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For us (Dependabot) the best advice I ever got was that your initial customers should come from sales, not marketing, even for a really low-price SaaS product.

For us (Dependabot) the best advice I ever got was that your initial customers should come from sales, not marketing, even for a really low-price SaaS product. I was literally giving Dependabot away for the first 6 months of its existence, but I was still doing concierge sales on it. When you sell to customers directly you get to hear their reactions and get a much better sense of what's valuable to them. You also make yourself more approachable if/when they've got feedback down the line. Finally, you get a predictable return to your effort (even if it's low!), which prevents the kind of boom and bust that can burn you out in the early days. I'd really, really highly recommend anyone else looking to start a B2B business take the same approach, even if your product is way too cheap for sales to be scalable.

geekjock 8y ago
Hi @greysteil :) Couldn't agree with this more. I also have a low-priced SAAS product [0] and spent a ton of time early on talking to new users who signed up. I wouldn't even call it "sales". I just wanted to hear from early users' own mouths why they had signed up, what they hoped to get out of the product, and how it was working for them so far. These conversations (which I still do today) provided invaluable insights into how to improve my product. [0] https://github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders https://github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders
leesalminen 8y ago
We did the same thing at Gingr. My co-founder and I were doing sales on our own for almost a the entire first year. We gave the product away for free and visited businesses in person after sign up to build a personal relationship. One thing I’d add is that we approached these businesses like partners, not customers. Our pitch is that we wanted to create something great (that would save them lots of time) and wanted to hear directly from the horse’s mouth what would make the product great.
- elvirs 8y ago
  unrelated by on the bottom of every page of your website it says "GINGR, BOULDER, CO, 80302, UNITED STATES" no street address is not a good impression. Have you looked into renting a mailbox at a UPS Store? addresses on those things look like real street addresses with suite numbers and all.
  - leesalminen 8y ago
    Ah, good catch! We actually have a real office (and thus street address) these days. Will update. Thanks!
wpietri 8y ago
Yes! 100% agreed. I got into computers because kinda didn't like talking to people. But learning to do good user interviews (which has a lot in common to a consultative sales process) has been amazingly helpful. I coached for a long time at a weekend workshop called Lean Startup Machine and it was amazing how much teams would benefit from just talking with 5-10 potential users. They'd often come back in a few hours and say, "Ok, our previously brilliant idea turned out to be entirely dumb, because we didn't understand X, Y, and Z about our users. Let's try this again."
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Every developer should be forced to tech support at some point. And additionally sales calls. While I really hated doing the latter it gave me some appreciation to what they have to do. Customer support gives you insight into how your actual customer used your service and their pain points. It's incredibly valuable as developer to see that point of view directly.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Absolutely agreed! A while back I gave a talk on why everybody should do support: https://vimeo.com/136270620 https://vimeo.com/136270620
tnolet 8y ago
This hits home. Literraly signed up the first paying customer for my monitoring SaaS [0] two days ago. It was done through discussing issues over mail, a tiny bit of “hand holding” and treating the customer as a launching partner (which they totally are). That first Stripe notification is pretty awesome [0] https://checklyhq.com https://checklyhq.com
- tortilla 8y ago
  That's awesome congrats! It's a nice looking site too.
- adventured 8y ago
  Just checked out your site. Two things I ran into, the first was that the site seemingly wouldn't load. So I quickly typed in https://www.checklyhq.com https://www.checklyhq.com and it doesn't resolve. Then I went back to the original url and gave it a bit of time, took maybe eight seconds to load the content, and it's doing that every time (HN flood?). It seems like something is fully loading, blocking the page load, before it finally displays the whole page. Anyway, I'd definitely suggest redirecting the www to the naked domain.
  - tnolet 8y ago
    Thanks for the tips. Crazy how things like this can slip. The site is static and on AWS Cloudfront, but it's a quick port from the actual Vue.js app which makes it rather big. Will make it server rendered (and faster) in the future. For now just reshuffled some v-cloak tags which should result in a quicker experience.
- arosier 8y ago
  Sight looks great. I would suggest selling benefits rather than features in the top fold of your homepage.
- rashthedude 8y ago
  Very happy for you. I'm on the same exact boat, first customer signed up on the 6th of this month which I'm ecstatic about. Wondering if you are German since it says Berlin as the HQ at the bottom of your page?
atinchandel 8y ago
This is absolutely valuable advice. Initial sales interaction gives you a lot of market insight. It has a lotof value in initial days.
mattio 8y ago
Interesting, indeed you would want feedback from users that want to pay for your product, rather than those who just want to take it for a test spin.
Gcam 8y ago
We [0] took the same approach since launching (which has been a while now). We focused on: 1) Outbound calls/emails, and 2) Networks Rather than relying on the ROI of long term marketing techniques such as content marketing early. Otherwise, it takes too long to learn from your users/iterate on the product. [0] https://telointerview.com/ https://telointerview.com/

