For those in B2B SaaS space, how did you get your first paying customer?

Question

We have been focusing on enterprise accounts but have found the buying process to be very long and slow...so slow that we're running out of money. Our plan is to pivot our market to SMB to try and close faster. Curious to learn how others here got their first SMB customers.

Gavin Hammar · Accepted Answer

We built relationships. We started by manually reaching out to potential customers on LinkedIn. We sent them personalized messages and invited them to give us feedback on the new product we were building. Even if they didn't become customers, they became advocates for our brand and whenever someone asked for a recommendation, we were top of mind. For SMBs, you need to build an army of advocates, it's the only way. You start off slow, but it compounds over time.

Roberto Morais · Answer

@ben_drellishak the niche you are working is a great one and the product looks very interesting. If I may give you a feedback, looking at your landing page it takes some time to really understand your value proposition. I only got it looking at the sections at the end of the page (below the case study) so maybe moving them up a bit helps.

Answer

This is a great discussion..... Looking at your landing page I would echo Roberto's point. You hit the nail on the head a long way down the page when you explain "Pidgi uses your customer data to find leads that are more likely to buy and provides sales reps specific data points to help personalize their outreach" and to my mind this should be right up the top. I would also add in a reference you have down the lower part of the page that you use AI to do this. To me if this were worked into the sentence above I would very clearly understand the secret sauce and the purpose of the tool. "Pidgi harnesses AI to analyze your customer data to find leads...." Etc etc. The only other thought is to explain in another way what you mean by using data points.... Ultimately you're talking to sales people like me rather than tech people like you .....so I need to know what does that mean as a salesperson. It sounds like you tool is super cool....do you use it in your own prospecting and how has it helped you?

Leon Dijkstra · Answer

Hi Ben, for our B2B SAAS we've got 60 appointments with relevant SMB and the first customers within 4 months via www.newgenerationleads.com. They use a very effective method via Linkedin. BR Leon

Gavin Hammar · Answer

@marta_tasks_ninja to be honest, not a lot of time at all. Most would sign up, complete our onboarding checklist, and tell us it looks cool. They would also tell us how they planned to use it. But the problem was a lack of buying intent. They didn't have the problem we were trying to solve at the time we reached out. But, when they came across someone who did, they would mention our product.  We also spent some budget on retargeting to stay top of mind and remind people to come back.

David J. Kim · Answer

@gavin_hammar Going to echo this as well. In the early stages, focus on building genuine relationships. And tailor your product on the person that is experiencing the most pain with the problem you're solving.

Olivier Tolédano · Answer

First, we asked our network to beta test our solution in order to get their feedbacks and some recommendations with their network.
Now, we are using Linkedin + cold calling, definitely the best way to get qualified meetings

Roberto Morais · Answer

@tetiana_nikolaieva just had a quick look. First I would like to say I'm not the right persona, I've had remote businesses with employees for the past 10 years and I've never needed or wanted any kind of time tracker, which that out of the way. I think your landing page and value proposition is great. Very clear, easy to the eyes, all the right pieces. The pricing page on the other hand I found confusing. A few points:
- Usually prices are shown in order from left to right
- The UI here (mostly color / contrast) are making the table hard to read
- The pricing itself looks more like a number than a price (6.4 should be 6.40 and the format itself can look better)
The content itself looks great.
Hope it helps and good luck!

Roberto Morais · Answer

Our first customers come out from two paths:
- Direct approaching people on our network with the right personas: this is the one with better results in the beginning. Selling to people who already have some kind of trust in you.
- Cold contact on LinkedIn: This is harder to bring results but with persistency you can find a few.
PS: We also had some good results speaking on the right events but I'm not so sure of this approach yet.

The first 10-100 clients are the hardest, after that you can leverage your clients trust to find more.

Good luck!

Tetiana Nikolaieva · Answer

@ben_drellishak @robertomorais I would be interested to know your opinion regarding the Yaware TimeTracker product. New insights are always valuable and interesting. https://www.producthunt.com/prod...

Ben Drellishak · Answer

@gavin_hammar thanks for the response! We've got our product behind a paywall right now, but it sounds like a good pivot would be to invest in a free trial and try to recruit SMB advocates

Ben Drellishak · Answer

@robertomorais thanks Roberto! yes, it's been a challenge for us. We've got a pretty powerful tool but struggling on the marketing and sales side. Plan is to continue to hammer away at cold calls until we can get some traction

Anastasiia Kolimasova · Answer

@gavin_hammar Inspiring !

Gavin Hammar · Answer

@ben_drellishak sounds like a good plan. Might also be worth introducing a generous affiliate program (30% and above). It worked really well for us at Sendible.

Suvojit Manna · Answer

@gavin_hammar this a one of the most genuine and realest way I saw in here. :)

For those in B2B SaaS space, how did you get your first paying customer?

Replies