I’m preparing for my first client! In this post I cover my strategies for client acquisition and the valuable insights I’ve gained while developing a strong proof of concept.
The ball is rolling!
In my blog post about the first four steps for startups, I mentioned that your next step is getting feedback as soon as you have your idea and name figured out. Obviously, you can’t get meaningful feedback on the product or service you are hoping to bring to the world without putting in some work to develop a proof of concept.
In the weeks that have passed since coming up with my idea, I’ve been researching and developing to get to a point where I’m ready to begin soliciting feedback. I’ve compiled all this information into slides. I went to Canva and started with this Pitch Deck template. Though a lot of the information isn’t useful to me at this stage or for the purpose of getting feedback, it was an excellent starting point. In a lot of cases, it helped me think about concise ways to present the high points in ways I wouldn’t have thought about.
Though I’m still not ready to share all the details of the business I’m building with the world, I want to share the overall theme of where I’ve been focusing my energy. Maybe if you’re at a similar stage, it will help you get or keep the ball rolling.
Pitch Deck
To recap what I’ve done to prepare for the first feedback meeting, I will outline my first “pitch deck” and summarize any behind-the-scenes work to ask or answer these questions.
Note: Before putting together slides, I sat down and wrote out what I wanted to say in my first meeting. As someone who has made slides for and given well over a hundred presentations, this was by far the most effective and efficient approach. I have no idea why I’d never thought to do that before. I highly recommend it.
Okay. Here we go.
1. Problem(s)
I started with a brief recap of the problem I faced, which gave me the original idea of starting a business. In my case, it looked like this:
Backstory/Home Buyer Problem
Looking on Zillow recently got me thinking about how time-consuming home searching/buying is when relocating to a new area.
- Numerous independent sources to evaluate to fully assess pros/cons of specific neighborhoods
- It is Difficult to vet real estate agents to assess whether they are area experts before working with them.
- Once found, verbal information was lost on me. I need to be able to sit with the information.
Note: My business’s target audience is much broader than the real estate industry, though it did start with this idea. While I’ve thought about over a half dozen products or services I could offer distinct markets, I have to pick one to get the ball rolling. To gain traction and build a reputation of success, I need to focus on one specific thing, refine my process and craft through iteration, and use that to collect testimonials and data I can highlight in marketing materials.
How did I pick this specific problem? It had less to do with the fact that it was my original idea and more with the fact that I’ve thought through the entire sales funnel or drip funnel for this big-ticket product and service.
2. Idea and Proof of Concept
Here, I walk through the mock-up I’ve created for the product I want to sell. For me, this is an interactive home buyer report in the form of an ArcGIS StoryMap.
In creating this, I realized this was not the best “first product” focus because:
- It’s fairly time-intensive, and each has the potential to serve a relatively small number of people
- The turnaround time needed for these to be useful to an agent and prospective buyers is relatively short. I would not be able to scale this business quickly without immediately hiring help.
- Once I secured my first client (a real estate agent), repeat projects would likely overlap in geography, making it difficult for me to gain valuable experience.
- Due to its narrow scope and who this product would serve, marketing to first adopters would be more challenging.
- And possibly most importantly, the metric for the success of this product is ultimately a home sale. I’d have to wait weeks or months to get data that highlights an agent’s potential return on investment. That’s slower than I wanted to grow.
3. Problem(s) expanded
Thinking through the issues with my first idea helped me develop a better idea and identify real estate agents’ overlapping needs and problems. The problems framed here are all related to the solutions I plan to address.
4. Revised Idea
I considered creating an example end product but ultimately decided that wasn’t the best use of my time for several reasons.
- My original example is similar enough and shows all the nuance of the product I’m pitching.
- Part of my pitch highlights that the real estate agent is the local expert, and I am there to highlight their knowledge with interactive and engaging content.
- I want to gain experience working with clients from the initial phase through the end. Creating an example before getting direction from the client defeats the purpose.
- It would have delayed my ability to get my idea in front of other people and begin getting useful feedback.
5. Us vs. Them
Oddly, when I came up with my original and revised ideas, I had yet to learn that similar products existed in the world. I also didn’t know the technical jargon and what people in the industry called these products. Part of doing lots of research involved learning this and confirming that what I want to offer is still significantly different and superior. Some people say that if your idea is entirely novel, it’s probably not good. So, it was a relief to see that wasn’t the case. It makes it much easier to pitch and gain potential clients if you can point them to examples they are likely familiar with and then paint the picture of how your offering differs.
6. Solutions
Here, I made a point to highlight solutions my product and services would provide, linking these back to the problems I highlighted earlier.
7. In Exchange
As I plan to offer my free time to the first 1-3 clients, I must ensure that time is well spent. Here’s what I’m hoping to get out of the deal:
- Feedback
- Case Studies
- Testimonials
- Success rate data
8. Ideal Candidates
To ensure that I set myself up for success and am likely to benefit equally from my free exchange of time, I had to consider the qualities my ideal candidates needed to possess. The three qualities I’m looking for are:
- Someone excited to highlight their expertise,
- Someone who is web savvy and can collect and report website and email lead statistics and
- Someone who has an existing email and social media marketing strategy.
9. How it works
Creation
The high level of how it works goes as follows:
- Agent answers short questionnaire
- I develop draft
- Agent reviews
- I revise.
It took some time to think through what onboarding questions I needed to ask and what information I needed to collect from the onset. I’m sure I’ll discover more as I work with my first few clients, but I have a starting place.
Implementation
This was undoubtedly the most time-consuming to think through. To guarantee I get meaningful success rate data, I need a specific ask regarding minimum marketing that the client needs to do to promote the product to their audience. Then, I need them to record data so we can evaluate the product’s effectiveness as a lead magnet. Here’s how I’m breaking things down:
- Before (21-28 days before launch)
- Marketing
- Business as usual
- Record Data
- Website statistics
- # visitors
- # Lead magnet clicks
- # leads generated
- Source of visitors
- Buyers
- # Buyer agent agreements signed
- Marketing
- After (60 days)
- Marketing Launch
- Two weeks of promotion
- Social media
- Min. 5 posts
- Min. 5 stories
- Email (min. 2)
- Social media
- Two weeks of promotion
- Record Data
- Website statistics revisited
- # of contacts from email launch funnels
- Buyer-agent agreement
- # Buyer agent agreements signed
- Did they see the product?
- Website statistics revisited
- Marketing Launch
Last remarks
Putting together my “pitch deck” helped me get super clear about my deliverables and expectations. There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes research, but highlighting that in any format is difficult. In learning more about Google Analytics, I’ve learned that I have a daunting amount left to learn to understand how to collect and extract the data I need my clients to record to track the success of the product. I’m not going to lie; this was kind of a bummer to realize.
Before going down this learning path, I was confident that it would be easy to find clients much smarter than me when it came to analyzing website traffic and leads. Now, I’m hopeful but also doubtful. Unfortunately, that means I must become an expert to teach my clients. That will be useful, valuable, and all things. And though becoming well versed in Google Analytics is on my “to-do” list, I was hoping to keep it really far down while I focused on other things.