geekjock 8y ago

Hi @greysteil :) Couldn't agree with this more. I also have a low-priced SAAS product [0] and spent a ton of time early on talking to new users who signed up. I wouldn't even call it "sales". I just wanted to hear from early users' own mouths why they had signed up, what they hoped to get out of the product, and how it was working for them so far. These conversations (which I still do today) provided invaluable insights into how to improve my product. [0] https://github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders https://github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders

leesalminen 8y ago

We did the same thing at Gingr. My co-founder and I were doing sales on our own for almost a the entire first year. We gave the product away for free and visited businesses in person after sign up to build a personal relationship. One thing I’d add is that we approached these businesses like partners, not customers. Our pitch is that we wanted to create something great (that would save them lots of time) and wanted to hear directly from the horse’s mouth what would make the product great.

elvirs 8y ago
unrelated by on the bottom of every page of your website it says "GINGR, BOULDER, CO, 80302, UNITED STATES" no street address is not a good impression. Have you looked into renting a mailbox at a UPS Store? addresses on those things look like real street addresses with suite numbers and all.
- leesalminen 8y ago
  Ah, good catch! We actually have a real office (and thus street address) these days. Will update. Thanks!

wpietri 8y ago

Yes! 100% agreed. I got into computers because kinda didn't like talking to people. But learning to do good user interviews (which has a lot in common to a consultative sales process) has been amazingly helpful. I coached for a long time at a weekend workshop called Lean Startup Machine and it was amazing how much teams would benefit from just talking with 5-10 potential users. They'd often come back in a few hours and say, "Ok, our previously brilliant idea turned out to be entirely dumb, because we didn't understand X, Y, and Z about our users. Let's try this again."

paulie_a 8y ago
Every developer should be forced to tech support at some point. And additionally sales calls. While I really hated doing the latter it gave me some appreciation to what they have to do. Customer support gives you insight into how your actual customer used your service and their pain points. It's incredibly valuable as developer to see that point of view directly.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Absolutely agreed! A while back I gave a talk on why everybody should do support: https://vimeo.com/136270620 https://vimeo.com/136270620

tnolet 8y ago

This hits home. Literraly signed up the first paying customer for my monitoring SaaS [0] two days ago. It was done through discussing issues over mail, a tiny bit of “hand holding” and treating the customer as a launching partner (which they totally are). That first Stripe notification is pretty awesome [0] https://checklyhq.com https://checklyhq.com

tortilla 8y ago
That's awesome congrats! It's a nice looking site too.
adventured 8y ago
Just checked out your site. Two things I ran into, the first was that the site seemingly wouldn't load. So I quickly typed in https://www.checklyhq.com https://www.checklyhq.com and it doesn't resolve. Then I went back to the original url and gave it a bit of time, took maybe eight seconds to load the content, and it's doing that every time (HN flood?). It seems like something is fully loading, blocking the page load, before it finally displays the whole page. Anyway, I'd definitely suggest redirecting the www to the naked domain.
- tnolet 8y ago
  Thanks for the tips. Crazy how things like this can slip. The site is static and on AWS Cloudfront, but it's a quick port from the actual Vue.js app which makes it rather big. Will make it server rendered (and faster) in the future. For now just reshuffled some v-cloak tags which should result in a quicker experience.
arosier 8y ago
Sight looks great. I would suggest selling benefits rather than features in the top fold of your homepage.
rashthedude 8y ago
Very happy for you. I'm on the same exact boat, first customer signed up on the 6th of this month which I'm ecstatic about. Wondering if you are German since it says Berlin as the HQ at the bottom of your page?

atinchandel 8y ago

This is absolutely valuable advice. Initial sales interaction gives you a lot of market insight. It has a lotof value in initial days.

mattio 8y ago

Interesting, indeed you would want feedback from users that want to pay for your product, rather than those who just want to take it for a test spin.

Gcam 8y ago

We [0] took the same approach since launching (which has been a while now). We focused on: 1) Outbound calls/emails, and 2) Networks Rather than relying on the ROI of long term marketing techniques such as content marketing early. Otherwise, it takes too long to learn from your users/iterate on the product. [0] https://telointerview.com/ https://telointerview.com/