How to Run a B2B Software Pilot Program and Get Your First Customers

0:00if you have a B2B SAS product and you haven't tested it with customers yet you're you're in the right place today and I'm going to hand things over to Andrew and he can kick things off yeah excited to chat about this I mean obviously as a as a B2B SAS company you have to get your first customer right and we're going to talk about like getting on that path to your first 10 customers like it's hard to think about going to scale and going to 100 customers like unless you've served one and I'm going to share some things that we've learned in working with a lot of

0:26other companies uh early stage startups B2B SAS launching our own that will help kind of guide how you approach building your customer base essentially as you have questions definitely you know drop them in the chat as Jacob mentioned if there's things after today you're watching this definitely reach out would love to would love to hop on a call and chat or just chat over email partner and CEO I've spent a lot of my time here at Headway I'm coming up through product coming up through design and really like Hands-On uh knowledge working inside of startups so excited to share a little bit here some of the things that we've

0:58learned and um I really like this quote I stumbled on recently I don't remember where it's from but it's something that I see a lot in Founders um primarily first-time Founders um but also some second time Founders as well where uh you know as Daniel orston says here the greatest obstacle to this discovery is not ignorance or like the lack of knowledge but it's the illusion of knowledge meaning we think we know what people want we think we know exactly what they need um we think that because you know we may have learned something or have a new opportunity for our B2B SAS a new idea

1:31but because it was true for us it's true for everybody and we just know that that's not true right and so you start to see this separation in the product you create and the solution that's out there and what actual customers need and so the whole goal of you know taking this sort of B2B SAS pilot approach is to get really close to your customers and really understand the problem understand the nuances and figure out how do you go and solve those for those customers and um I think ultimately like here it's trying to you know dive into you know that ignorance in some cases and also

2:06that illusion of knowledge like validate if you're right or you're wrong um being open to um what real customers tell you is going to be really important and so I mean first things first like benefits of a pilot program why would you run one um let's talk about that I think the biggest one is you want to capture motivated early adopters you want people who are willing to try new software right I think a lot of times um to the detriment of of startups you try to seem bigger than you are and that's not necessarily the best thing for your customers and that's not necessarily the

2:39best thing for your pipeline like when you try to appear like your um you have it all together and you don't you will lose trust really really quickly and so um but the benefit there is that you can capture people who are motivated to change who are open to new ways of doing things who want to be involved in shaping that um the other benefit of this is as I mentioned kind of in the intro is developing that deep empathy for the problem like taking what you know and building upon it and shaping it and shaving the edges and not really getting deep into the weeds for the customers

3:11you're serving is is primarily the biggest benefit that you're going to get from it and I think the other part of that is like learning what aspects of the solution hit or miss the mark like where were you wrong where were you right how do you challenge the assumptions around what you think people will do and how you think you're going to change um their behavior I think the the really big goal here obviously as a company is to make money so converting those Pilots into long-term customers and evangelists like early on the pilot program is designed so you can understand how to create benchmarks um in metrics like what's working for

3:46customers now what's not and then as they're using your product like you want to turn those early Pilots into evangelists or case studies through testimonials through things that you can start building proof with um because otherwise you just kind of have there's a gap in trust like if you if you try to act bigger than you are and you try to say that you know you're this huge company that's going to solve all their problems you don't have any proof behind it like no one's going to believe you they're going to go to the places they know or the the brands that they know and then the other benefit here is to

4:18inform the roadmap what's the investment case you know a lot of Founders early on you've raised a pre-seed or a seed round or maybe even bootstrapped and you're trying to get your product into Market you're trying to get your first customer you really have to build evidence and kind of building on that case study strategy that I talked about where you need to put forward the proof that somebody else wants this right you have this vision for it show me that it's real show me that there's a you know the problem is quantifiable and there's people that are willing to um do things a different way and that

4:48ultimately helps you shape what that market opportunity is and so we'll talk a little bit here around just plg versus sales lead growth I mean plg is a Hot Topic these days right it's no surprise um who wouldn't want to kind of be hands off with all of your customers and have them go through the entire product self onboard get the value out of the product tell people about it but the reality is the companies that do that really well especially in B2B SAS have learned that through founder-led sales sales lead growth those sorts of things where they intimately understand the nuances of the journey that they're on or they're

5:26targeted and so specific that um they can do product-led growth successfully I mean like product-led growth ultimately bakes in a ton of assumptions around the context that Prospect is coming from the journey that they're on and like what their ultimate goal is and so I'm sure a lot of people have seen this and this is something that um you know we talk a lot about as we think about the funnel here the pirate model of Engagement metrics going from acquisition and activation um getting referrals getting retention getting Revenue a lot of times with B2B SAS like the recommendation is to move Revenue up to you know right after acquisition

