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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2550 How To Get Your First 10 Customers. A Step-By-Step Guide.
00:17:30
Are you ready to get your first 10 customers—the first 10 people who will believe in you and your product? You’re excited but facing a common challenge: How do you find your first ten customers?
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Transcript13 lines
- [00:00]
Jim
Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.
- [00:20]
Omar Zenhom
Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.
- [00:31]
Jessica
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- [00:48]
Mark
You don't need a big bank making you feel small. You need a go to tap to open a Goto bank account today. Early direct deposit availability depends on payer type, timing, payment instructions and bank fraud prevention measure. No monthly fees with eligible direct deposit. Otherwise $5 per month.
- [01:08]
Omar Zenhom
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. In today's lesson, you're going to learn exactly how to get your first 10 customers for your digital product. Whether you're selling an online course, coaching, you're selling a template, software, whatever, it might be an ebook, right? If you're selling online and you' price point for the sale is less than $10,000, then this method to get your first 10 customers. Now we're talking about strangers that you don't know. Now your friends and family is going to work for you. This method is going to work. How do I know? Well, I've been using this method for the last 10 years to sell all my products and services. And the best part is it's that you're going to build momentum through content marketing. It's very low touch, it's not very salesy or direct to consumer sales. It's actually quite easy to do and very comfortable to do if you've never sold before, whether online or offline. I always tell people that business and sales is basically just math, right? So we're going to work backwards because getting 10 customers isn't as hard as it sounds if you have a plan, right? And today I'll show you exactly how to do it. Also, you can download the checklist that goes along with today's lesson over at 100mba.net worksheets. You could download it over there along with all our worksheets for many of our lessons. So here's the math I'm talking about. On average, 2 to 5% of your email list subscribers will buy from you at some point. So 2 to 5%, let's be really conservative and say 2%, right? Only 2% of your email subscribers buy from you. If you want 10 customers, you're going to need 500 people on your email list. That's doable, right? And I'm going to show you how to get those 500 people to subscribe to your email list in a timely manner so this doesn't take years. Right. And how to build a sales funnel that gets you those 10 paying customers off that email list of 500 people. The first thing I want to share with you is that if you want to sell anything, you need to build trust. So if you want to get your first 10 paying customers, you have to be aware of the fact that you're in a trust building exercise here. You need to build as much trust as possible with your audience so that you can get as many sales as possible. The more trust you have, the more sales you're going to make. Okay, now how do you build trust? Well, you show people that you can actually deliver on what you say. You can actually solve the problem, problem that you say you solve. Right? You can help your potential audience with an issue with something they're struggling with. You can help them improve something that they're trying to work on. Whether you're in the fitness space, whether you're in the mental health space, whether you're maybe in the quality of life space, trying to improve people's lives, whatever it might be, you need to prove to them by building trust, by building awareness that you can actually pull this off. So how do you build this trust so that you can make sales with your audience? Well, that's where step one comes in. Awareness. You want to create free content to build visibility for your business, for your brand. Your first step here is just to get noticed, to be top of mind. People know that you exist, right? And this is where your content marketing is going to come into play. When I say content marketing, I'm saying you're creating content, whether it's images or infographics or videos, which is very popular today on social media, on YouTube, on podcasts, on, you know, whatever it might be for you that is out there in the public. Okay? We're not talking about your email list right now. We're talking about people that are still not in your community, not in your email list. They're not there yet. They're just kind of out there in the world. This is your kind of billboard advertising. This is your chance to reach people with your value, with your content. Now here, this word content marketing here, but this word content, I'm not really in love with this word because just sounds like just information and just like blah, right? No, I actually want you to think of it as your best work, right? Your art, really. And I see myself, I know this sounds strange, but I see myself as an information artist. Artists, right? I'm trying to present my information, present my value in the best way possible. Because I don't want only the information to be great, but I want the delivery to be great. I want the way people consume it to be enjoyable, right? So think of it that way. Don't try to think of it like, I just gotta put as much information out there. No, you want to have high quality, engaging, cool stuff out there, right, that you're proud of. So the first step is getting people aware of you through social media by putting this information, putting this content out there. For example, I built my audience through the 100 LMBA show podcast. I've been publishing episode after episode, over 2,500 episodes, over 10 years on the podcast. We also started our YouTube channel recently, just a few months ago. And that's an avenue, a way for me to get and reach people that never heard of me before. Just searching the content or the topics that I am creating. My video will pop up, right? I do this on social media, on Instagram, on TikTok, right? On Facebook, on LinkedIn. Right? I'm sharing my content there