4 ms·

At your price point ($10-50 per sale, $10-500 lifetime value), it simply is not worthwhile to have anyone doing 1:1 sales. You should be acquiring customers via

by a13n 5y ago

At your price point ($10-50 per sale, $10-500 lifetime value), it simply is not worthwhile to have anyone doing 1:1 sales. You should be acquiring customers via marketing. There's a pretty famous book called Traction that introduces founders to marketing. It goes over 19 marketing channels, and after reading, you should have a good hunch about which 3-5 channels might work well for you. Off the top of my head: - Partner with climbing gyms. They all have a store that sells chalk and shoes and whatnot. Either sell them 50x of your product (this does require actual sales) or see if they have a model where they get a cut for every sale made. - Influencer marketing. Reach out to people like Alex Honnold and ask if they'd be willing to try your product out for free and give you feedback. If they like it, ask if they'd be willing to help out by talking about it on social. Could eventually explore some kind of affiliate model where they get a 20-30% cut per sale they drive your way. - Paid search ads. If anyone on the internet is searching for "climbing chalk" then they should end up on your site via paid ads. - Retargeting ads. If anyone visits your website or puts something in their cart and doesn't buy, make sure you use Google Display and/or FB/Twitter retargeting ads. These will be the most profitable ads you ever pay for. - SEO. This one is pretty hard because your site is relatively small/new, but if you write articles talking about why your chalk is better for the environment, you might get some traffic this way. Some of this work does involve "sales", in that you're selling to gyms or recreational stores or influencers 1:1. BUT, just try to think about it from their perspective. You aren't "selling them on your product", you're "helping them make more money by promoting a cool environmentally friendly chalk brand".

bserge 5y ago
Add to that affiliate networks. CJ Affiliate, Rakuten, Shareasale and many smaller ones still exist and still have an army of people waiting to sell your product for a commission. Depending on how much you need to pay the network, you might want to negotiate or raise prices, but it could be worth it. I used to do affiliate marketing (a long time ago tbf) and sin care products were always top performers.
- bserge 5y ago
  *skin care, sorry
ryanmarsh 5y ago
This, although to clarify you're still going to have to sell into some of your marketing channels (such as when partnering with a climbing gym as suggested above). I'm a programmer turned business man and I have autism spectrum disorder so learning to sell was difficult, but doable. Now I'm a natural. I had this conversation with another founder last week. She'd sold nothing so far. Here's the crux. Selling is a deeply personal experience. You're getting someone else to open their wallet and give you their money. Even if that's not exactly what the transaction is it's how it feels. Trust makes a massive difference here. Some people engender trust because of their natural trustworthy disposition. The rest of us are not naturally so likable and do not have a likely future as a con artist. Take time to understand your customers. If you don't know how to sell a relationship with a channel partner then you need to not be talking you need to be asking questions, getting to know them. How does their business operate, what do they need and want, then its your job to find synergy. Selling is most effective when you're finding someone a solution to their problem, not when you're persuading them to change their behavior for your benefit (that's the slimy shit we all hate). Let's take the climbing gym example. Let's imagine they have a problem with churn, or competition from other climbing gyms. You have a product climbers will like. Can the climbing gym give your product as a gift to members who sign up for a plan? See how you are both aligned there? It's just one example and perhaps not the right one but you get the idea. Also, if you want to play the social game I find lots of products that drive most of their revenue from social content marketing (Insta, TikTok, etc...). If you want to play that game it can work. I don't know that area well so I can't give you tips. I just see lots of slick content from small brands and occasionally I buy a product from them. Selling is completely transformed when you *know* your product is good for them they just don't know it yet. As opposed to that awful feeling of begging for approval. Lastly, ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALE. You want to ask, and get the rejection or the sale. The rejection will teach you how to improve your offering, the sale will of course give you money.
jwhitlark 5y ago
Can you please give an author's name for your reference on the book Traction? There seems to be several possibilities.
- x0x0 5y ago
  I suspect Weinberg (duck duck go founder). Not sure how similar selling a physical product is to a consumer saas business, but it's always worth reading widely.
- rozenmd 5y ago
  They're referring to: Gabriel Weinberg - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
x0x0 5y ago
Partner with regular gyms too. Lots of places don't let people use chalk because there's always some asshole who's a clapper. Liquid chalk products seem to slide under the no chalk rules.
nowherebeen 5y ago
Thank you for the recommendation. I have been listening to the audiobook and it’s good.
kirso 5y ago
This is a great advice, but sales actually make sense for distribution partnerships such as gyms. To actually take on the point that you made around sales. I am an introvert who used to be nervous about people. There are definitely some people in this world who are naturally born salesmen and personally I hate these personalities :) It feels that they always hunt and they have an agenda. Now where it gets interesting is that the other 99% of people who actually learn sales, some will realise that sales is rather about listening and seeing a fit in a potential customer. You wouldn't want to sell your product to unqualified customer (someone who won't need it and will churn anyways). In terms of skills - you don't need to be pushy. After 8 years in sales I realized that at some point you will just develop a mental script and practice makes perfect. You will be nervous the first few times, but later realize that nobody will kill you for just a conversation. On the 20th call, you will realize its actually not that scary. On the 100th call you will have a state of flow where you already know what works and how to "feel people". On 1000th call, you will have a sense of empathy like 99% of people don't have. You will notice people have behavioural patterns and you will learn how to work with them as well as with people who are just negative from get go and how to cut them out early. These soft skills are invaluable for relationships, dealing with colleagues and many more. So the only advice I can give is: push through, get better, learn and continue doing so. I am pretty much on the same route with coding now :)