6:06so that basically we're getting people paid and bought into what we're doing um versus trying to offer Something Free and then try to charge them for that later especially in Enterprise B2B SAS you know I'm thinking 500 plus dollars per month you know subscriptions that's usually not going to end well you're going to get people that churn you're going to get kind of a mismatch and expectations there and so what we've seen in this uh with plg people who launch product LED growth out of the gate without serving customers you know serving One customer or 10 customers is you see people that are interested right um and what usually happens here is you

6:43get you know you have a pre-launch page you have your waitlist page and there's this big Allure of what the product could do and there's usually a gap in when you put that pre-launch page up whether that's product hunt or early bird or any of the other early sites and then you have this trailing activation meaning someone might sign up for what you're offering and then two three four months later you send them an email hey it's ready you have access activation is pretty low meaning like the amount of customers that actually sign up and log into your platform get their team invited take whatever action

7:19you consider to be activated on their platform like really Trails off and trickles and so you see this huge bump in acquisition this huge bump in interest not a huge follow-through and that's not because the product's bad it's because like there's so much Nuance in this that you have to build that motivation and so unless you're an expert in behavioral design and designing people you know through a funnel you're going to have a hard time to understand what's actually motivating them and like you know speaking to the value and the messaging and positioning your product in a way where they're ultimately going to be successful and so you know one of the things here

7:56that that's really important is like analytics and product metrics tell us what's happening so you can install Google analytics you can install mixpanel you can install you know intercom whatever you're doing to track the funnel here amplitude is another one um you'll figure out what's happening hey people are signing up they're not actually activating doesn't really give you any intel right it'd be this it'd be very similar to um I think um peep over at winter had this had this comment of like you're pitching to somebody on a website where you can't read their emotions and you can't understand you know their intent and their problems where it's just kind

8:32of a one-way mirror right where you see what the product's doing you don't know why um and so that's why you know early on my recommendation and what I believe in is to to do these sales lead growth motions for pilot programs and those conversations and that that one-on-one time with customers in your Market who are trying to solve the problem you're solving um helps us learn quicker helps us reduce risk and deliver value sooner and ultimately that just means like more people are going to get value out of the product you're offering and more people are going to ultimately you know refer other people you know

9:07um stay customers of the product and that sort of thing because you can start to understand the nuances of your customer I think it's easy to kind of hide behind you know a login and say oh go log in through our platform but if you've tried it you know that that is kind of a Fool's errand in most cases where it seems great it seems like hands off um you have to really develop that empathy and that that level of understanding of your customers where you can bake that into a product-led motion versus starting product LED and then trying to figure out you know why people dropped it's usually reverse so

9:39not against product-led growth I think it's a great growth mechanism for a lot of companies and a lot of companies have done it well but early on if you don't have 10 customers and you haven't served one person that way you really need to get in the weeds and get out of this mindset of you know hey Tech is going to automate my entire job um so here you know the recommendation is at first if you're launching this pilot program it means you don't have any customers yet it means you're trying to you know create a new way of doing things you really need to be Hands-On

10:07with your customers and so that kind of gets into like some high level of you know overview between product LED growth and sales like growth and some of the the core things you get out of it as you look at the pilot program just rules of thumb some of these are good tenants for also sales right and so some of these principles are things that we have in our sales process things that we recommend to other people but they're things where ultimately you're trying to gain the most understanding of the most learning from um from these conversations so one of the things is like never run free pilots

10:43and you know I think there's a there's been a sweeping change across um venture-backed companies now where essentially you know you're going from this huge bet into a profitable company like you can build a profitable company from day one um or cash flow positive maybe is a is the right term um where essentially you can charge people for what you're offering like there is somebody out there especially in that early adopter space where you're a new product that will pay you for incremental value right there was another quote I just heard today I forget um who said it but it was like for you to make a huge impact your idea only

11:22needs to be 10 different or better than what's out there right not not this 10x change like people are willing to pay you for um the results that you can generate and so not running those free Pilots um just to kind of hang on this for a minute means that they're more invested in the process means you try to avoid them signing up for an account and never getting back to saying oh well it's not really a priority it helps you screen people that are really motivated um to to act and that's what you want out of a pilot program like you want to accelerate your learning and you having

11:54them pay is a way for them to get invested in the relationship get some sort of commitment to you where you can actually have some level of expectations for them and we'll talk about that in a minute here one of the other things that's a Cortez like never send new information over email like if you're having a call with a customer saying oh I'm going to send you our our DAC with pricing and everything over early on it just kind of you know it's the same thing I mentioned before it's like sending off that into the abyss and all you get is a yes or no back that