to help people so they can find me, discover me and want to learn more, right? So here's an action step for step number one. You want to start sharing two to three pieces of content each week on platforms where your target audience hangs out, right? So whether it's YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever it might be, here's the thing, this is just the start. Two to three pieces of content. For example, I share a whole lot more on social media on YouTube, all the other platforms on podcasts, right? So the point here is, is that you want get as many eyeballs onto you. But let's just get started first. You want to get momentum. So two to three, if you are cramped on time, just commit to two pieces of content a week. If you have a bit more time, three pieces of content. And you don't need to do this on every platform. Choose the platforms that you know your audience best that would be more interested. So for example, if you are geared towards working professionals or corporates or enterprise, LinkedIn might be the place for you to start putting this content out. If you are in the creator world, if you are in the independent freelance world, maybe X or Twitter or Instagram is your place, right? Also, think about the kind of content that you're creating. Maybe if you are going to be creating videos, then, you know, videos are really popular on places like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. Those are the areas where you can really utilize video to grow your presence and awareness. So just be consistent. Choose two or three pieces of content that you want to share every single week and make it happen. Just make sure you're doing this week after week. So what's the point of all this? Why am I putting out this content? Why are we, you know, putting it out on Instagram? So that we can have all these followers on Instagram so we can have all these subscribers on YouTube. No, we're not here to make clout. We're here to make money. Okay? We want 10 customers. Remember, this is the whole point of this thing. The whole point of this content is to get them interested enough to want to join our email list right now. That's where step two comes in, to convert them to an email list and nurture them on the email list. I believe that email is king and it's one of the best ways to start growing a business. This because email is still a very intimate space in the online world. Right? You can communicate with people on email. With social media, you don't know if your posts are reaching your audience. You hope your stuff is showing up in their feed. But if you really want to start building a good relationship with your audience and build that trust we talked about, email is where it's at because people can't ignore email. People look at their inbox, they either going to archive it, they're going to read it, they're going to open it, they're going to do something with it. They can't just thumb through it like a feed on social media. Okay? So the goal here is to get people on our email list. So say, for example, you're creating a thread on X or Twitter and you're creating this thread at the end of the thread. The call to action. The thing that you want them to do after they read the thread is maybe subscribe to your newsletter or to opt into one of your templates or one of your free guides or ebooks or checklists or whatever it might be, right? The point here is, is you want to give them a value to continue their journey of benefiting from you, getting value from you, but on your email list. So you want to kind of tempt them with something that's valuable. And I like to something that I normally would sell, but I just want to give it away for free. So it's such a high value proposition for them just to give their name and email address. So that's really what you want to do here. So once they're on your email list, you're getting really close now to that 10 customer mark. Why? Because now we know that If I have 500 email subscribers on my list, I can get 10 customers. Right? Because if I'm conservative, 2% of 500 is 10. So at the top of our kind of funnel, we have just social media, free content out there, ungated kind of content, and then from there we want to attract them to our email list. And that's where they come in, right? They come into our email list and maybe they consumed a free guide or a template or a mini course or an email course or whatever it might be so that they're on the email list. And once they're on the email list, what I like to do is I like to nurture them with at least some contact once a week. And this could be your newsletter, right? My email list grew quickly after I started to really take my newsletter seriously. Now I used to, you know, have a newsletter that was kind of like a roundup, and this is what the latest podcast episodes are. And it was all right, it did okay. But then I reshaped my newsletter and thought, how can I make this more valuable? Like super valuable, like people can't wait to open it. And I reshaped my newsletter. And if you're curious, you can go to our website, 100 MBA net and jump on our newsletter. And you could see my weekly newsletter has really taken shape. We have a newsletter that basically helps people change the way they think, change what they do every day, and gives them something to learn or something to kind of consume so they can improve. And my job was really to create a newsletter to get people to the point where they're ready to invest in themselves. Really, that's what we're doing here at the Hundred Dollar MBA is that we want people to feel like, okay, I want to invest in myself so I can get better, so I could build a better business, so I can be financially free. So I wanted to create something super valuable in itself. Even though it's free, the newsletter is free. Why? Because the job of the newsletter here is to build trust and to nurture our audience to get really loving our stuff, get them really feeling like I'm getting a lot of value week after week from this person. Right? Because we're going to talk about the next step when we actually make the sale. But this is really important because the more nurturing we do, the better value or the more valuable value we give them, the more chance we're going to have of converting that. 2% can be 3%, could be 5%. We can really get more people to become customers.
