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355 points rasulkireev | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source

Hey HN,

I am a solo founder that just finished writing code for my project (MVP) and am ready to find clients.

- for the sake of the question, my clients will be small physical businesses. Think, Family Doctor's Office, Local Cafe, Small barber, etc.

I will be developing a blog for SEO purposes and doing other things to promote my business online. However, I believe the key to success here will be "Cold Sales". I have never done that before. So, if you could recommend a book, a blog post, other online resources, or you just have a random advice that I could learn from, I would be very thankful.

Suffice it to say I will be starting out ASAP, even though I don't know anything. I believe practice is the best teacher. However, if there are any resources that could help me get up and running quicker that would be awesome. Thanks a ton in advance.

1. martinshen ◴[] No.33224649[source]
My 2 cents... you need to start doing cold sales and it'll be very difficult as you'll get flat-out rejected 95/100 times.

Learning about sales will feel more productive and in your comfort zone but you should start by going out there and talking to customers. Get out of your comfort zone.

I'd start by going door-to-door so you can start gathering feedback from SMBs and get a sense of the true ICP. Once you've closed ~10 clients this way then you should consider using a sales engagement platform like Outreach, Hubspot or Salesloft which will automate the cold email to call. If it's a 1-call close type sale, then you can use something like https://www.mojosells.com/. You can buy lists from Zoominfo or otherwise.

That all said, any type of human-centered sales motion in North America will require a minimum annual contract value of $10,000/yr to scale up.