by a13n 5y ago

bserge 5y ago

Add to that affiliate networks. CJ Affiliate, Rakuten, Shareasale and many smaller ones still exist and still have an army of people waiting to sell your product for a commission. Depending on how much you need to pay the network, you might want to negotiate or raise prices, but it could be worth it. I used to do affiliate marketing (a long time ago tbf) and sin care products were always top performers.

bserge 5y ago
*skin care, sorry

ryanmarsh 5y ago

This, although to clarify you're still going to have to sell into some of your marketing channels (such as when partnering with a climbing gym as suggested above). I'm a programmer turned business man and I have autism spectrum disorder so learning to sell was difficult, but doable. Now I'm a natural. I had this conversation with another founder last week. She'd sold nothing so far. Here's the crux. Selling is a deeply personal experience. You're getting someone else to open their wallet and give you their money. Even if that's not exactly what the transaction is it's how it feels. Trust makes a massive difference here. Some people engender trust because of their natural trustworthy disposition. The rest of us are not naturally so likable and do not have a likely future as a con artist. Take time to understand your customers. If you don't know how to sell a relationship with a channel partner then you need to not be talking you need to be asking questions, getting to know them. How does their business operate, what do they need and want, then its your job to find synergy. Selling is most effective when you're finding someone a solution to their problem, not when you're persuading them to change their behavior for your benefit (that's the slimy shit we all hate). Let's take the climbing gym example. Let's imagine they have a problem with churn, or competition from other climbing gyms. You have a product climbers will like. Can the climbing gym give your product as a gift to members who sign up for a plan? See how you are both aligned there? It's just one example and perhaps not the right one but you get the idea. Also, if you want to play the social game I find lots of products that drive most of their revenue from social content marketing (Insta, TikTok, etc...). If you want to play that game it can work. I don't know that area well so I can't give you tips. I just see lots of slick content from small brands and occasionally I buy a product from them. Selling is completely transformed when you *know* your product is good for them they just don't know it yet. As opposed to that awful feeling of begging for approval. Lastly, ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALE. You want to ask, and get the rejection or the sale. The rejection will teach you how to improve your offering, the sale will of course give you money.

jwhitlark 5y ago

Can you please give an author's name for your reference on the book Traction? There seems to be several possibilities.

x0x0 5y ago
I suspect Weinberg (duck duck go founder). Not sure how similar selling a physical product is to a consumer saas business, but it's always worth reading widely.
rozenmd 5y ago
They're referring to: Gabriel Weinberg - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

x0x0 5y ago

Partner with regular gyms too. Lots of places don't let people use chalk because there's always some asshole who's a clapper. Liquid chalk products seem to slide under the no chalk rules.

nowherebeen 5y ago

Thank you for the recommendation. I have been listening to the audiobook and it’s good.

kirso 5y ago

This is a great advice, but sales actually make sense for distribution partnerships such as gyms. To actually take on the point that you made around sales. I am an introvert who used to be nervous about people. There are definitely some people in this world who are naturally born salesmen and personally I hate these personalities :) It feels that they always hunt and they have an agenda. Now where it gets interesting is that the other 99% of people who actually learn sales, some will realise that sales is rather about listening and seeing a fit in a potential customer. You wouldn't want to sell your product to unqualified customer (someone who won't need it and will churn anyways). In terms of skills - you don't need to be pushy. After 8 years in sales I realized that at some point you will just develop a mental script and practice makes perfect. You will be nervous the first few times, but later realize that nobody will kill you for just a conversation. On the 20th call, you will realize its actually not that scary. On the 100th call you will have a state of flow where you already know what works and how to "feel people". On 1000th call, you will have a sense of empathy like 99% of people don't have. You will notice people have behavioural patterns and you will learn how to work with them as well as with people who are just negative from get go and how to cut them out early. These soft skills are invaluable for relationships, dealing with colleagues and many more. So the only advice I can give is: push through, get better, learn and continue doing so. I am pretty much on the same route with coding now :)