12:25doesn't really help you learn it doesn't help you craft your message it doesn't help you understand the mindset for why they chose no and so the recommendation here is to like always deliver that over a call or a conversation or something where you can try to pull some nuggets and insights out that changes what you do um the other one here is never end a meeting without booking the next meeting we had a sales coach we worked with for many years Scott sambuchi and he kind of coined this but bam fam was uh was the name and so we do it here we recommend it to all of our startups like book a

12:54meeting from a meeting so make sure there's always a you know a bookend uh of a decision or a bookend of a process as you're talking with somebody in the pilot program where you always have that next contact right because the idea is that this is an ongoing relationship it's not something that's transactional hey we talk once you let me know if you need anything we go from there you really have to be the concierge of your product and of your business and you know get in front of that by setting up these regular cadences um the other thing is slow is smooth and smooth as fast a Navy SEAL phrase but

13:25like don't skip parts of the process like especially when you know we get into your first five Pilots when you ultimately are talking to people in your network it's easy for you to skip ahead and say like oh I know you know Jacob from this team like they're for sure going to use it you know he said they were really interested um when you skip parts of the process in Discovery and understanding what their real problems are understanding why or why not they might be a fit for this sort of pilot program you you lose the ammunition you need in that sales process right so when you talk to Jacob

13:57and you say hey Jacob I'm working on this thing and he says that sounds great I'll bring my team to the next call and on that next call you don't have any context of their situation or what they care about or what their goals are or what their struggles are that conversation is going to be really bad right when he brings a full group there and you try to um you know Wrangle that sales process and convince them that this pilot program is right it's hard to speak to the context that they're in um and pull them through and so making sure you don't skip that is really important

14:27um the other thing here is like don't expect customers a self-on-board activate and retain like in most cases um you know product-led growth automates the onboarding and the processes and the questions and the motivation that you're trying to learn in this sales lead growth um there will be customers and we have a customer we're working with now where they sent them the login and they onboarded their entire company to the product right and they're using it day to day but that really isn't an expectation I think that you can have and so taking the other side of that which is hey you really have to be the

15:00Usher and the guide on this journey even as they've already committed to you to bring them in to make sure they're being successful to to really focus on that because like these basics in the beginning days are going to shape how you grow later because it's going to help you understand so much more of the people that you're serving the other thing I'm here is just measure everything so as I mentioned in the product-led growth for satellite growth is like learn what's happening so making sure your product is metered making sure you understand where people are dropping off you have the right event tracking you have the right Journey mapped out and

15:36then understand why like having those conversations is just so important because it helps you build a better case moving forward or understand we're all you know where you're just plain wrong and um I think that is pretty um it's pretty effective because the pilot program isn't to grow and scale and you know you can get a lot of people into the top of that funnel but if everybody drops out it doesn't matter and so making sure that you're designing an experience that provides value and then ultimately helps people get what they need out of it is going to help you make you know better uh better

16:08products um so yeah I guess kind of like talking Next Step here your first five Pilots we talked about you know the titles getting the 10 customers um a milestone is is five kind of on that journey and we'll talk a little bit around that um you know now but I think the biggest thing and there were some questions that were sent in before this is like you know starting in network like there's this notion of um founder market fit that if you're starting I think especially true in B2B SAS if you're starting a product that is serving a specific Enterprise a specific type of company and you don't have

16:44expertise in that it's going to be a very long journey for you um and I've seen a lot of Founders early on try to create new Innovations and spaces that they're not involved in and that's not necessarily the bad thing the bad thing is when you don't like you can't name your first two three five ten customers and say like oh I think they would give me some really good insights and learning and I'd be able to kind of hone my message there and um you also don't have the capital to be able to go infinitely right so if you think about like Elon Musk or you think

17:16about Apple or you think about some of these companies that take these really big swings they have the ability to enter new markets and build up expertise in that over a series of three five ten years and so ultimately like being able to name your first customers and have those conversations helps you cut your teeth and then also like the idea there is that you're able to ultimately build better case studies and Pilots um there I think the other thing if you've read if you've been in sales you may have heard of 100 million dollar offers a big proponent of that is or a big component of that is like scarcity

17:52and urgency and so when you start a pilot program and you're you're pitching as if you're this big dog you want to compete with you know the who's who in the industry they're going to compare you as that right if you're able to create a pilot program where you're limiting to three to five customers and you say hey we have this pilot program um we're a brand new startup we're looking to change the way we're doing through X again you're looking for early adopters that are willing to enter this type of Engagement um you can say we only have three people that we can onboard in this next quarter

18:22as part of this pilot program there's all of a sudden scarcity and there's urgency you know and and the thing that you come on the back of and you promise is that level of support which kind of goes into like you know not hiding what that the product is new that it's just getting started use it as a benefit and as a feature of working with you is that they get the opportunity to help shape where this goes and they get this Tech enabled service which is the customer success calls you're going to have with them the understanding and really Hands-On approach that you're going to

