A startup founder talking to investors has the same problem as a founder selling, which is too many open conversations to hold in one head. One investor asked for your numbers on Tuesday, another said to come back after the next release and a third still owes you an intro. An investor pipeline is how … Read more
You started a company to build a product, and now the product needs customers and nobody else is going to find them. Most advice on founder-led sales tells you why it matters and then stops before the part where you have to fit it into a week. Founder-led sales is when the founder personally finds … Read more
The call went well, the buyer liked what they heard and you promised to send something over. Now it is five in the afternoon and the email is still unwritten, because you are not sure what it should say. A sales follow-up email template needs three things, which are what was agreed, the next step … Read more
Someone on the team asks what you will close next month, and the honest answer is a shrug and a number that feels about right. Most guides answer that with six methods written for a company that has a finance department. You need one method and a table. Sales forecasting for a small team means … Read more
Most small teams already have a pipeline review, and it is the Monday meeting where each person reads their deals aloud while everyone else waits for their turn. Nothing gets decided, so the board looks the same on Tuesday. A useful review is shorter and it ends with a date on every deal you talked … Read more
Search for how to get clients and you get lists of 15 tactics, from guest posts to paid ads. You are one person with client work to deliver and a few free hours a week, so a list that long is no help. To get clients as a one-person business, write a list of 30 … Read more
Your clients live in your inbox, your phone and your head. That works until someone you did good work for hires somebody else, because you never wrote to them again. A client list template needs ten columns: name, company, email, phone, status, work done, source, last contact, next check-in and notes. Copy the table below … Read more
The project ended well and the client said to stay in touch. You meant to, then two busy months went by and writing now feels awkward. The same thing happens with the person who said “not this year” and the one you met who isn’t a prospect yet. To keep in touch with clients, put … Read more
Most of your work already comes from people who know you. Yet you probably ask for an introduction about once a year, and you could not say for sure who sent you your last three clients. Asking feels awkward because the usual ask is vague, and a vague ask leaves the other person to work … Read more
The discovery call went well. They talked for twenty minutes, they liked you and they said “send me something” at the end. Three weeks later you have heard nothing, and the fix is in how the call ended and what you did that same day. A discovery call is a first conversation of 20 to … Read more