- [11:37]
Sarah
And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts. His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time? He's going for it. Is that his phone? He's snapping a pic. He's texting Ramp. Jim is fast, but this is unheard of. That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.
- [11:58]
Omar Zenhom
On ramp expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text, switch your business to ramp.com.
- [12:10]
Jessica
That'Ll be $52.87.
- [12:12]
Mark
Oh, no. Do I have enough in my bank account to cover that? Oh, please, have enough. Okay, here we go.
- [12:17]
Emily
Does this panic at the register sound familiar? We've all been there. Thankfully, Gotobank's got you covered. That's right. You can get up to $200 in overdraft protection when you use your debit card from Gotobank. Because when you need backup the most your go to's got you tap to open an account today. Opt in required for overdraft protection fees. Terms and conditions apply.
- [12:41]
Omar Zenhom
So a couple action items for you to implement this. Step number one, you want to create something valuable that's a freebie that solves a small but meaningful problem for your audience, like a checklist, like a cheat sheet, like a mini course, an email course, something like that where they can feel like, wow, I got a lot of value from them. And then once you captured their email, give them something regular every single week, like a newsletter that's really valuable in itself, that keeps them loving your stuff and really just waiting for you to sell them something. That's when we get into step three, sell with live webinars. Wow. I've run over 500 webinars in my career in the last decade. And the reason why I've done so many is because they work so well. And I'll explain why and I'll explain how to do it briefly. But the point here is that I now need a sales environment, right? I need a sales transaction. I need a chance to sell my products or services right now. Yes. I can just send an email out to people say, hey, here's my product. If you'd like to buy it, here's a link. And there'll be people who will buy. People love your stuff because they love your newsletter and they love what you give and they love the videos you put out there on social media and all that stuff. But I want to maximize my chance. I only have so many chances to email my customers. And, you know, I can't email every day and say, buy this, buy this, buy this. Every single moment they're going to unsubscribe. So I want to maximize that one moment when I email them and say, hey, I have something for you to buy. So what I like to do is give myself a chance to explain the value of my product or service to them on a live webinar. The reason why live webinars are so powerful is because I can answer questions. I can go back and forth. I can show people how whatever pains and problems they have, my product or service can help them with those pains and problems. And this really increases my conversion rate and gets me more sales, right? I want to maximize the opportunity every time I sell. So basically, a live webinar is a demo, a chance for you to showcase your product and answer any questions. Like I mentioned, it's also an opportunity to connect with your audience in real time so you can build more trust, right? And show them how your product solves their problems, but also how passionate you are about your product, about what you built, about what you've done to get to this point where you're actually saying, hey, I created something for you and you could buy it. So how do I do this whole live webinar thing? Well, it's quite simple. I just invite them to a webinar. I invite my email list, hey, I'm doing a webinar to show you my new product. This is a new product I created. If you're curious about this product and how it helps you do xyz, come to this webinar. Now, the reason why I do this is because I want people to come to the webinar that are interested in buying. I don't mask it and say, hey, free workshop, or we're going to be talking about X, Y, Z. No, I want buyers on the webinar, right? A lot of people do this and they do this, like, switch, where they're like, okay, we're going to teach a topic. And then, by the way, I got a product that really solves this problem, right? I am not really into that. I'm into building trust. I'm really into just telling them, you know, straight out, hey, I'm going to be showing you my product or service. I'm going to show you the value of it. If you're interested in it, they're going to be on that webinar. So what I like to do is