18:53take to help them make sure that they're being successful in the product and shape the roadmap you know going forward um and so as I mentioned before focus on providing a tech enabled service like a lot of Founders still fall into this this trap where if I'm giving them a log into software that login has to do everything like you can send them an invoice stripe through QuickBooks especially early on when you have you know even 5 10 50 customers you can set up recurring billing really easy outside of the platform a good example of this is you know understanding um you know Zoom was a good example like

19:30they had their pricing based on um and this this happened to us they had their pricing based on storage where ultimately um they had no governance model inside the platform to price for that and so their reps hit us up directly and said hey if you want the storage let's hop on a call and we can you know we can get that um organized um so understanding that like there are going to be these edges where if you wait for them to be in the product it's probably too late or you're going to spend a lot more money in time investment to get to that point

20:03um the other thing for those Pilots is like setting up these this regular Cadence and commitment for both parties like if you're signing in a pilot agreement with somebody there's a price that they're paying um it's probably a discounted price at that right or maybe your early pricing you don't have to call it a discount say hey this is our you know early stage pilot program pricing here's what that looks like um but getting a commitment from them where you get the learning that you need to hone the product and you get the time from them that ultimately helps you change your product over time through

20:34the insights that they're providing I think is really important um you know looking over now to like pilot sales I think the biggest thing like we talked about getting your first five Pilots some core tenants there um like in Pilot sales like understanding what today's look like look like sorry it looks like is really important and that all has to do with like qualifying who they are and what they do I think early on it can be very attractive for early for first time Founders and even Founders that have served people before to try and take on you know they squint a little bit and say like oh I think our

21:10product fits what they do right and you try to get this early Revenue that maybe isn't going to provide you the right feedback that you need you're right and you're trying to combine the vision of that you have of the future and also like what does today look like um so understanding those benchmarks um for the tools that they're using the processes what's the current state of performance like what are you trying to change and then how does that make them feel I think like understanding that will give you the ammo you need in that sales process but then also um as you move into those those real

21:42Pilots being able to um to Benchmark against that right so setting matches of success of like hey it was a 50 bump in this and that helps you go from kind of this you know list of logos and companies to a list of uh benchmarks and absolutes where you say hey we're going to improve them by 50 but in reality we really want to get them to 800 based on this absolute Loop Benchmark or this kind of North Star Vision we have for the outcomes we can generate for them um and then I think the big thing is setting the right expectations as I said in the pilot like

22:16trying to hide that you're a that you're a fully buttoned up operational company that's digital that is ready to scale is setting the wrong expectation for you because you're going to be stressed behind the scenes trying to keep this facade going on um and it's also the wrong expectation for them because they're going to hold you to that standard instead flip the script and try to provide more value through services and through your time and through understanding and digging into their needs and then try to augment and change the road map where it makes sense to provide that value to them versus them thinking it's TurnKey they

22:51just hop in and they get exactly what they need so much of it is is about setting the right expectations and so I think the other um the other part of you know great pilot sales there is guiding the process and sharing and implementation timeline a lot of times in B2B and Enterprise depending on who you're selling into you can get really bogged down with all the steps to go from somebody said yes to now like you can start activating them on your platform and the clearer you are about those needs the better and so I pulled up an example of an implementation process here of of one of

23:24the tools that we've worked on over the years just as an example to share of like you know um the worst thing that you could do is get a yes from somebody and not know what's next and early on you might have to learn this and so when you know people or you create this early on relationship with with folks that are trying to adopt it you can start talking about future pacings is kind of what we call it where you understand more of what's next who who all needs to get involved from a Personnel standpoint what sort of legal agreements need to be in place and if you're in healthcare

23:54it's different if you're in fintech it's different if you're you know just Enterprise B2B SAS utility or dashboards things like that it's going to be a little bit different but understanding what that timeline looks like and being able to put that forward and this will always change and adapt but I feel it's been really beneficial in the startup set we've been involved in to be able to propose a path forward and then this ultimately you know two weeks might not be realistic but this then on helps you inform your pipeline if you're depending on pilot sales to keep things going um where maybe they're like hey this

24:30looks great like this business in legal you know these sorts of things we don't think these are going to be able to be completed for four weeks and here's why and that starts to help you create a better vision of your financial forecasts your roadmap and then also helps you challenge that and say like why like what is it about this that makes it difficult is it their procurement process if so can I get a call with procurement and understand how we might expedite this or understand what they might need from us that would help you know move it forward faster those sorts of things and creating kind

25:00of a template for future pacing helps you guide that conversation and that process where maybe you don't have it all together but you know what you need to have coming up um you know and so some of that early on you might not have but as you get into you know the additional Pilots as people start with you you're building this kind of implementation process and plan that helps them uh your guide and then I'm going to talk a little bit about just kind of ongoing call structure here um you know I think like a 30-minute structure typically works pretty well and this could be every two weeks

