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Getting Your First 10 Sales

Marketing, social media, advertising

jpanarra

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Hey all, JP here!


From my personal experience in the number of start-ups I’ve done and advising others in trying to start their own business. I’ve seen a large number of failures and too many people not understanding the fact that a good business starts with your neighbors.

Many people like myself learning the ins and outs of a business will quickly come to realize that Sales is the heart of any business.


Before you even think about writing a 30 page business plan and going straight to an investor or pitching it to try and fund it by claiming the market size is 1.4 million people and you can reach out to 20% of it by so and so.


Get a MVP(minimum viable product) and get 10 sales first. Go to your neighbors, family, friends ask them to pull out their wallets and buy one from you. They might do it to support you but the fact that they buy something means they believe in you and will give you valuable feedback on how you can improve your idea.

Now, if you’ve tapped out all of your personal network and you don’t get 10 buyers. That might be a real world slap in your face saying your idea just might not work. However, I wouldn’t suggest that you give up immediately. There are a number of ways you can reach out to people on the web using Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.


In the upcoming posts I’ll be sharing how I reach out to strangers and get a sale from them across the different social media platforms!
 
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Thomas Baptiste

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For someone like me who lives in a third world country, it's not that simple. The niches here are very specific, the most popular being food/consumables and require tons of capital to get going. There are so many policies and political agendas here that small businesses are rarely, if ever successful on a national scale. That means that reaching out to people elsewhere and solving a problem for them( from my current location) is probably the most efficient thing that can be done fastlane wise. Any thoughts on this?
 

jpanarra

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For someone like me who lives in a third world country, it's not that simple. The niches here are very specific, the most popular being food/consumables and require tons of capital to get going. There are so many policies and political agendas here that small businesses are rarely, if ever successful on a national scale. That means that reaching out to people elsewhere and solving a problem for them( from my current location) is probably the most efficient thing that can be done fastlane wise. Any thoughts on this?

It is that simple,

(Make Product --> Ask people to buy --> Sale ) x 10 = Viable Product
 

banjoa

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Hey all, JP here!


From my personal experience in the number of start-ups I’ve done and advising others in trying to start their own business. I’ve seen a large number of failures and too many people not understanding the fact that a good business starts with your neighbors.

Many people like myself learning the ins and outs of a business will quickly come to realize that Sales is the heart of any business.


Before you even think about writing a 30 page business plan and going straight to an investor or pitching it to try and fund it by claiming the market size is 1.4 million people and you can reach out to 20% of it by so and so.


Get a MVP(minimum viable product) and get 10 sales first. Go to your neighbors, family, friends ask them to pull out their wallets and buy one from you. They might do it to support you but the fact that they buy something means they believe in you and will give you valuable feedback on how you can improve your idea.

Now, if you’ve tapped out all of your personal network and you don’t get 10 buyers. That might be a real world slap in your face saying your idea just might not work. However, I wouldn’t suggest that you give up immediately. There are a number of ways you can reach out to people on the web using Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.


In the upcoming posts I’ll be sharing how I reach out to strangers and get a sale from them across the different social media platforms!

Take my money!!!!!
 
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XxThelionxX

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This is perfect. Following!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

The Abundant Man

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This is what the Amway guys pitched to me. "Start selling to your family and friends...then get them to join your downline. We're not Pyramids okay. Coca-Cola is structured as a Pyramid. Amazon is structured as a Pyramid. When you join it's a circle. You and I are going to be partners."
 

ManlyMansNegator

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This is what the Amway guys pitched to me. "Start selling to your family and friends...then get them to join your downline. We're not Pyramids okay. Coca-Cola is structured as a Pyramid. Amazon is structured as a Pyramid. When you join it's a circle. You and I are going to be partners."
yes but unlike amway you will be selling products of VALUE.Amway was asking me to sell kitchen utensils which my family members who could get it 25% cheaper at the Target down the road.
 
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Gutzofter

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This is what the Amway guys pitched to me. "Start selling to your family and friends...then get them to join your downline. We're not Pyramids okay. Coca-Cola is structured as a Pyramid. Amazon is structured as a Pyramid. When you join it's a circle. You and I are going to be partners."

Look at it as hypothesis testing. If you can't make sales to family and friends, it will be very difficult to make sales to total strangers.
 

jpanarra

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Hey all , JP here!


I posted last week about getting your first 10 sales and utilizing your personal network about finding people to actually open up their wallets and pay your service/products which would be a legit confirmation that your business idea has a chance of being valid.


Now is a good time to ask yourself, what pain are people feeling that your product or service can help?


Try to trim that down into a single sentence and stick by it.


For instance, My Business,

I help people get sales online.


Another thing to look at is how often do people ‘feel’ the pain and how intense is it?


