Ask HN: Keeping track of sales pipeline for sole dev/founder?
I've been running a small, seasonal ski-industry SaaS business for a couple of years. It's grown from a side project into something that's taking up most of my time these days.
I'm all good on the technical side of things, and I love talking to my customers. But I'm terrible at sales and follow ups, and I'm at the point where I need to get some revenue rolling so this beastie will really support itself.
For those of you out there on the small end of things, what works for you? How do you keep all those conversations going, remember to follow up with people and don't drop the ball getting new people signed up? How do you balance that with getting the technical end of things done?
9 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] threadTo help bring balance to the situation though I have reverted back to setting a standard weekly schedule. Basically, set a schedule saying Tuesday and Friday you are doing Sales, demo's and client followup. And then the rest of the week you work on product. Or reverse it if the needs are reversed. But you get the idea. Of course, when you do that it doesn't mean you ignore calls/emails. Instead you immediately respond and schedule time on the next day/time available and in that followup make sure you aren't missing an immediate issue or hot prospect. Use your calendar of choice and just schedule yourself in detail.
Like I said, I am doing this (again) and it is helping me refocus a lot, but in fairness I sometimes struggle still putting off a demo until another day so I catch myself sometimes doing a "quick" demo or talking to prospects when I should be finishing something. Every time I do a non-critical (e.g. service is not down) activity out of turn, I wind up kicking myself later because rarely is the case where it has led to a sale or where it was something that could not wait 1-2 days while I finished what I was in the middle of.
As for sales, I think if you haven't already you really need to identify how people find you and how you get them to signup. If this process is primarily human, that is a key if not primary place to focus a lot of your efforts. Signup and on-boarding need to be automatic as does the ability for a person that hits the marketing site to understand the products value proposition. Small quick video(s) and image walk-thru's help from what I have seen. It doesn't mean you stop being human and talking to everyone on the planet that will listen, just that you need the research and on-boarding process as smooth as possible so that you don't get overloaded doing work a computer should.
Simple daily focus and discipline, easier said than done. As a practical matter, write everything down on paper, schedule reminders on your calendar. Work in power-time blocks. Suggest looking at David Allen's brilliant GTD system> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RVerrdJmXw
Here's a small collection of resources you might find useful - I had the same question about a year ago.
The end result one year later? Google docs + Yesware.
Unfortunately, you don't have contact in your profile. Feel free to get in touch. I'd be interested in learning more about what you need to see if we can help.
We've finished the integration of the complete new UI (take a look at some screenshots on our portfolio http://sprawsm.com/project/funnel/) that we will be releasing in a few days.
We've been using it for over two years now for our design company, worked wonderfully.