25:33depending on your product or this could be every month I I think even a month gets too long in the early stage you might you may want to do every one to two weeks um depending on the level of involvement folks uh have from both your team and then also from your customers like is it a daily user if so you might want to do weekly is it a weekly use you might want to do bi-weekly or you know every three weeks just figure out the red Cadence but having an opportunity to kind of build rapport catch up understand you know who they are you know ultimately you're building a

26:05relationship with them in this pilot it's not transactional usually it's usually this ongoing thing where they see the potential in you and your idea and you're trying to you know also sew back into that reviewing the latest metrics and um and feedback I think is really important and we have a different subset which maybe Jacob can link here around our ready to scale series which um kind of brings up more op options and opportunities here to talk about like customers are joining you with a context like what they're coming from the benchmarks what they're running away from all those things and a promise of what you could offer ultimately to try

26:43to get to an outcome and so when we talk about reviewing the latest metrics and feedback understanding where customers are on this timeline is going to be really important so it doesn't have to be automated it doesn't have to be an amplitude you could take this and you know label this label this sheet up as you wanted to but ultimately like covering it up and like what's onboarding and activating what's the core value they get and like where are you just supporting where they've already reached that aha moment and they're in that everyday usage um so for here a good example is like in onboarding like understanding if you

27:16sent an email out to to somebody who agreed to be on a pilot and you walk through implementation um and they didn't sign up like that's definitely a problem right so it's like either the problem's not big enough uh the Pain's not real enough it's not a big enough priority for them and understanding that like going through this process is something that you're going to have to understand that each pilot in your program you should try to intimately Benchmark like where they are in this process and these are just examples here um but in onboarding like understand like where's the magic moment and where are you trying to

27:53um get them to for them to go like yes like we're going to use this with you know the first project that we have and then like if this goes well we're going to onboard all the other projects and like fully adopt this you know going forward um but you know on going into those meetings with those early stage Pilots it could be a representation of this value you know of this journey that they're on and where they are where they're getting hung up um it could also be you know a scorecard that understands like hey how many projects did they create how many folks from their team were on board how many

28:24things that you can quantify to talk about like what's the expectation and you know if they said they were going to onboard 10 folks from their cust from their team and only three people had joined like let's figure out why the invites were sent but they didn't really know what it was so maybe we need to introduce a call right and really you're trying to figure out like what's what are the results from the journey today and then how do we update that Journey how do we introduce a new call or a service uh touch point or onboarding call or things or maybe it's something about the product where we

28:56have to speak to each user type based on their role and maybe we have to capture that in onboarding and um the insights that that you get from this would be really important and so bringing those back where you can identify those key areas to support and improve I think are really important um because it'd be it'd be very difficult to go into a customer success call or a pilot success call and not know what they did on the platform what feedback they submitted and what actions like they actually you know got through success um successfully or completed um the other thing is like 10 minutes to

29:31share upcoming improvements and releases so this is kind of where um that we talked about on another call as well but like continuous impact like understanding where in this process they're getting hung up and then sharing what you're going to do to overcome that that could be through software release it could be through a service touch point or like a new workshop it could be through you doing the onboarding for them to a certain point and doing all the integration from their old data um but sharing that and being able to get that feedback from customers early on is really important then the next step is like closing that

30:03out so what what's the next step here scheduling a deep dive if needed and so a lot of times you might have a a pilot structure where you're meeting with maybe two two people from a potential client every two weeks you may want a deep diver there may be there may be a problem that came up of like oh we actually can't you know we can't fully onboard to that because we don't have that data or because procurement doesn't allow us to export XYZ like you probably need to schedule a deep dive to understand more of the Nuance around that and like what challenges that specific thing has so then you can bring

30:35into your process here and um you know which kind of comes back to the continuous impact Loop stuff that we talked about I'm just going to share this very briefly But ultimately like the whole goal of this is dual track agile or whatever you want to call it but discovering what we should build and then delivering it successfully and measuring the impact is really kind of the core tenets of this model but in this you know coming back to the um to the funnel example this problem of activation where let's say you've a pilot agreed to join they signed the contract they gave you all you needed

31:07from a legal perspective they started they're not onboarding their people appropriately or the invites were sent but nobody set them up right so what's the um you need to improve that metric here and so what you would do is to go through these Loops you would say all right we're going to explore so we're going to talk to our customer that's kind of uh part of this doing customer interviews we're going to look at the data and the performance on the platform that's those metrics then we're going to say like what can we do to improve this and that's part of you know the process I mentioned above but then you get these

