be a leaky bucket.
Is it because I live in a remote place in India and don't have connections to SF companies, like they have companies in the backyard that raised 100 million and can easily make money? This stuff has been bothering me for years!! What am I missing?
They have an ICP, a no-brainer offer, and they reach out to hundreds of people per day. They also test multiple offers. That's literally it.
Most people can't get customers because they don't do enough targeted consistent volume over one channel.
For example, email requires minimum ~300 targeted sends per day to see any sort of replies. Anything less and you're guessing.
The people running ads spend thousands per month before they have a winning angle, and even then target relatively modest ROAS.
People who make content make it with little views for months or years before finding something that works.
All of this takes time, and more volume than you could imagine. Take however many outreaches you think you should be doing per day, and 10-100x it. That's the real number.
And anyone who tells you "all cold outreach is spam, don't send it!" doesn't understand the game. Most people who view your content/outreach won't buy or find it interesting. The whole point of outreach is to find the 1% who do.
So TLDR: Do more volume and test more offers. There is no shortcut. The people who are winning mostly do more volume than you do.
I could easily give you that title. Or maybe you can even do that yourself.
Lots of new companies are either faked, or amplified.
Example:
If I made a sale of $100 this hour, it can become $864K ARR, with amplification (100 x 24 x 30 x 12).
What to do?
Focus on your job and forget everybody else. Don't ever judge progress by revenue alone. A low revenue company who invents something in energy could be worth all companies exist today. But you never hear about it, because it is the real stuff.
Its fking frustrating and exhausting when you spend 8 months to build something genuinely good and not another AI wrapper and can't get money out of it and teach ai to survive. It sucks man
To my estimation, you are in B2B, competing with the likes of Wiz. Those with $500k ARR are usually "ad forwarding" or "networking" companies. Think about how you distribute your software, that's probably more important than your current features.
Kinda? One of the biggest advantages of being small is that, when someone asks where they can find suchandsuch feature, you can build it and point them to it in the same time it would take a larger company to reply “yeah that’s on our roadmap”. You’ve gotta leverage that to compete.
They cannibalize their social group. For example, they will make a lot of immediate small deals with other people in their cohort, incubator, or investor circle, and then use these deals to get to their next round of investment. Functionally those early sales are just there for signal.
Further, if you "cheat" your first tranche of sales you're potentially burying a valuable negative feedback loop for your product and sales development. The real hurdle, afaik, is mid-market and enterprise sales which is a big jump from getting your buddy to sign a small one year contract.
Just because someone says somethign on the internet doesn't mean it's true. THere is no real get rich scheme. Someone might have 10-15 years of experience and know how something is priced in an inefficient market and know how to capitalize on it (they understand how people buy).
If you do not have funding, you probably need to set aside most startup advice.
The resources and time you have available are entirely different.
Spending on ads can be a waste of time if you don't know know to retain the customers you keep.
Google one phrase: Founder-led sales.
Founder-led sales is what must be done before having delusions of prodcut-led growth. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just a question of whether you notice how many new things you're trying to learn to do at once.
Most people will make their life much harder by picking a startup in an industry that they don't know, trying to solve a problem they've never had nor know the depths of. It can be a subtle form of self-sabotage.
Being problem focused (problems of an identifiable company in the market that says yes to solving a probelm).
You must avoid the disease of building and selling an idea. Solving a problem that's verified is something else.
Back to founder led sales, this means, you, and you alone, must learn the needs from the market, and how to sell it, and get it going.
The first 100 customers is up to you. Do you know how to sell small, medium, or large customers?
Growth is about building an acquisition (marketing and sales system) that can distribute (product) something that can gain and retain customers from the market.
You need to set up a methodical go-to-market process.
You can automate some of it, but it's good to start manually and learn the ropes first.
You need to understand who your ideal customer is and what channels are they on.
Linkedin is a common one for b2b sales.
If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
It is extremely hard at start, especially for engineer types (like myself)
Fortunately, it's a skill like any other that can be learned.
Read this article for more info https://x.com/namanyayg/status/2097783972302557668?s=46
As someone who gets a ton of these inbounds every day, I report every single one of them as spam.
I teach AI and have around 18k Instagram followers and about 9k on LinkedIn. Do I need to connect with Instagram influencers for a collab? Is it a good way?, just curious. Btw linkedin cold message gives conversion?
Appreciate the post.
Want to clarify that lazy and ai spamming on LinkedIn is lame, especially for non-tech sales people selling technology.
Also, b2b sales can be foreign to most people - when i've done b2b sales on linkedin it's mostly about just building a relationship. The 5% of the market that is ready to buy will always self identify if they are looking for help.
