Before publishing this I realized it had been written three months ago so I added in some parentheses showing what happened currently as well.
"So what's the product?" he asked. "Well..." I took a deep breath "We have just recently started this...but so far so good by using our marketing methods we can give you more business"..."What's the price?" he asked..."We need to discuss that when we meet"..."Ok, lets make a meeting time and we can talk about it next week".
Just like that I was in! I met this guy from a friend at a business event who was doubtful as a client, however here was the opportunity! As Gurbaksh Chahal says "risk is your best friend" so I took it. My co-founders were ecstatic that this could be our second client! (Our first ended up leaving us interestingly enough). That week during the meeting I was completely honest with him. I told him we're in the early stages of the company and don't even know if people want what we're offering; "Ok he replied lets see what you have and if I like it I'll refer more people". That same day we negotiated on the price and off we went! A few months later I asked him if he liked the service, new features, received feedback on the price, how to pitch people, what he sees as the ROI and what he thinks about where we're going. I was completely transparent putting myself on the line as a result so was he.
He referred 5 people! Yes I know I wrote 3 in the title because those were the ones who have converted so far aka paid us (now all 5 have paid), but two just got started on our trial. If I do well here (knock on wood) I can get more clients as referrals and I won't have to cold call anymore (now I learned cold calling is inevitable and actually like it). I'm a pessimistic person, so even if this business fails it's ok because I'm learning a lot and this is the first time I've been referred clients. (In retrospect I actually need to learn a lot more, it's amazing how much I don't know).
So how did I do it? How did I get clients referred? Well simple, it was being HONEST from the start and thereby easily building trust (If you're honest and really like your product selling to clients isn't hard at all). After a few months of business with this guy we are now on good terms (still on good terms). I'm ecstatic that my intuition about being honest and working hard has been proven correct! I can't disclose everything, yet and we're a baby company (still a baby company, looking to finally explode in the next few weeks), but I finally have a valid looking business model. Whenever I doubted something I told him, whenever I didn't know if we could deliver I told him and by doing that I am now in an amazing relationship with someone who truly likes our service.
I know it may sound too good to be true to you, but it took a lot of hard work and as I stated earlier about 4 months of business. In the end I have to say it's definitely worth it. From now on I will be completely honest with everyone on every cold call and am very happy to have things starting to look up. What's our conversion rate? Well 1/100, but that is real world numbers (still is). I think if you want to succeed that's the effort you gotta be willing to put in and slowly I'm learning how to work hard daily.
As always thanks for reading and feel free to ask me any questions.
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