31:37Solutions designed and so the things that you're coming back to them with in these later stages um in those meetings or deep Dives or like sharing prototypes sharing potential Solutions once you're understanding what the problem is and then you could even go as far as doing user testing with with the Prototype where you're using maybe a sigma or something they can click through to understand more perception of where things are if it's a brand new feature if it's a brand new capability those sorts of things and usually early on for these Pilots this pilot delivery is where a lot of people stay where it's like experiment design and build you

32:10probably don't have a lot of feature Flags um kind of built up here where you're limiting that release it's probably releasing it to everybody but you're being able to measure the data and analytics of how things go and so by isolating where people are getting stuck in the product and in the journey you can then bring it down and start to focus on it and I think one of the things that a lot of people talk about like should I focus on acquisition or retention and usually the answer is both but um the biggest thing is like understanding which one takes priority like retention is going to be really important

32:45um but if you activate people the right way and you acquire through this sort of model in this kind of B2B um sales LED motion we find that a lot more people will will build that loyalty where you're trying to solve their problems more specifically you're really understanding where they're coming from and so um it's kind of the basis of what uh of what we have kind of to cover today in creating these pilot programs just some things that we've learned over the years of helping run these helping coach these and um things you know areas we see a lot of companies falter in by you know

33:20having this notion that plg is going to work out of the gate it's usually an evolution of what they do or they start product-led growth with a really low price point and then grow into sales lead either way I think like having access to early customers being able to have those conversations as you need you know when things uh come up or new ideas come up um and then being able to steer the roadmap based on needs is really important there's other things that we've talked about I think Jacob um added it uh in the in the comments there is ready to scale where as you go back into you know some of

33:53these customers like you might get a customer that's really big because you knew somebody and they were successful and you launch with somebody who's maybe an earlier Siege company with a team of 15 and you find that it's like really hard to activate them and they don't actually get the value and you find someone in the middle As you move forward Beyond these 10 Pilots into a hundred or Beyond you're most likely going to be going at a seed raise or a you know a series a round race where you're going to have to answer like where your growth is coming from and so if you start these pilot

34:24programs from day one with the right benchmarks with the right understanding of metrics and kind of where they are in these Journeys along with this context of hey what what's the makeup of their company what are they using today you can start to build a better guess so to speak of where your growth is going to come from and how that aligns with the vision of the company so they could all be different customer types hiring your product for the same thing um but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to grow with them and so there's more details there in that series that that Jacob showed goes a

34:55little bit deeper but um yeah I guess we'll we'll kind of wrap that up and then open to uh to questions before we jump into some of the questions that we got I love how you kind of mentioned like hey sometimes if you focus on product blood growth first you might end up finding that you don't really have any Clarity because you don't really know the those customers that well so it's like going to be almost like almost it almost creates like more chaos to start with plg for B2B SAS instead of like manually one by one getting each person in actually understanding who they are who who on

35:26their team is buying even because the first person you reach out to might not actually be the user or the buyer oh yeah like my team could use it next thing you know you're talking to somebody else so it's like that's where it gets really interesting is like you need that like qualitative data in the beginning like a lot and I think it's harder to do that with plg because plg is so passive uh like right you're not like engaging with them having conversations with them sure you can do surveys but they that's still even such a passive and can be a very misleading thing um I know it's something that Rob

35:55and Ryan talked about the other year uh how like surveys can be really great if you have the qualitative data to back it up so I always think of surveys as like a secondary thing to just say hey we're gonna do we're gonna double check at a larger scale to see if this is really true based on this qualitative research which is which is really really great way to do it um awesome so I'm going to go into this first one uh best strategies to pre-sell so like you know what in what have you seen in your experience to get people interested get those conversations rolling all that

36:28kind of stuff I know you covered some of that here but what what have you experienced personally yeah I mean I always like the better you can visualize the value most in most cases that's through a prototype and like demonstrate so like understand what they need obviously like you have to understand the problem that you're solving showing the journey they're on and like what it's going to unlock is really important we've done this with a lot of companies both Innovation teams creating new things in the market and then also for um you know early stage startups where you have to build you can't just tell someone what you're

37:00going to do if you show them and give them a you know A visual representation of the value they're going to get from it like selling on prototypes can be really effective and there can be two approaches to that right like getting a letter of intent which means hey we're not signing a contract today but we're saying hey we're really interested in this we'll give you some ammo um to be able to go and you know help you raise funding ultimately um signing a contract is always great but it can be a little bit hazy and hard to do because the of the caveats right like you may not if you're in that stage

37:31and you need to raise money you may not be able to get there um and I think you know I guess I would urge to be to be clear about to be clear about that um you know getting a contract signed for a future date of hey we're going to start this pilot in in three months and here's what we're gonna do in between and kind of make sure that you're having the right Cadence with them along the journey will be really important but the other part of you know pre-selling and Enterprise product um is like you know I I mentioned like talking to people you know like having that founder

