A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:23:12 · Mark Hughes, Pablo Srugo
[00:23:12] S0: Do stuff that don't scale. Yeah. And I'd go really deep there to find out, like, what messaging is resonating, who's the persona, like, do a lot of work on finding out who your ICP is. Because as I said, like, now I can tell you, like, our ICP is b to c, enterprise companies scaling past 10,000 support tickets a month that use an outsourced BPO and have an AI agent live. And, like, to your point, like, we still have a massive TAM. It's, like, get, like, really firm on your ICP. [00:23:41] S1: How did you tell me about that because I I think that's critical. Like, you can send half a million emails to the wrong type and you're gonna have way your conversion will be worse. How did you do that at the beginning? Like, how broad did you because you have an idea. You always have an idea. You're like, no. No. I know my ICP is this. Right? Like, how much did you just focus on that versus just go, let's assume I know nothing, blank slate, and you just kind of hit up a bunch of different people. Like, where where did you find that middle ground?
00:24:02 · Mark Hughes, Pablo Srugo
[00:24:02] S0: I spoke to lots of customers, basically, or prospective customers. Like, anyone who would speak to me, I would speak to. From my own network, I would say, like, hey. Will you introduce me to this person, that person? So, like, while Patrick was building the product, I was on lots of discovery calls, essentially, trying to find design partners, trying to find people that would actually test the tool. So there was a lot of that. I would get lots of learnings from those calls and then take that messaging to find similar people who I had better conversations with to then try find because it's it's very easy to if you talk with, like, the mom tests and you can find people in your your network who are gonna be like, yeah, this is great, but, like, I actually needed to verify it with people I didn't know. So then I take, like, the best conversations, their roles in those companies, then go after similar people completely outbound on LinkedIn, get super personalized with it. The messaging that would lead to, like, higher kinda conversion rates from first calls booked, I'd be like, okay, put that in a Google Doc. I know that's a good message. I'd kinda build up a bank that way. And then when that became somewhat repeatable, I scaled it. So that's really helpful. [00:25:01] S1: Do you remember, like, people that you thought should work but actually didn't work? Do you know what I mean? Like, on the ICP finding side, like, things that you you ultimately only found through these reps?
00:25:01 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:25:01] S1: Do you remember, like, people that you thought should work but actually didn't work? Do you know what I mean? Like, on the ICP finding side, like, things that you you ultimately only found through these reps? [00:25:12] S0: I spent a lot of time in, like, selling to other b to b SaaS companies coming from a b to b SaaS background, and I was just, a complete waste of time. Like, it was really the big eye opener for me is, it seems obvious in hindsight, like, B2C companies that actually have so much conversation volume that they really they have so much support. They have so many conversations coming in, so was the kind of big eye opener for me that's like, okay, kind of changes everything. [00:25:34] S1: So I like that. And then on the messaging front, you you mentioned like as things worked, you would kind of put them in a bank. Do you remember some of the subtleties and the messages that you found started working versus maybe the ones that seemed to work less?
00:25:45 · Mark Hughes
[00:25:45] S0: Yeah. This is kind of the advice I give to salespeople as well or, like, people are doing founder led sales. It's like, you kinda need to remember what is the purpose of the message. Because a lot of people is like, if you actually take the mindset of, like, this message is to close this customer because I need my first customer, it's It's like, never gonna work. So I felt like it was almost like putting too much detail and like why we're amazing, whereas like the goal of the message is to get a call or get a reply. Even if you take a step back, it's like, the goal of the message is get a reply and then when you get a reply, it's to get the first call and then you can go to work from there. So it was really just like simple stuff and like lean on the fact of like, hey, I'm kind of building this startup in this space. I'd love to get your thoughts and your feedback on the version one of the product. A lot of people are happy to help startups, and like those like initial conversations where it is really just, like, feedback, you're not trying to hard sell them, oftentimes they then turn into, hey. Like, you know what? You should talk to John on our team. I think he actually might be able to test this out with, like, a small cohort of users and give you some better feedback than me. So I, like, went really high of CEO, COO and like played ignorance of like I'm a startup founder, please give me feedback. Then they push it down the chain and then fully enough when we actually look back at some of the deals we closed, look at like how the first meeting got booked that it's like from the CEO or co founder of the company, and like by the time it actually gets to the person who procures the software, they probably think they've been told to buy this tool because it's gone from their CEO. So I think that is something that's quite helpful. If you can get in like at the highest level and work down the chain, that's a good starting point.
00:27:17 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:27:17] S1: You know, the the part about figuring out what you're trying to accomplish with the message and kinda and breaking it down in Stes is often lost, I would say, because you need to have something simple and sharp. Obviously, everybody's busy scrolling whatever. And if your goal is to get a sale, how can you accomplish that in one line? But if your goal is just to stop the scroll, right, like get a reply, then it changes how you're gonna say it. Okay, so that's phase one. You've done that. You're like, okay, I know that my ICP is not B2B SaaS. I know that my ICP is b to c. It's this, that, that. I know that these kind of messages work. So that was step one. What was step two? [00:27:51] S0: Step two is then scale it. I as I said, we set up those kind of the outbound engine with the email domains. And we tried to do, like, multi touch as well, so I would try, like, cold calling as well. Quite difficult to get numbers, especially in Europe. I would use, like, HeyReach as well as Lemlist. So HeyReach would do, like, a LinkedIn connection as well. So I was trying to still do multi touch, but, honestly, like, all the replies came via email. [00:28:18] S1: What tools did you use? Like, did you use Clay? You said you mentioned Apollo. Like, did you try a bunch of different things and you chose one for a reason? [00:28:24] S0: Yeah. Like, I I I kind of tested probably every sales tool known to man at this point from, like, HubSpot sequencing's tool to Salesloft to you name it. So I really just went with, like, the cheapest tooling possible at the time.
00:28:24 · Mark Hughes, Pablo Srugo
[00:28:24] S0: Yeah. Like, I I I kind of tested probably every sales tool known to man at this point from, like, HubSpot sequencing's tool to Salesloft to you name it. So I really just went with, like, the cheapest tooling possible at the time. [00:28:38] S1: There you go. Price wins. Yeah. [00:28:40] S0: We used Apollo to get the contact information and then push that into Lemlist, set up multiple, like, uni inboxes in it was like a uni inbox with multiple different variations of the email, and started with, like, one email address, and then five email addresses, and then 10, and then 20, and, yeah, we just, like, buff you on the fire because I think there's a good book, forget who wrote it like called traction and it's all about the very simple traction channels you can you can use, but like when one works, like you should double down on that. So when it was working, we're like, okay, like how do we send more volume, send more volume and know I sometimes this can kinda go against the grain where people are like, oh, you're burning your time. But, like, people get so many emails now. They're not even gonna remember if you emailed them six months ago. So I think people can overthink that to a degree. [00:29:23] S1: That's a good point. I mean, it's true. Like, of the emails that you don't reply to, how many do you remember three months later? And the answer is probably, like, none. That's the reality. Yeah.