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Posted17 days ago
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But you're actually doing something even more common: running a consulting business, and there's plenty of content on that for just that reason, so I would go find content on how to scale a consulting business, e.g. this seems like the start of a thread to pull on https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
I also recommend Founding Sales and think it would be worth the OP skimming.
Also, search for Steli Efti (founder of a CRM called Close) who has some great content for outbound sales. I thought he did a session for Y Combinator's Startup School but didn't just find it. But he has lots of great content and a bit of a hustle mentality.
Also running a small consultancy firm like OP and coming from a technical background, building an effective sales motion is the hardest challenge.
Example 1: The other day I was trying to fix a sprinkler. My results were mid, then I saw a truck at my neighbors house with a phone number.
1. I was not in the market for sprinkler repair until that day. 2. I was too busy to make a market comparison, seeing that my neighbor did it was enough.
Example 2: I was thinking about refining my mortgage this year. My current servicer called me one day with an offer. It wasn’t the most optimal rate but the lady on the phone signaled to me she understood my values and would get it done.
That’s what you are looking for with outbound, people who are in need, willing to part with cash, but probably not shopping for the thing.
This is why cold calling works and why volume is so important. You aren’t trying to persuade people who aren’t interested, but trying to find those who are.
I’d focus on zeroing in on a niche (even if it’s an artificial niche). Develop case studies for how you’ve helped people in your specific niche. Then find people in that niche and offer them those same niche services.
Do not try to be everything to everyone. No one wants to work with a software agency that “does anything”. (Well it’s possible but then you’re competing with thousands of other consultancies).
If you develop into a niche well, you’ll have less competition, you’ll be able to target the right people more easily, and youll be able to write messaging that speaks to people in that niche.
Everything gets easier when you narrow in on a small slice of a market. The problem set becomes smaller and easier to solve.
Once you see some traction, start to expand your niche.
I mean, the man asked here as a starting point and was probably looking to hear from other engineers who already were in a similar situation. If you don´t have something concrete to offer in way of help, then its better to suppress that urge to sound smart by dropping around general-sounding "pearls of wisdom". You offered a lot of "whats" and very little "hows", which is what I assume the OP was asking for in the first place.
I oversee a team of sales and marketing people. I’m accountable for their results, and set the direction. I’m speaking from first hand experience.
I’m not going to link to random blog posts or courses, which seems to be what you’re expecting. Sorry!
"All things being equal, people buy from their friends. So just make more friends"
If you are confident of your services, just make more friends. Talk to people more. If it is too salesly already, you lost the conversation. Instead try and learn about their lives. I sometimes even open up with "No agenda to sell, genuinely curious"
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> I say in every talk I give: “All things being equal, people buy from their friends. So make everything else equal, then go make a lot of friends.”
I agree with you about the zero sum, once you’ve seen the first hyper personalised email that says they really like your commitment to x, the rest are all the same.
Very few know more about outbound than he does, and that book is recent.
My two cents: It's unlikely you can make outbound work for a custom software dev studio unless you go extremely niche and have a way to target customers with relevant needs. The more broad your services the more new business depends on trust, and outbound has the lowest trust context of all top of funnel sources. What works best for dev shops is word of mouth.
Consider a referral program instead maybe.
I see the reason: my customers are people who don't know anyone they could possibly recommend me to, because they are from random industries and random places. Also their projects are one-off: usually first and last software projects of theirs, ever. Working for someone with large networks who can make referrals means losing money because these people also know good coders and can hire well. I never solved this and rely on outbound all my life.
Word of mouth mostly comes from repeat customers as well.
What I’ve seen work is relationship based sales, lots more outreach to people at orgs that are doing something interesting to you, without any immediate sales pitch, just to build up relationships - basically asking what they are working on and talking about what you do. This is still hard without a niche that suggests there’s some common interest, but can get more traction than just cold sales pitches.
The goal is to stay top of mind and build up some relationships, from which you can try warm pitching, or that will make them think of you when they need something.
In no particular order, and please keep in mind this is off the top of my head:
* Influence (the classic)
* YC videos (e.g. https://youtu.be/0fKYVl12VTA?si=I9uylXSRyOf1nXRv, https://youtu.be/DH7REvnQ1y4?si=Ke858PmaaBr5ar-e, https://youtu.be/hyYCn_kAngI?si=sO_co6kbDaNn3cql, etc)
* Thinking Fast and Slow
* Purple Cow
* Clayton Christensen stuff
* Spin Selling
* Challenger Sale
* Guerrilla marketing (for the mental muscle)
* Jeffrey Gitomer (basic but useful)
* Lean Startup (for positioning)
* Charisma Myth
* Minimalist Entrepreneur (bits and pieces)
* The presentation secrets of steve jobs (just a good book on presentations, framed around Steve Jobs to sell more)
For what its worth this question comes up fairly often. It seems like technical people would like a "technical people" guide on how to do Sales and marketing. Does that sound useful to anyone?