For an example, an online retailer that is struggling will need my help much more so than a hardware store in the rural midwest.

Understanding those two things has helped my business grow and I review them every other month or so because businesses are a living, breathing thing that has the potential to change with every sale.


Back to getting your first 10 sales, let's say you’ve tapped out, you’ve gotten maybe 4-5 buyers from your own personal network and you still feel like you haven’t gotten a good feedback and still need more sales from outside of your personal sphere. What I usually suggest first is to go to Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and even the google search engine.


I wanted to cover how you can get an sale from Twitter. I’ve used this approach to get sales for myself and my customers. Twitter is still an massive platform with over 300 million users every month. Every single industry that there is in the world will be on twitter in some shape and form.



  1. Find your direct competitors - they’re usually targeting the same customer base and in the same locations. If they’re on twitter, that means there is an market for your service/product and this is good news. Save a list of their tags, you will use them later.

  2. Use Twitter Advanced Search - Those tags you saved, put them in the ‘to these accounts’ And put in words of dissatisfaction in the ‘all of these words’.

    1. For an example, @squarespace ‘sucks’
  3. Send a tweet - Send a tweet (you want this public) to the dissatisfied customers in a personal way how you can help. Keep in mind not to be ‘salesy’ but be personal and talk like you would to a friend.

  4. Repeat - Do this 3-4 times a week, you’ll start getting responses, follows, and direct messages to solve the said problems your competitor is not addressing. (I have this on my calendar to make sure I stay on track for this)

I plan on going over the other platforms on my other posts coming up! Stay tuned.
 

jpanarra

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Hey All, JP here!


I posted twice about getting your first 10 clients from your personal network and twitter.

I'm going to go over my strategy of getting clients off of reddit. This has gotten me a lot of inbound interest over time and it'll compound if you remain active. This stragety will work on any forum type website as well, find a subreddit or a niche focused forum.


Again, The key on reddit is to be consistently active and try to get as much 'karma' points at your targeted subreddits. That way people will start seeing you as an trusted figure on the forum, people will start tagging your username for being known as 'this' guy.

Again, its all about providing value to people and think about who you can help.

People that need help are everywhere in those subreddits and forums. Even if you don’t know the direct answer to the question, you can go ahead and use your googling skills and find the answer and interpret it in the best of your ability.

The most important part is to make sure that you explain to people I do ______, and then give your answer. For example, I own a digital marketing business and my advice to most people on those forums and subreddits are related to trying to market a business online. Therefore, I would open my post like..

"Hey, I see you're having an issue with ________ . I own a digital marketing agency and what I think could help you is ______________.

Do that a few times, and people will start connecting the dots and you won't have to start dropping that line as much.

The key is to try to help people, get a full conversation going whether or not its on the public boards or in private. The more people you talk with the closer you are to the next sale for your business.

Be honest, be yourself, and help people for the sake of helping, eventually you'll have opportunities to put a price on your services when people come to you and asking you to do something.
 
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jpanarra

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Hey everyone!

I just got my first customer through Instagram.

There are ways to cold reach through the different social media platforms. You just gotta be authentic and share stuff on a regular basis on your account.

Then another thing is you gotta be constantly active in local areas that are familiar with and commenting on random posts so you gain followers.

More followers = More trustworthy!

What i did was I saw a contractor posting stuff, this tells me that he understands the urgency of using social media and the internet, but he probably went the easiest way he knows how to share his information. I shot him a simple PM, "ever thought a bout a website?"

We struck up a conversation and I'm about to send him an invoice of 2500$.

Here's some guidelines

Post regularly, 2-3 posts a week (MINIMUM)
Comment regularly, 2-3 comments daily (MINIMUM)
PM people regularly, 2-3 direct messages daily (MAX)

No need to pick up the phone, be active, be consistent, and most importantly be real.
 

Andy Black

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Hey everyone!

I just got my first customer through Instagram.

There are ways to cold reach through the different social media platforms. You just gotta be authentic and share stuff on a regular basis on your account.

Then another thing is you gotta be constantly active in local areas that are familiar with and commenting on random posts so you gain followers.

More followers = More trustworthy!

What i did was I saw a contractor posting stuff, this tells me that he understands the urgency of using social media and the internet, but he probably went the easiest way he knows how to share his information. I shot him a simple PM, "ever thought a bout a website?"

We struck up a conversation and I'm about to send him an invoice of 2500$.

Here's some guidelines

Post regularly, 2-3 posts a week (MINIMUM)
Comment regularly, 2-3 comments daily (MINIMUM)
PM people regularly, 2-3 direct messages daily (MAX)

No need to pick up the phone, be active, be consistent, and most importantly be real.
Well done. Great if you can pull this off without picking up the phone.

(Tip though: he isn’t a client till he pays the invoice.)
 

jpanarra

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