Pivoted, got our first paying customer... now what??

F

futuretrainee

New member
Context:
  1. Left previous employer and started working on original idea
  2. Worked full time to get MVP out
  3. Got paying customers -> they all left
  4. Customers were more interested in a certain aspect of product
  5. Pivoted to that aspect
  6. Ran out of money so got job to be able to live and build MVP
  7. Built MVP
  8. Saw startup CEO giving pitch on their launch day
  9. They had a calendar invite QR code for prospective customers
  10. Scheduled a meeting from that
  11. Asked about their product and how they handle the certain pain point we solve
  12. By end of 45 min meeting they were sold
  13. Signed them up the week after (monthly plan)
  14. Got feedback that it solved their problem exactly and they will be renewing for foreseeable future.
Now what??

I am not a marketing genius, salesman, or anything of that sort... What do I do to get more customers. Do you do more SDR style things like cold calling, or email blasts, or social media posts, or what?

Edit:

Thank you all for such a helpful and kind response! Really appreciate you all taking the time out of your day to respond.

What I started to do after all the super helpful comments:
  • Figured out my ICP
  • Reached out to my network for word of mouth referrals
  • Focused hard core on current customer
  • Started gathering my emails for cold outreach and accounts that fit my ICP
What this led to -> currently in discussions with a referral client for an annual contract ($200/m)!!
 
@futuretrainee Congrats! You just went from 0 to 1, which is often the hardest part of starting out. Keep doing more of those things that don’t scale, and continue to do sales yourself. Sounds like you’ve found a pitch that’s working. See if you can keep it going.

Tap your customer for recommendations to other potential customers, cold email, reach out to people who meet your ICP on LinkedIn, etc.
 
@grounded Thank you! What is ICP?

Side note: it's so funny because I spent so much time building and trying to make things pixel perfect and didn't spend much time on the marketing/sales side of things. When it comes to coding, I can spend days working and making awesome tangible progress, but when it comes to the sales side of things, I constantly doubt myself and if I'm doing the right things. I think it's because sales has tangible metrics, but in the beginning it is slow, as opposed to code where it's like hey I want this form to submit and do something... an hour later it's done. Sales is like reach out.... no answer... x100... one reply... not interested.
 
@futuretrainee Ideal customer profile (not to be mistaken with the insane clown posse)

And yeah, I totally get that. As founders there are a ton of hats you have to wear. It’s easy to get holed up into building because you want your baby to be perfect (esp as a technical founder) but if you can’t sell it, you’re building for the void. And because sales is often out of our comfort zone we try to avoid it or find ways to scale it at the get go (or hire someone to do it) so we don’t have to talk to people - this was certainly my experience the first few attempts at a startup. As someone with social anxiety, trust me, it gets easier over time!

I think founders (even the technical ones) should do sales because it helps to talk to customers. That direct feedback can help you make your product better. And as the ones building it, you would know best on the capabilities of your product. It also helps to get practice in pitching your stuff. And when you do actually start scaling and building out your sales team, you’ll have the experience to evaluate them and help train them.
 
@grounded Cool getting to hear that you are a startup founder who went though similar things. The social anxiety of getting judged on your "baby" makes it all that much harder because the criticism hits home. But I can see the value in pushing through and just learning to sell. Thanks for all the advice! Will keep y'all updated on any new sales.
 
@futuretrainee Research more about this customer and how they are using your product. Write down the characteristics. Define the customer on paper. Build sales material. Reach the potential customers. Generate leads. Convert them. Service them.
 
@unpreached Fully agree with this approach. Focus on a cohort of customers to see what works. I’d recommend find just 20 total potential customers and throw the kitchen sink at that group. After a few weeks identify which tactics worked to get conversations going and then focus on those with a separate cohort to see if you can get similar results with less effort. Stay lean until you have 10 happy customers and some signal of what sales outreach has worked multiple times.
 
@unpreached Thank you! I really should write down what our current customer is using this for and see what pain points we could potentially sell to others. Definitely learning that talking to our customers is making a huge difference in the direction of the product.
 
@futuretrainee I'm in a similar position.

Here's what I've done and I'm happy to answer more specifics if this is of interest:

1) Created a rough draft ICP profile both in terms of company and person.

2) Once that was finalized, I created a few lead and account lists on LinkedIn Sales Nav.

3) Put together a cold email messaging campaign on Lemlist

4) Went back to my LinkedIn lists and extracted the contact info and loaded them into the Lemlists campaigns (you can also enrich the contact info)

5) Rinse, repeat, iterate, improve, tweak, fix all of the above.

You basically need three tools to start going to market and doing some initial cold outreach. You need something to build lists with. That's LinkedIn Sales Nac, Crunchbase, Apollo, etc. You need something to enrich contact info. That's Lemlist, Clay, Smartlead, FullEnrich (there are several). From there, you need something to send messages with: Lemlist, Smartlead, Instantly, etc.

All these tools combined will cost $150-$200 monthly but this is as cheap as it gets without ruining quality.

Good luck!
 
@kylels Wow super helpful! Didn't even know half these things existed. Have you found any new potential customers this way yet? Does it take a lot of your time, or is this a couple hours a day kind of thing?
 
@futuretrainee I'd say finding 10 quality contacts a day, putting them in a sequence, personalizing a bit, takes about 60 min of my time a day. I personally do it all myself but my CEO leverages a VA. We just recently got started but this is a typical outbound motion
 
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