Saturday, 9.01pm
Sheffield, U.K.
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’
— Don Marquis
Your first few customers will come through founder-led sales.
This week I’ve been working on my sales process. The simple truth every founder needs to hear? It’s up to you. If you don’t put in the work, nothing happens. Clients don’t magically turn up.
I’ve been doing some things right and some things wrong.
I started posting regularly on LinkedIn. There isn’t a huge readership – we’re all competing with many other people on the platform – but being invisible isn’t a good strategy if you want customers.
You’ve got to get out and do something – anything – to get started.
A year ago I put some time into pushing out content. I found that the people that liked what I published and that I interacted with were similar to me – interested in the same topics and with similar jobs. I saw that as a problem. After all, I was networking to meet clients, not competitors.
What I hadn’t realised was that you have to reach out to clients first. Every potential buyer has been approached by ten competitors before you’re even thought of getting in touch with them. The chances of them seeing your content and getting in touch are vanishingly small. You’ve got to start by improving the odds.
And this takes work. Not hard work like digging ditches, but work nonetheless. It’s a few hours a day working on reaching out to people that work in the roles that have the power to decide whether to work with you or not. And then a few more hours the next day. And so on until you have your first 20 clients and can afford to hire someone to do this work for you.
People who can bring business into a firm are called rainmakers.
I’m working with a coach to improve my rainmaking skills. Having someone talk through a plan with you, and then keep you accountable and motivated, is a good way to build and keep momentum during what is going to be an emotionally draining period. It’s easy to get low when you have no responses. You get that dopamine hit when someone responds. You have to learn to keep working the plan despite what you feel from time to time.
It’s early days, but what I can tell you already is that if you put the work in then something will happen. I can also tell you that the opposite is true – the best way to stay exactly where you are is to do nothing at all.
I might spend the next few posts digging into rainmaking as a topic, working through some of the ideas as a new book project.
Cheers,
Karthik
Handcrafted insight 