In this blog article, we will cover the most important steps for SaaS founders to win the first 10 paying customers. So in case you are an early-stage start-up founder and face the challenge of how you can find and win your first customer, this blog article is for you.
A common mistake I see over and over again is that founders develop a product/solution for a problem that might exist (or might not exist). Don't develop a product without understanding the real problem of your potential customer. This means before you actually build a product, take your time to talk to your potential customers, understand their specific problem, and evaluate together with them a potential solution.
So instead of building a product and then trying to find a customer group who is interested in such a product, start with a well-defined problem from a specific target customer and build a product/solution for them.
If you solve their problem, you create value for them, which means they are your customers and are willing to pay for it. This means you found your first customer!
Most start-up founders want to have scalable sales and marketing strategies in place straight from day one on. They love the idea of having a scalable customer acquisition strategy (nice paid ads on Google, Instagram, or Facebook, plus a nicely designed landing page followed by a self-service SaaS product) and hope they don't need to talk to the customers, onboard them and do some time consuming manual work. While this is the desired strategy later on and should be the objective for start-ups who’ve found product-market fit and focus on growth, I would highly recommend starting manual hand recruiting your first 10 customers by doing stuff that does NOT scale (e.g. Outbound Sales, phone calls, emails, etc...).
Preferably you start with customers you already know personally or are within your network. In case this is not working for you, I would suggest you start manually outreaching your specific target customer.
Here are some potential strategies for you:
For all those methods it’s crucial to have a well-defined target customer persona.
A lot of inexperienced founders or technical founders think they need to have the ‘perfect’ sales pitch and just use a template to win the client. My experience is the more natural and human you are in your cold outreach the more successful you will be. Don’t use sales scripts, show up as a human and personalize your message to each potential customer. Don’t sell your product in the first step, rather spend time with the customer, ask questions, understand their specific situation and challenges, and then (in case the customer is qualified) try to sell your product and win the deal.
As described in the first paragraph, in an ideal scenario you've already done interviews with potential customers before you've built the product. This means, just following up with them and showing them the product. The chances are high that they love it and want to be your first customer. Depending on your product, it could also make sense to sign LOIs with those customers before you start building the product (mostly relevant for B2B Enterprise SaaS). You should aim to find first customers who really love your product and see high value in it. Don’t make the mistake of onboarding hard customers or just anyone who is interested but does not fit your target persona (more Infos in the following sections). And don’t underestimate the extra motivation boost you’ll get if your first customers love you and your product and give you positive feedback.