38:04market fit is really important um if somebody called you up out of nowhere and they just presented you a prototype it would have to be a really compelling case study for you to be like yeah like keep me in mind right you'd have to have a unique Insight or a certain leverage or some level of understanding that goes beyond just like Hey we're gonna make it this a little bit better um and so when you have those kind of allies in customers that know you trust you personally those sorts of things and are able to see the vision you're on and and be open to shaping that like it's a

38:34really good mix for early stage products um one of the other ways we sold is yeah through as I mentioned through prototypes where um you're getting buy-in from a dual-sided market right and so being able to I'm trying to avoid talking about the specific customer but being able to talk to both sides of the marketplace um especially if you have a Marketplace play and getting a alignment is is important so it's kind of few different variations here right if you're selling to one company and one business and um that has its own complexities right all the things we've talked about but if you're doing a Marketplace play where

39:11you have to get buy-in from two or three of the different players in the marketplace it's a longer Journey for sure um and I think like teasing at the opposite sides of those marketplaces or talk a little bit about um Marketplace Dynamics I'm trying to think which open Office hours it was but making sure you're like picking the right one that's kind of the linchpin of um you know of that Marketplace is important like which one drives growth and drives the other which part of Supply which part is demand and how do you get in the right you know the right effects of both but um yeah pre-selling definitely highly

39:46recommend um even for anybody that has the funds to you know go and build their own products from you know from day one yeah and actually this kind of goes to the question of um Nicole asked about pricing like how do you figure out what to charge people for this kind of like first version or this first experience even if it's not fully like fleshed out like yeah your thoughts on that yeah I mean it the answer is always it depends but I think like understanding what else is available in the market and like doing is some pricing um Dynamics and pricing understanding of like how else are people solving are

40:22solving this problem um the more Niche you are the higher you can price right so if you were if your notion anyone can use you for anything right but if you were a tool for B2B SAS companies that helps you you know with all these specific insights that helps you operationalize your Wiki and has you know AI on top of and all these things that get more and more specific like layers of the onion you can charge more and so I think understanding how segmented your your product is is one aspect to that what are the other options in the market and then um you know landing on a price that that

40:57feels right I think part of it I say feels right um in the sense that like doing some price testing in those conversations right versus like if you were just doing plg and somebody had to put their card in for the price you don't understand if it's higher low you just know they didn't buy and so I think like understanding you know that sort that sort of pricing is important and we might recommend what we would do in in our situations is like simulated shopping where essentially you would come up with an option um in a series of questions that help the prospect understand the value you're

41:30looking to provide and then ask them like hey now that you've seen this like what do you think this is similar to and you start to get some of that qualitative data like oh you know people might assimilate your product to something that is like a consumer product like oh this is just like notion and in that they start to say oh maybe like ten dollars a user right and you're like oh well maybe not what I was thinking or they might compare you to this really Enterprise tool and so understanding maybe um what the market is bearing now across what they're using and what how they

42:03would compare your product to other things out there is a good way to understand like where do they see this in the value chain is it just a utility or is it like a core part of their operations um you know and I think uh Nicole knowing your situation maybe a little bit better than other folks on this call is like understanding like what the cost is today right so doing some value studies if you're trying to change the um the narrative on on pricing is like undercutting what they're charging today by being software enabled or by being you know Tech enabled like how is this changing and

42:36improving and um those sorts of things so kind of a long-winded answer but there's a few different ways yeah sure you kind of answered this other comment because uh this person asked um about pitching and comparing to competitors but I think like the one thing with this question is like you made a good point of like sometimes you assume what the competitors are yourself but like I think it's good for them to naturally without creating a bias in their head already of what this thing is like let them decide what it is on their own and then it'll be like Oh I thought it was a competitor to this but

43:08actually they think it's a competitor to this or it's similar to this um which is really interesting so um so hopefully that helped answer your answer your question um unsuke like like I think it's good to go in with like so there's a there's a Android brought up a term called simulated shopping uh Alan I don't remember his last name uh uh Clement yes Alan Clement has this uh technique called simulated shopping so if you want to look it up we actually have uh on our YouTube channel under exploring product we have assimilated shopping interview with him like or he talks through the whole process so if

43:45you want to check that out on the channel uh I'll link it in the comments and stuff in a bit but yeah that was a really good I think because it's like hey I can set up these programs you want people to pay for it what should I make people pay for before it's like a fully fleshed out thing so yeah and there's also like you know if you get customers paying early on um and you have these three to five people there's also um trying to think of profitwell is the company and like Patrick Campbell they have a lot of really good stuff on their site on

