[FHMS]

"Cold call ~20 people who might be good customers."

IMHO this is probably the first! thing you should do. To my own surprise people will give you money for your service even if you don't have a websites (and name, logo, slogan or anything else), and you send your 'product' via email.

And 3 out of 4 ideas don't survive these 20 calls - so you'll save a lot of time if you sell first and build later.

Emotionally that's not easy - of course - but it's what you will be doing all day anyway if it goes well, so why not start early?

[GordonS]

Maybe this is a US thing. Here in the UK, cold calling is illegal (for consumers at least, not 100% sure about businesses), and for a good reason - it's extremely irritating! Anyone cold calling me would go straight on my shit-list.

[FHMS]

I totally agree - we all know of the extremely irritating cold calls. However, in my own experience, if you research the person you are calling well, and follow a few rules of thumb (be genuine, aim for learning) the feedback from people is surprisingly positive! (I'd say maybe 1 out of 10 is a slightly irritated response)

Here (in Germany) it's legal to call businesses.

And also: It doesn't have to be calls - it could also be email or linkedin - and yes! also here it works if genuine.

[GordonS]

Personally, I don't care how well you've researched me before calling me; if I want a solution, I will go looking for it, and cold callers get short shrift.

[mygo]

K, cool nbd.. we'll just move on and call the next person on the list

[killerpopiller]

in Germany it is permitted to cold call B2B (§ 7 (2) Nr.2 UWG) but not cold-email (§ 7 (3) UWG).

[rorygibson]

Cold calling is not illegal in the UK, for either consumer or B2B. There are, however, restrictions. Here's a good summary.

http://www.inbrief.co.uk/consumer-law/cold-calling-and-the-l...

And here are the actual rules:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/electroni...

More abstractly;

I'd be interested to know whether any of the respondents in this thread hold, or have held, genuine management responsibility in a reasonably sized company.

Sales tactics like cold calling work because in business, companies look for advantage or efficiency, and it's entirely reasonable that another company might sell you something that helps; many people are willing to listen to the occasional pitch if it has a chance of making their job easier.

[jpster]

This is very good advice for B2B founders. Groupon is one example of a company that did this as a path to growth. From talking with one of their early salespeople[1], two tactics that worked best for them include:

-build your own lists, don't buy them, and

-get to "no" as quickly as you can -- it will save you time in the long run.

[1] https://www.jenieceprimus.com/5-startup-sales-hacks-from-gro...

[pjc50]

That's extremely surprising to me; I'd have assumed that 19 out of 20 cold calls would be rejected regardless of how good the product is.

[FHMS]

I would think the same if I didn't experience the opposite. To be honest, I would start with an email / linkedin mostly, but even cold cold calls work. I remember doing exclusively cold cold calls for one side project (airbucks.io) - and I got an awkward early ending to the call maybe 1 out of 5 times. Which doesn't faze you much when you've just had a blast for 30 minutes with a potential customer.

[Aeolun]

I guess if it's something that's genuinely interesting, it's the same kind of flattering as if a crew/group of students with a camera accosts you on the street to ask your opinion on something. I'm happy to provide feedback if it comes with no requirement to pay.

[FHMS]

Totally agree! People's willingness to tell you about their thoughts is the N.1 way to get a call started.

Now imagine that group of students opened the conversation with: "I saw you raise your hand in C101 this morning, and thought your question was very interesting. What made you think of that?"

[mrmondo]

Yes this would put me off immediately.

[naturalgradient]

Do you have some examples for this type of service? I understand if someone needs, say, a gardener or cleaner or (if per email) translator, this would work.

[FHMS]

Any type of software development services and business where the end result is some form of data (and you can send it as a spreadsheet) - i think this covers almost anything. On short thought - the only big exception I could find are 2-sided marketplaces.