Early-Stage Founder Led Sales

This week I've been deep in doing experimenting with outreach in the early stages of LinkedIn campaigns. I focused a lot on tweaking the message and personalizing it, by visiting their profiles and trying to figure out what would connect with them in the most genuine way possible.

And it's a reminder that building real relationships take a lot of patience! And many iterations! And that's something… I am struggling with that, especially in the early stages, where it's like an urgency versus patience game.

You know, when I started my LinkedIn outreach, I felt good and positive about it. With LinkedIn, I am building my presence, posting content, people see my profile, which is part of that founder-led sales process. So, I’ve been creating a list of prospects and also iterating on our messaging. I've been running this for the last two weeks or so, and the response rate has been decent and could be improved. Sometimes, rejection can be very discouraging for me, but I'm trying to gain a new perspective to say, "Hey, it's an opportunity to continue to experiment," which means rewriting some of those intro messages to make them less sales-pitchy and trying to be more personal to start a conversation.

Just like any sales outreach, there's experimenting with the personas, the list of prospects, and the messaging. Should I set up an interactive video demonstration or not? Should I try to get them on a call as quickly as possible, or should I focus on building more camaraderie? These are all the different types of attributes I'm testing. I think LinkedIn is a very interesting platform that allows for this, as opposed to traditional email. As we know, if many emails are sent out, unless they are highly personalized, they probably won’t get much response. But with LinkedIn, because you and your prospects are connected, you can continually engage with them through comments, or you can appear on their newsfeed.

Meanwhile, I grappled with the ancient founder problem: How pushy is too pushy? Do I call or email someone who hasn't responded to me, or would that be spammy? There isn't a best practice, but I'm attempting to use my own good sense and put myself in the shoes of the person I'm trying to talk to. If I'm adding real value and demonstrating that I respect their time, then a follow-up doesn't feel like an imposition and rather becomes a chance.

Why am I writing this?

Just reminding myself that making something new is never a direct shot. There are moments of doubt and setbacks, and it is not a very straight line. I want to record these setbacks not just to be honest, but to take you along for the ride.

If you're an entrepreneur, a builder, or just someone who's curious about what it takes to get something off the ground, I hope you'll stick with me. Your encouragement, feedback, and support mean a lot to me and keep me going as I document the highs and lows.

Read more about my startup journey: https://growthwithgary.com/archive?tags=Startup

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I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. Building ClarityInbox. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.