{"id":5434,"date":"2018-12-27T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T05:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=5434"},"modified":"2022-02-22T18:26:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T12:56:03","slug":"how-do-you-find-early-customers-for-a-b2b-saas-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/27\/how-do-you-find-early-customers-for-a-b2b-saas-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Find Early Customers For A B2B SAAS Startup?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the\u00a0following question on Quora<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This question reminds me of a Patek Philippe ad in which the luxury Swiss watchmaker says, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”. The tagline of the ad is “Begin your own tradition”.<\/p>\n

I’m tempted to paraphrase Patek Philippe in my answer: “You never actually find a customer. You merely look after a prospect for the next stage of the funnel”. And end with the following tagline: “Begin your own campaign”.<\/p>\n

Just that the process of finding a customer is arguably harder than taking care of a\u00a0luxury watch for the next generation.<\/p>\n

With that preamble out of the way, the only place where you, as a vendor of a B2B technology product or service, can\u00a0find<\/b>\u00a0customers is in your list of existing customers.<\/p>\n

Everywhere else you can only find target audience. Which is not the same as finding customers.<\/p>\n

It’s extremely important to appreciate the distinction between members of target market and customers.<\/p>\n

In most areas of B2B technology products and services – including B2B SAAS – a vendor needs to work on around 200 members in the target market to acquire one customer. So it\u2019s a smart move to avoid using the two terms “target audience” and “customer” interchangeably.<\/p>\n

Your search to acquire that one customer begins by finding those 200 people in your target market.<\/p>\n

After finding them, you need to take them through the various stages of the sales funnel, as illustrated in the following exhibit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
Different things happen at different stages of the sales funnel.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As a vendor, you need to respond differently at each stage.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When all goes well, 200 prospects at the top of the funnel will yield one customer at the bottom of the funnel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Happy Selling!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the\u00a0following question on Quora: This question reminds me of a Patek Philippe ad in which the luxury Swiss watchmaker says, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”. The tagline of the ad is “Begin your own … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b1-integrated-marketing","category-digital-marketing","category-it-marketing","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5434"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9215,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434\/revisions\/9215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}