I mentioned cold emailing yesterday, but I never discussed the why.
In the past year, I decided to focus on business opportunities selling software to businesses. After some exploring, I found something in the area of outbound sales that I thought I could compete in. I decided to build an application that helps to guess email addresses for outbound sales.
I spent a few weeks building a minimum viable product and was really happy with how the product turned out. That’s where everything stalled. Instead telling the world about my product, I got self conscious. I didn’t do too much to market the product except mention it to a few friends. I used it myself for my own case, but that was about it. I don’t think there are any other active users on the application now.
After doing some basic research in the space, I decided there were two main problems with Curtact. These two problems halted my progress in its tracks.
Problem 1: There’s a free alternative dealing with simply guessing email addresses one at a time by using Rapportive of SideKick.
Problem 2: The way the tool is currently built, it only helps with one off email addresses. Companies deal with magnitudes larger lists. If you want a tool that will work with companies, you need to be able to utilize bulk uploading and guessing of email addresses.
Today, while writing this, I thought back to comments Scott Barnett, founder of CareerNumbers, made to me a few months ago. He said that there’s always going to be problems in your business and holes in your funnel. As an entrepreneur, your job is to be aware of them and to work hard to fix them over time.
I believe I gave up on this project much quicker than I should have. I didn’t reach out to many people who might be in the target audience and didn’t do much research on who would be in the target audience.
When I gave up on The Curtact Email application, I decided I needed to learn more about how companies sell. This is when I decided to start cold emailing companies asking about how they sell and writing about them on the Curtact blog.
This is how I am tiptoeing my foot into the world of sales. I believe asking how someone sells is a much easier proposition than asking for money. Although that’s not the point, it’s a nice side effect. This is allowing me to tiptoe into the world of sales.
The ultimate goal is to find out the similarities and differences in how companies sell. How does how larger companies sell differ from smaller companies? Are larger companies more likely to be leads lists? Are there tricks of the trade that I’m not familiar with?
When I started looking into B2B sales, I was an idiot. I had assumptions that were dead wrong. I assumed sales is sales – that that companies wouldn’t differ too much from one to another. And after talking to ten friends who work in sales, I found out that each company they worked for had a different way of doing outbound sales.
I’m excited about reaching out to companies and learning more about how they sell. I realize there’s a lot I don’t know, and I’m excited to to learn more. What tools does everyone use? Which tools are necessities and which tools are luxuries? What do hustlers in smaller companies use compared to larger companies with more of a brand name?
This is where I’m at now. This is what I’m working on. This is how I’m tiptoeing into the world of sales.