My hands are tingling and sweating as I fight with myself and finally decide to dial the first number. There's a deep pit in my stomach feeling like this call is make or break. Sitting on a bed in the midst of silence, convincing myself watching youtube videos isn't gonna stop me from living with my parents, I slowly dial the number and hit the green call button. All I hear is ringing stuck in pitch black silence..."Hello" the front desk person speaks "how my I help you?".
"May I please be connected to John?" I ask, she replies "sorry John is out of the office" can I take a message or would you like to leave a voicemail?", "voicemail sounds good" I say in a hesitant tone...When I finally get through to the voicemail I hang up the phone because they never call me back. On and on this process plays 20 to 30 times everyday until I finally I speak to the decision maker 2 or 3 times. Those are the make or break moments knowing that if they don't like my pitch I have to start all over again.
This is crazy I say to myself. Cold calling is the only way I can reach my demographic, they're not a techy group of people so online marketing channels are out of the question...I repeat this process a lot, my much more technical co-founder seems to be getting people on trial what am I doing wrong!? At night I watch cold calling videos hoping there's some sort of solution, but its even painful to watch those videos as well. I tell myself the more I do this the better I'll get, but progress is slow and my hands still sweat. Weeks go by with little to no progress. Will it ever change? Well it does.
Our first two clients came from friends and this week is finally different. My less social and caring co-founder seems to have convinced a guy in another state to get on trial the past weeks and finally one verbally commits to paying monthly. This is our first client! Our first real straight up business, no "friend introduction" or "I'm doing this as a favor" client! We need ten of these to make a living on top ramen and hopefully can.
I got a few people on trial and am hopefully improving. I don't get that pit in my stomach like I did the last few weeks, but my hands still sweat...the only thing that differs is I fake confidence now and it works. I switched my pitch up, I don't ask anymore I tell them I'm doing them a great favor by putting them on trial. I let them ask me questions, but I ask them their email and contact information during the instigation process. I no longer care about questions such as: "what's your companies name?" or "how many people are you working with?" I quickly answer those and steer the conversation to results and how they will get a sample of what we do in a couple of days.
I still don't meet my sales goals, but I have been consistently meeting half of it the past three days and slowly improving. From concepts, pivoting to here... I and my co-founder have created our B2B SaaS business in the last 4 and a half months...my hands still sweat and I get nervous and I might fail, but I'll do so fighting down this path...I wonder if other co-founders are as scared as me?...I wonder if I'll ever move out of my parents house doing what I love with a great team I built together from scratch?...I'm stuck in a place of wondering, hoping I'm going down the right path with my life.
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