Ask HN: Specifically, how did you get your first 100 (B2B) paid customers?

Hundred, hell, I got four. (Not four hundred, four, trust me it's plenty - we sell Big Solutions Contracts.)

Start with your current connections.

Attend the conferences of the industry you're in. Ideally, present/speak at them.

Blog about solutions for your industry if you can do it without coming across as spammy.

Keep an eye out for articles/blogs/etc on problems that your offering solves. Follow up with people directly about that and/or post to the blogs saying "we do this and here's why we're great". (If you do this, absolutely do disclose that you're self promoting.)

Find someone with industry experience and/or a rolodex. Pay them a decent commission.

Find the right search terms to drive people to your site and make sure you have a clear description of the problem the customer is facing, with simple glossy answers for how you can help them fix it.

Suppose you aren't directly in that industry...how do you do all of the above ?

For instance, in my case, I am trying to reach ad agencies, marketing firms, marketing agencies, etc.

But I am not 'very intimate' with that industry.

Blogging about the solutions for the industry, that makes sense...just trying to get more answers that relate to my specific situation (i.e. trying to break into an industry that I didn't necessarily come out of).

Assume I have no connections to any of the agencies I want to reach. How do I get to them ?

Thanks.

For instance, in my case, I am trying to reach ad agencies, marketing firms, marketing agencies, etc. But I am not 'very intimate' with that industry.

Well, in that case, you picked a kind of odd market, didn't you?

If you don't already have a very good idea of how to get intimate with at least one ad agency, you're barking up the wrong tree. If you've got no connections to any of the agencies you want to reach, what makes you think you know their problems well enough to have something to offer them?

Because I used to work with people that worked with ad agencies all the time. They always used to complain to me about this specific problem.

It was something I had to deal with, A LOT.

But I never dealt with the ad agencies directly. I do know that many of them have my particular problem.

I have also spoken to a few people that work at various agencies and they have confirmed that this a problem. But those leads haven't worked out.

Because I used to work with people that worked with ad agencies all the time.

There you go. Talk to those people, and have them set up some introductions.

I have also spoken to a few people that work at various agencies and they have confirmed that this a problem. But those leads haven't worked out.

But even if those leads don't "work out" in terms of sales, they should definitely be a source of information and contacts in terms of setting up the next prospect. The people who liked your solution but for whatever reason choose not to buy it can be a very valuable resource.

I have tried that route, but for a variety of reasons they never lead anywhere (as in, never got the referrals).

Mainly because my old colleagues are very busy, and disorganized.

But you know how people are, they always say they will refer you (and probably do have the best of intentions) but it just never works out.

So my network is pretty much tapped out. Trying to get beyond the network on my own...that's the tricky part.

I'm not speaking purely about referrals. I'm talking about learning from your would-be-but-not-now-customers how their acquisition process actually works. How do they find out about solutions? Are there trade journals they read? Conferences they go to? Blogs they follow?

In other words, you say "Bob, I understand that you're not interested in buying my solution now-- that's fine. But if I wanted to reach a dozen more guys in your position, what would be the best way to do it?"

Great advice. Never thought about that.

Thanks for that tip.

If it is important or interesting enough (or you are important or interesting enough) you will get traction. On average it takes at least 6 calls to reach someone. Most sales people give up after 1 or 2 tries. You must keep at it.

and never tell the screeners anything its a massive waste of time (better to just make another call) and closes more doors than it opens.

If you're chasing big accounts, you're going to have to talk to the exec asst--thats different.

Cold calling. It's boring. Some people are jerks. Try and get the person you are talking to remember when they were doing shit work getting their agency started.

Go to the library and ask the librarian to show you how to use reference usa (or email me: actionbrandon@gmail.com). You can search a massive database (for free) and get your hands on leads by city/zip/state and type of business, contact level, business size, and so on. Google "SIC codes" and find the code for the type of industry you want to target and filter reference that way. I think ad agencies are 7311, but I may be wrong.

Good luck

Try contacting your local American Marketing Association(or Advertising Federation) group. They are always looking for speakers and sponsors. You could speak about the issue at hand if you are able to do it without making it into a sales pitch. They also typically are looking for companies to sponsor a luncheon for a fairly small fee. Then, you get a chance to speak with some of them after the meeting.

You could also provide a few free subscriptions to the the service to marketing journalists and just ask them to take a look at the product for you. Don't ask them to write an article about it. If they see the use they may mention it in their publication.

Do you have a referral program for current customers? Something like earning a discount if they get others to sign up. This can put a viral component in your product that can help it grow.

I don't live in the US any more....so no local AMA for me :(

With page.ly, our first 100 customers came through my network on twitter. I think I had about 1300 followers at the time but probably 250 or so people I had some sort of relationship with beyond just twitter.

A tweeted a bit leading up to launch sharing screenshots and such of what we were working on, announced we were live on twitter and got a handful of customers within minutes.

The first 100 are the hardest, but leveraging your existing network is an easy way to go about it.

