📞 Do you call your potential customers?
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Do you have experience calling potential clients?
For us, it's time for active marketing and sales, so we're starting to reach out to studios and individuals who might have the problems RunEvr solves.
And for these calls, we're preparing questions to understand their problems more deeply first.
So, the structure of our calls or meetings should look something like this:
15 min - questions to the potential client
5 min - introducing the solution we have
5 min - selling the product =D
That's the plan!
So??
Do you have calls, meetings, or any strategies to lead potential clients toward buying your product?
Share your experience, pleaseee! =)
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I'd anchor the first 15 minutes on the last time they hit this problem, then reflect the workaround back before showing the product. What would make you decide to skip the demo and keep digging?
@neerajnathany Maybe when I realize I don't fully understand the potential customer's pain yet.
Do you often have calls with your PC?
I very rarely innitiate calls with people I do not know :D
@busmark_w_nika Same for me personally =D
But from a business perspective,it's a necessary part of the process ig, h?
@adana It depends. I somehow decided to skip calls because it wouldn't be worth the stress I experience. Of course, if my situation was very bad, I would probably jump on a call. :D
@busmark_w_nika the stress part really exists =)
@busmark_w_nika Oh yeah, the cold calling can be daunting, What sales/marketing motion do you use?
I never cold call, but any solid email inquiry that comes in to sales@ I immediately pick up the phone and call the prospect if there's a phone number in the signature. I've found this to be one of the most effective sales hacks, especially if I catch the email coming in and call within the first 5 minutes.
I don't really sell on the call, I keep it friendly/casual and just ask them questions about their business to get a sense for what their pain points are and then follow up with the real sale/quote on email. I'm in manufacturing and the emails come in from all over the world so the value of the call is more in them being surprised at getting a phone call when they were just expecting an email response, and getting a chance to build rapport as a real face in a sea of competitors quoting them via email.
@chrisdevsz Thanks for sharing your experience in such detail!
For me, the purpose of these calls is to create a warm atmosphere, encourage people to share the challenges they face in their workflows, and really understand their problems first. Only after that suggest a possible solution.
What do you think?
Adana, the call structure matters less than who's on the other end. the calls that went well for me were almost always with people who'd shown some sign they were already looking, like commenting on a rival tool's post or just hiring for the role your product helps with. a studio picked cold off a list will sit through your 15 minutes of questions politely and then go quiet. how are you picking which studios to call first?
@bazfurby First I'd like to collect as much data as possible and understand workflows better and better.
One thing I'm really thinking about is that sometimes owners or managers don't even realize they have a problem. They don't know they're losing 2 hours per artist every day, $6,000 a week, or quality of the final product.
@adana yeah i think you're right, and that's the bit that breaks the 15/5/5 concept. if they don't know they're losing the 2 hours, "what's your biggest problem" gets you a shoulder shrug.
@bazfurby i think about first 15 minutes like having right questions , how you handle this, how you approach that - and after collecting that data, everything else is easier ig =)
For a self-serve product where buyers never speak to anyone, the written version of this has worked better for us than calls: when someone asks a specific question in a thread or a DM, we answer with one question back about the last time they hit the problem, and only then show the product. The useful part of a discovery call is the listening, and the questions that come back in writing tend to turn into product requests, which is more than a pitch would give us. For anyone who does call, I would also keep the 5 minute sell short and spend the saved time on asking what they did before. (I work on BlueVeta.com.)
@tomer_bar_meir Sometimes the written version really can work better, agree!
How do you find your potential clients?
@adana Mostly through the places the buyers already hang out: marketplaces, social posts and short Q&A threads, and by answering questions people ask about selling better. What works for you?
@tomer_bar_meir As our product was born in our own animation studio till now the clients were from the studio network. And the other flow came after PH launch.
Now we're exploring more ways
@adana A studio network is a strong starting point, since those clients arrive already trusting the work. For the flow that came after launch, one cheap test: ask the first few people from there what they were searching for or reading right before they found you. It usually shows which door to widen first.
we're pre-launch so it's mostly testers right now, but yes. a 15 min call shows where people got stuck way faster than any analytics
@farzam_habibi But will you call your potential clients as well, to understand their problems and try to solve those?
i've only done cold email so far, no calls. your 15/5/5 split sounds right tbh, i'd maybe drop the selling part and just book a second call. how are you finding the studios?
@vidur_saini as our product was born in our own animation studio, we found our clients from our network.
Now we're testing other approaches. First connecting local studios and book meetings.