I start with that so that they come to my webinar, they come live, or they could watch a replay later and they can learn more about our product or service. And then I make an offer on the webinar and I sell that product or service. Now, not everybody on my email list is going to come on the live webinar, but a high percentage of people on the webinar will buy because they're coming framed. You know, they're coming with the mindset of, I'm coming to check out a product. I'm coming in to see a product I potentially might want to buy. So the action step here is to schedule a live webinar or product demo and invite your email list. Just send them an email and say, hey, I'd like you to come to this live webinar. Here's the time of the day. Click here to attend. You can use several softwares. There's a lot of software out there for webinars. I created a webinar software myself and built it for 10 years and sold it to Proprofs. We just exited just about a year ago. It's called Webinar Ninja if you want to check it out. But you can use any software. Of course, you could use Zoom if you like, whatever you're comfortable with. But the point here is, is that after the webinar, you can also send out the replay to the whole email. As they say, hey, if you couldn't attend live, here is the replay to the webinar. And people can watch the webinar and say, hey, there was a special offer on the webinar. I can extend it to you. Here you go. And that's pretty much it. You just can then remind people what the offer is on the email. And that email alone just maximizes your chances to convert. And you don't need to do this every single day. You can run an offer. You can run this webinar, you know, once every month, once every two months. And you can just make more sales every single time you're looking to make more sales. So it's pretty simple. But just off these three steps, you're going to get your first 10 customers, if not on the webinar, then off the replay or in the Email when people check out the offer. So there you have it. It's simple. This is an effective funnel that has worked for me and you can get your first 10 customers, strangers to buy your and services this way. Now there's a few things I need to kind of just make sure is clear before we wrap up today's episode. Really important stuff. Number one, your product or service has to be valuable, has to be something that's good enough for people to feel like, yes, I need this in my life. This is going to help me solve a pain or problem, right? That's obviously like sort of like a given. But I want to make sure I emphasize that because the better your product is, the easier it is for you to sell it. Okay. Number two, as you can see, this is not like a instant thing. You're going to get 10 customers in 10 seconds. No, this, this is something that we're gonna build trust, build an audience. We're thinking about our long term brand. But also it's not gonna take forever, right? You can start getting your first hundred, 200, 300 email subscribers in a month or two, right? As you're building content, as you're creating good valuable stuff on social media, you know, as you're building your kind of presence online. Now when I was starting from scratch, it took me a little bit of time cause I was an unheard commodity online right when I first got started, you know, 15, 16 years ago. And when I was selling online business online products, you know, it took me about three, four months to get my first 10 customers. But that's okay. I'm refining my product, I'm refining my messaging, right? And then once I got my first 10 customers, it was easier to get my next 10 and my next 20 and my next hundred. Okay, so as you're building, as you're going think that this is just the start. And it's good that it's a little bit slow so you have a chance to improve and iterate as you go along. Remember, this is a numbers game, so stick to the plan. You'll get those 10 customers sooner than you think. Don't forget to download the checklist for this episode. If you're watching on YouTube, it's in the description below. If you're listening to this podcast, go to 100mba.net worksheets and you can grab all our worksheets that we offer that go along with some of our episodes. Thanks for tuning in to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. I'm Omar Zenholm and I'll see you in the next episode.
- [19:36]
Jim
Got a 7am meeting on a Monday? Expensing breakfast because it's in policy, wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.
- [19:56]
Omar Zenhom
Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.