Idea Extraction to Saas Business

[BigLo]

Hello everyone

I am starting this progress thread to help document my progress, share my experiences during this process and hold myself accountable.

A little about myself:

I am currently 25 years old and work a full time job at an automotive logistics company. It's an office job I landed out of college. My goal is to quit my job and become a successful entrepreneur so that I can have the freedom to live the type of lifestyle I want. I have tried a few different dropshipping businesses in the past and none of them did that well, but it was a great learning experience. I gained some knowledge in Facebook Ads/Google Adwords that I can take with me moving forward.

For this new pursuit, I am going to be working toward starting a Saas business based off the "Idea Extraction" approach. I am starting from scratch. I am basically going to be setting up phone call meetings with business owners (I have a market picked out already) and discussing their pains and problems with running their business. The goals to find/validate a pain in the market and build a solution to solve this pain.

As of right now, I have a call scheduled for tomorrow with a business owner in the market I am targeting. My approach right now, is that I am sending out personal emails to setup the calls and I am letting them know that I am going to be creating an industry report from all my research and will be giving it away to them for free for there agreement to do a phone call.

This seems to be effective with my market right now. I have only sent out 20 emails so far and 5/20 responded that they are interested in talking (only 1 scheduled so far). I will need to send out way more emails to validate that this will be an effective way to schedule more calls but it looks promising.

Goals for tomorrow (Day 1):

• Call business owner for scheduled IE call
• Hand write sales letters (1 page)
• Schedule 10 personal emails for Monday morning

- BigLo

 

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[LeoistheSun]

Good Luck!

I've been doing something similar. I've got a thread titled SaaSify.

 

[BD64]

First post and you've already taken some action. This may be promising!

Keep trucking along and post your progress here, wins and losses.

Goodluck

 

[BigLo]

Good Luck!

I've been doing something similar. I've got a thread titled SaaSify.

Thanks man. I'll check out your thread.

 

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[BigLo]

First post and you've already taken some action. This may be promising!

Keep trucking along and post your progress here, wins and losses.

Goodluck

Will do man!

 

[BigLo]

Day 1 Review:

Goals for Day 1:

• Call business owner for scheduled IE call (Done)
• Hand write sales letters (1 page) (Done)
• Schedule 10 personal emails for Monday morning (Done)

A little bit of a slow start to the day but ended up getting some things done and accomplished my daily goals. I plan on doing these short updates everyday and probably longer updates everyday 7-10 days to analyze my progress and make adjustments. This journey will take some time and I want my effort to be as effective as possible. Especially since I got a full-time job.

Had my 1st IE call today. Had some technical difficulties before the call with my laptop. I ended up using my cellphone vs Skype with recording. I think for a 1st call it wasn't to bad. She was pretty defensive at the beginning then after a few minutes she was very open about her current projects. I definitely need to review the IE call tactics and structure to improve the process. It will probably take around 10-12 calls to get completely comfortable.

As far as the emails I ended up scheduling 12 instead of 10. Also, hand writing the copy.

Goals for Day 2:

• Take a sip of coffee 1st thing in morning (to help with morning productivity)
• Create/Schedule 30 personal emails

 

[BigLo]

Day 2 Review

Goals for Day 2:

• Take a sip of coffee 1st thing in morning (done)
• Create/Schedule 30 personal emails (only was able to do 15)

Had to stay an hour and a half later at work which cut into my time today. I still was able to create/schedule 15 personal emails for Monday. In the future when this happens I'll just get less sleep so I can get more done.

As far as my work schedule, I work Wednesday through Saturday/Sunday 10 hour night shifts. It sucks but allows for me to schedule calls during business hours and adds tons on motivation. So my Monday's through Wednesday mornings, I will be able to put in long hours toward this on those days. Thursday through Sat/Sun I'll be able to squeeze around 3hrs in before work.

Goals for Day 3:

• Take a sip of coffee 1st thing in morning (to help with morning productivity)
• Create/Schedule 30 personal emails

 

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[LeoistheSun]

When your talking to Owners and whatnot you might want to not only ask about their tasks but their employees tasks and problems with customers (or customer problems).

 

[eliquid]

There are several SaaS threads in the forum that may be able to help you and guide you to avoid potentially issues as you go further into this.

I'll offer up my AMA as one such thread
GOLD - Ask Me Anything About SaaS ( I'm building my 7th )

 

[LeoistheSun]

Let me know if you want someone to practice your IE skills with.

 

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[BigLo]

Day 3/4 Review:

I sent out the emails I had scheduled over the past few days. Also, setup an automated followup sequence to help with time. Spent some time collecting emails as well, ended up with a little over 300 contacts.

Goals for day 5:

• Take a sip of coffee 1st thing in morning (to help with morning productivity)
• Create/schedule 60 personal emails for Wednesday morning
  

 

[BigLo]

Day 5-10 Review:

Not the most productive days due to being sick but I was able to schedule quite a few emails for Monday as well as schedule my 2nd call for the 14th. I have taken a look at the data of the emails I have sent out so far. I have a 78% open rate on the emails I am sending and have gotten people interested in speaking. I believe that I can get 1-2 calls scheduled per 30 emails sent. If I can land 7-10 calls per week that would be great. I will be aiming to schedule 30 personal emails per day (210 per week). Depending on how some of the followups go for the people interest but haven't scheduled a call yet, I will have to just give them a call over the phone after an email or two. I plan on testing out personal emailing first, then if it is not providing the results I am looking for as far as scheduling calls I will start hitting the phones (email 1st then call everyone who opens email).

As far as improving my productivity, I think I found a great solution on this thread by LightHouse. I have already setup Trello with my goals for this next week.

Goals for this next week:

• Create/Schedule 240+ personal emails

 

[francevalue]

What's up @BigLo ?

 

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