Thanks for this advice. Sounds good...except I run into the same issue of 'not in the industry'.

I got a lot of interest and people checked(ing) it out, but they don't experience the pain that I am solving so they aren't my 'target market'.

I am trying to get to Product/Market fit. I have the product, now I am trying to get to the market :)

No one likes to be sold to, no one likes to introduce their friends to someone who will sell to them. Instead, tell your friends that you have this startup and really want some advice from experts in the field. People are much more willing to meet to give advice.

My partner was the sales guy and he cold called all the real estate agents from an established competitor, and met them up each to close each deal.

Here are some concrete things: Identify companies you want to talk to Get someone cheap on odesk to do the research to get you names and contact info for the people Send out an intro email and start calling (use a message re advice) call at least 6 times

Alternately, have them use your linked in to find contacts

First.. If you don't have special insight into the industry, how do you know that they have a problem, and how do you know your solution solves the problem that needs solving the most?

Otherwise new orbit's suggestions are very good

That is a great question, in most cases. In my case it's a bit different. As I said in reply to Michael earlier:

I used to work with people that worked with ad agencies all the time. They always used to complain to me about this specific problem. It was something I had to deal with, A LOT.

I, personally, never dealt with the ad agencies directly. I have also spoken to a few people that work at various agencies and they have confirmed that this a problem. But those leads haven't worked out.

So it's not that I don't know the problem I am solving.

I have solved a problem that I know exists. Now I need to find the market that understands that particular problem and sell them my particular solution....if that makes sense.

In that case, don't worry about 100. Get your first user, through your friends who have ties within the agencies. See if your solution works for them, and then go from there.

So ... One customer at a time

I've built a few niche products and managed to try enough stuff to get some decent traction with two of them: notarycrm.com and mailfinch.com

tl;dr - if you're selling B2B, you're not going to get anywhere unless you can reasonably convince someone that you'll save them time, money or (ideally) both.

In general, I spent a lot of time cold calling the first users and gave away the product. There was a lot of back-and-forth about what sucked, what I had recently fixed, etc.

In both cases, the first users helped me understand quite a bit about how I was going to have to scale the sales operations... for example:

With MailFinch, one of my original assumptions was that real estate agents would want to use it to send out all the weekly flyers that they usually send out. So, I first asked all of my friends in the DC area to send me their local newspapers -- I spent a weekend circling all of the real estate ads that were larger than 1/2" (if they're advertising in the newspaper, you can reasonably assume they have money and have some understanding of marketing). I then cold-called the hell out of these people and learned two things:

1. I was right -- they send an average of ~100 flyers each week. 2. They would usually hand me off to their assistant (!!!)

That second item was important -- I didn't need to sell to the agent directly, I needed to call their office and talk to the assistant or office manager instead. I talk about this in detail in my Mixergy interview last year (which is now behind a paywall): http://mixergy.com/mailfinch-paul-singh-interview/

With NotaryCRM, I actually convinced one notary (my mom) to start using it for her side work. Then got my wife to use it. Then one local notary that I cold called. From there, I learned pretty quick that notaries talk... a lot. If I had a bug, everyone started bitching simultaneously. As the product got better/prettier/more useful, everyone started loving it simultaneously.

The big breakthrough was realizing that there are two good channels to reach this market:

1. Cold call the notaries (there are huge directories for this now) and convince them to signup for a free account -- this is generally hard, but I did a lot of it early on. 1a. Make sure you ask for referrals on each call, email, meeting, whatever -- "do you know any other notaries that might find this useful?" Notaries are regular people. And regular people want to seem "in the know" with their friends. If they loved NotaryCRM and referred it to their friends, they generally looked good. Totally serious about this. :) 2. SEO works... especially in niches like this. Checkout notarycrm.com and click on the "Find a Notary" link. I could probably write a huge blogpost about this but the gist is that notaries are searching for their own name -- all the damn time. It also helps that they usually suck at SEO... so it didn't take long for me to put together a directory that came up at the top of the SERPs for their own name. Once they click through, there is a big call to action that says "claim this account" if they haven't already. Again, lots more I can say about this but it might be offtopic from your original question.

So... I hope that helps. :)

Wow...this definitely helps. I have been cold-emailing, but I am thinking I should probably pick up the phone and call some of these agencies.

Thanks a lot.

Dude -- definitely get on the phone, it's hard but you'll find that the conversion rates are usually way better than email. :)

Feel free to email me directly if you need anything -- should be in my profile.

Check your inbox :)

I'm not at 100 users yet as I have just "launched", but I can guarantee I'll hit 100 users within the next 30 days because I am EXTREMELY active on a very popular internet forum that is directly interested in what I'm building. I'm currently individually referring users but will be launching publicly on Monday on that site, and it will be the channel I will build my business from.

A lot of equity can emerge from giving people a lot of free help and advice on forums. If there exists one that applies to your niche, go help people as much as you can, and you'll start off with a captive audience when you launch