I'm saying this as someone who has ba background in technology and helping companies purchase software.
There are better ways to use LinkedIn to earn interest and attention of those small percentages that move forward.
Knowing your stuff and how to apply it and not confusing talking for doing is critical.
Influencers who sell courses on topcs they are new to themselves might think introducing people to topics is a cashflow stream, but most will move on and it will be a leaky bucket.
Please don’t send me messages on LinkedIn. The spam is unbearable.
Is it because I live in a remote place in India and don't have connections to SF companies, like they have companies in the backyard that raised 100 million and can easily make money? This stuff has been bothering me for years!! What am I missing?
that’s certainly part of it. Your network access matters.
but some people dont have office make shit ton of money from ai slop saas? genuinely frustrated by all the effort I put and no outcome
The thing about gold rushes, and market manias, is that the outcomes are irrational.
They have an ICP, a no-brainer offer, and they reach out to hundreds of people per day. They also test multiple offers. That's literally it.
Most people can't get customers because they don't do enough targeted consistent volume over one channel.
For example, email requires minimum ~300 targeted sends per day to see any sort of replies. Anything less and you're guessing.
The people running ads spend thousands per month before they have a winning angle, and even then target relatively modest ROAS.
People who make content make it with little views for months or years before finding something that works.
All of this takes time, and more volume than you could imagine. Take however many outreaches you think you should be doing per day, and 10-100x it. That's the real number.
And anyone who tells you "all cold outreach is spam, don't send it!" doesn't understand the game. Most people who view your content/outreach won't buy or find it interesting. The whole point of outreach is to find the 1% who do.
So TLDR: Do more volume and test more offers. There is no shortcut. The people who are winning mostly do more volume than you do.
but sending 300 ish emails make all of my email outbound to spam right!!
How much you want? $1M? $10M?
I could easily give you that title. Or maybe you can even do that yourself.
Lots of new companies are either faked, or amplified.
Example: If I made a sale of $100 this hour, it can become $864K ARR, with amplification (100 x 24 x 30 x 12).
What to do? Focus on your job and forget everybody else. Don't ever judge progress by revenue alone. A low revenue company who invents something in energy could be worth all companies exist today. But you never hear about it, because it is the real stuff.
Its fking frustrating and exhausting when you spend 8 months to build something genuinely good and not another AI wrapper and can't get money out of it and teach ai to survive. It sucks man
To my estimation, you are in B2B, competing with the likes of Wiz. Those with $500k ARR are usually "ad forwarding" or "networking" companies. Think about how you distribute your software, that's probably more important than your current features.
You get sales first. Then you build the thing.
But you do need a product for sales aint it
Kinda? One of the biggest advantages of being small is that, when someone asks where they can find suchandsuch feature, you can build it and point them to it in the same time it would take a larger company to reply “yeah that’s on our roadmap”. You’ve gotta leverage that to compete.
They cannibalize their social group. For example, they will make a lot of immediate small deals with other people in their cohort, incubator, or investor circle, and then use these deals to get to their next round of investment. Functionally those early sales are just there for signal.
That or they just lie on socials.
Further, if you "cheat" your first tranche of sales you're potentially burying a valuable negative feedback loop for your product and sales development. The real hurdle, afaik, is mid-market and enterprise sales which is a big jump from getting your buddy to sign a small one year contract.
So going for an incubator is a good approach as I do have functioning product
Just because someone says somethign on the internet doesn't mean it's true. THere is no real get rich scheme. Someone might have 10-15 years of experience and know how something is priced in an inefficient market and know how to capitalize on it (they understand how people buy).
If you do not have funding, you probably need to set aside most startup advice.
The resources and time you have available are entirely different.
Spending on ads can be a waste of time if you don't know know to retain the customers you keep.
Google one phrase: Founder-led sales.
Founder-led sales is what must be done before having delusions of prodcut-led growth. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just a question of whether you notice how many new things you're trying to learn to do at once.
Most people will make their life much harder by picking a startup in an industry that they don't know, trying to solve a problem they've never had nor know the depths of. It can be a subtle form of self-sabotage.
Being problem focused (problems of an identifiable company in the market that says yes to solving a probelm).
You must avoid the disease of building and selling an idea. Solving a problem that's verified is something else.
Back to founder led sales, this means, you, and you alone, must learn the needs from the market, and how to sell it, and get it going.
The first 100 customers is up to you. Do you know how to sell small, medium, or large customers?
Growth is about building an acquisition (marketing and sales system) that can distribute (product) something that can gain and retain customers from the market.
How do you know they’re not lying? Words are free.
thats true, but many are genuine btw