Getting Your 1st, 100th & 500th Customer

My First sale was very different to earn compared to my 100th.

And my 500th was through scale, unlike everything before the 100th mark.

To get my first custie it took me less than 30 mins from when I started selling.

The night before my friend and I bought equipment.

He was going to do the work itself and I was going to sell as well as do the main business things to grow later on.

At about 12:00pm I went out in my neighbourhood, knocked on 6-7 doors and got my first customer who paid out $200.

He was very straight to the point and quick, but I closed it.

All it takes to get your first customer is starting and putting in effort and having belief in yourself. It really is not hard.

Regardless of what method of sales/marketing you use, as long as you start this process and put in work towards converting eyes to customers you will get that 1st custie.

And when you do get it, you now know that it’s possible to get more, a lot more. A belief I have is that if you can get 1, you can get 1 Million.

So you now you just keep continuing with what you started with. But the point of entrepreneur ship is to have full control.

When you have full control your main focus should be how to constantly put yourself in a more leveraged position. Without leverage you’ll scale slow and it’ll be a useless pursuit.

To grow from 1 to 100 customers in about a couple months was through scale. As in scaling how many sales we can get in the shortest period of time, as my business was seasonal.

So I trained others on how to sell the way I do. I had done sales the year before so I started from an experienced position.

Knowledge is rarely ever a bad thing. Learn as much as you can, but don’t let it stop you from taking action as soon as you can.

My first year I built a team of about 6-7 salesmen and 3 technicians within 3-4 months of starting. Throwing yourself in a deep end, regardless of experience, will force you to perform and make it work (only if you really want it though.)

At the end of our first season (5 months) we had about 230 customers and the business kinda blew up in my face at the 4th month. I lost half my team, had my 1 best salesman stay and the rest were average.

Going back to school I only had one thought on my head. “How do I start this up again?” And “How do I scale this further?”

I met one of my best friends at the beginning of the school year and we both had pretty similar goals. As soon as the season started it was just me and him.

I trained him to be very good. I didn’t hire another person for about month. And another month later I hired another.

That year I had more focus on the quality of my team over the quantity like I did the year before.

And it worked much better. Everyone made more money because I had more resources to help them, and we got more customers.

The second year we ended on about 600.

And throughout this period till the third year I had other ventures like content, another sales job and different things too.

To get to 1 thousand, you need more avenues of sales. For us it was ads, content, using our previous customer list, and follow-ups.

The part of this that I didn’t like in the beginning was the fact that it took much more mental power and work didn’t end after the last customer was serviced. It ended when everything ended.

You need to be willing to go through discomfort if you want eternal comfort. Living and operating from a position of “balance” doesn’t get you the extreme enjoyments of life.

So many nights were filled with me staying up, scripting, editing, etc, but it’s always worth it if you stay consistent with it. Same with follow ups to a degree, it’s annoying but worth it.

I’d say follow-ups are part of sales, but too frequently (especially in the beginning) we just don’t follow up because it’s annoying, or can seem too desperate. So we just push for new blood.

But following up and reaching out to old customers worked so well, because when something is familiar it’s easier to buy.

If someone bought the year before, enjoyed the service and liked the end result, there is a good chance they will buy again, and sometimes it takes that second nudge to get them thinking of you again.

This along with persistence and purpose was able to cross me over 750 total customers.

You need to be able to get in-front of as many people multiple times. Without attention you can’t be noticed.

Nor can you get that far if you don’t make sure your business is actually good, via the experience and value.

So focus on quality of scale over quantity of attention. Re-talk to customers. And start if you haven’t.

Hopefully this helps with getting closer to your goals, salam ailaikum.