For example, Hi I’m John and my accounting software can increase your profits by 10% by reducing time spent doing billing.
Vs
Hi I’m John, we do custom software and we can do an app for you in accounting for example, but also a crypto wallet or a booking website.
If you are in the second route, there is no mass outreach strategy because you are not offering anything specific your customer is anyone and your solution is anything. The outreach works for the first category, because spam or not, if someone is offering to fix a problem I have I’m ready to listen. Hence the relationship advice, if you provide services, people around you need to know that you “do apps and stuff”, and if you do products you can throw 1,000 emails fixing one thing with some level of certainty that someone within the ICP will give you a chance.
- Make two (nested) lists - the people you know in real life- and the people they might know. Now, can any of these people be your potential buyers? if they are in first list, good, just talk to them, if they are in second list, ask for an introduction from your connection in first list.
- Advertise where your potential buyers might notice.
2 - Understand what is the problem you're solving and how companies can benefit from it
3 - Understand how companies actually do procurement
4 - Outbound sales are the ones that sucks the most. A rejection is just a rejection, don't take it personally (one part of having actual sales people is being a more impersonal process - they care about the sales but a rejection is taken less personally)
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
ISBN 0241242533
Ex. I never did more than 1k whatsapp messages with 20% open rate in a month ...
Know a friend who is doing 190k MRR with 12k whatsapp messages open rate 40%-60% (no AI SDRs!, fake avatars, etc) and what to double it next year. All he wants to talk is outbound ... and how it will make rich and how it should cost no more than 20% revenue.
Make about 1,000 calls.
www.salesviewer.com
They are analyzing your website data and telling you very much about the visitor. (I guess they are also doing some fancy AI stuff in the background, like connecing/syncing with linkedIn for known static-IPs etc.)
Give it a try!
The question I'd ask near the end of every first sales call is, "If we end up doing business together, can you walk me through your internal process of bringing on a new vendor? Who else needs to get involved in the decision or sign off?" This will give you a map of all the stakeholders who need to be part of the sales cycle (e.g. legal, finance, somebody's boss, etc...).
Without this map a seller might say, "We're talking to XYZ GREAT COMPANY...." and be single-threading a conversation to one interested prospect without clarity on which other stakeholders need to get involved and what the next step is to close the deal.
For outbound and pipeline generation, I like Predictable Revenue from a Salesforce exec in 2011. Some tactics are dated, but the concepts are solid.
Also register and use lunivtech.com as your website (it's open now). Don't use .tech as your primary domain.
- Know your ideal customer (ICP)—or have a decent idea. Find companies that match that profile.
- Find the right people at those companies. Go on Linkedin and find 3-6 people you think could be decision makers at that company.
- Research those people and figure out how your solution might work for them (RHO).
- Reach out to those people. Communicate what you think their pain point might be and how your solution will help them. Try and get them to agree to a discovery call.
- If they are interested, you'll need to figure out who the decision makers are for buying. If the timing is bad, ask when they renew and reach out again 3-6mos to see how their currents solution is treating them. If they aren't interested, DQ them and move on. Guarding your time here is valueable.
A bit of background—I was one of the first product designers hired at Salesloft. I've spent a decade building software for sellers.
Like, you want to call up a company and get them to buy your software? To pay you to make them software?
Because while either way I'd say be more targeted -- try to network IRL and have linkedin (retching noise) just the place you go to get their email... and then make a targeted pitch to a smaller number of people you've met IRL. Budget to go to a few conferences.
But that's a strategy I think works best if you have good product and want to get businesses to pay to use it, and is less effective in selling "consulting" (sarcastic finger quotes).
Either way though, going to conferences where people will be legitimately interested in your product (Think going to HOPE instead of Blackhat)... offer to take people out to dinner, expense it as marketing.
Also I don't reccomend buying people alcohol, just food. For whatever reason, people will overdrink and turn into asshole reasons when alcohol is free... by all means point them to a decent dive bar.
(For example there's one behind Bally's that's attached to a convenience store. They used to let folks buy shit in the store and eat it in the bar if they weren't entitled about it.)
If you're selling that you can make cool stuff, software wise? Try more academic conferences. A lot of people would kill for a decent software engineer, it can be extremely hit or miss with academic CS types, they often would love people who can do stuff like set up a limesurvey server or whip up a nice looking static site for their lab or do really basic stuff like make R scripts to automate stuff done in the opendocument equivalent of excel...
But no course, book, or framework for outbound sales will ever Trump face to face interaction. A lot of companies discount who being the "cool guy at the conference" can lead to sales... especially as people age (because again, I said go for authentic gatherings, not sport coat fests).
Over time, if you combine being friendly with having something of value, sales will happen -- those in person leads will be your most valuable IMHO.
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