44:12called willingness to pay and it helps you like app you know as you're running Pilot pricing to evaluate and even as you continue on like to grow is like evaluating what the value is someone's getting and what their perception of price is right and so they try to ask a few different ways not like hey would you pay this price but it's like at what point would you consider this to be too much for the value you're getting or for your perception and so there's a bunch of really good stuff there on pricing uh I guess pricing Dynamics and pricing psychology around like one you have to

44:44establish a price early on and then two um you know how do you think about increasing your price over time I just dropping the link there in uh YouTube and Linkedin the uh tuxo Valley propositions and willingness to pay good stuff awesome

45:10I'm trying to think oh uh before we get to the other kind of other wrap-up questions this one was interesting I don't know if you have any other examples of implementation timelines and steps um but I know that I know Andrew you've been thinking about um diving deeper into like B2B SAS pilot programs and like uh considering like a guide or a course or something so I don't know if you have anything to share today on this one yeah um none that I can share unfortunately they're all you know either for clients or partners and stuff and that other one was kind of a unique um from a while

45:41back so I was able to share it but I think like um it's gonna depend on what what you need to get you know to get up to speed and I think you know one of the things that we didn't really mention here is like if it is a true Enterprise sale uh you mentioned a little bit Jacob like you probably have multiple buyers you probably have a technical buyer a user buyer product Champion then an economic buyer who makes a financial decision and that'll impact you know if you're going you know straight Enterprise like that'll impact how you can you know get into those processes I think the biggest thing um

46:12that's a risk here that's related to implementation timeline and steps is like sometimes a sales cycle can be so long it's a detrimental risk to the business model meaning you could get a yes but if it takes a year to get approved through legal or six months like you got to start building today right and so um I think that's one to be really mindful of that I've seen by a lot of people is like being able to get commitments and for them to see the value but then implementation and timelines being so long and so drawn out that it's hard for you to survive and so

46:44I think like balancing that with raising uh is really important and um because you know it's a tricky art I think yeah all right jump back over here we already talked about sales lead growth versus product flood growth um as far as starting but this one was kind of interesting and I I feel like we kind of touched on this but you know how do you get those initial I thought of hundreds a lot like we you know this whole conversation is about like how do we start with three to five ten like really small numbers um but what do you get yeah what are your thoughts on like people doing like

47:18DMS or Outreach or ads on LinkedIn to get to get those first handful of people um and if they do that like what should they be considering when they do it yeah I mean you definitely can I think software is a little bit different right I think the you know if if you can think about a time where maybe somebody sent an ad to you for a pre-launch product they wanted you to be a part of their you know their pilot program like I think it depends how you position that and really what you're trying to you know to do if it's 100 beta users I think like

47:52I don't know I mean I I always think you know back to our other thing like slow is smooth and smooth as fast um it'd be very it'd be a shame to get you know to turn marketing dollars on and to get all this traffic into the funnel and then not be able to keep customers right and so like where you see them drop off hey we have a lot of acquisition we got our initial 100 users kind of as I showed in that example but um no one stays around or we don't solve it in the right way and so when I think about scaling like you could build up a

48:25wait list um still and you can get 100 beta users through different you know communities getting involved in where your customers are you know different forums um different industry communities things like that is always good but having that wait list you know probably with a screener is what what I would recommend there where maybe you have 100 people um you're looking for people with specific characteristics they want you know specific volume that you're trying to solve screen them a little bit and then try to pull them into those pilot conversations so what I would recommend so they're still there they're still kind of acquired but um turning on the product for all of

49:00them before you've even proven that you can get one kind of to value and to stay and to stick um it can be a little bit distraction where you're trying to focus full funnel and really haven't provided that value so but yeah I mean there's a lot of stuff out there on you know building an audience like building an audience is never bad I just think like when you're starting to pull them into a pilot program um the smaller the better at first so you can really learn and focus and go deep with those customers three to five was the example I mean if you have a

49:30bigger team or founding team maybe you have 10 and you divide those up but then you get the insights you need to then turn on you know marketing for 100 beta users and things like that yeah you know it is interesting because like you could spend time you know like you were talking about building an audience publishing on LinkedIn talking about the problem that your product is solving saying hey I understand it here's ways you can solve it you know maybe once in a while you know it's like an 80 20 like 80 of time you're just talking about how to be helpful 20 of the time you bring up like Hey we're

50:02actually working on this new product if you want to be part of this pilot program shoot me a DM yeah there's some of that stuff obviously you can do like you know cold Outreach and Linkedin as well hey I'm working on this new program but to be honest like half the time when I get those DMS I'm like hey I don't have time for this right now you need like that um there needs to be that natural um I don't know if it would be push or pull from this perspective but like that person has to like feel that pain already a lot and and your content can

50:29kind of like create that and if they're reaching out to you about interest in the program like that's a better thing than you going out to them and say hey I have this thing yeah it seems interesting that's not the right you know like that's probably not the right person like like curiosity can almost like because even you know even with with us like when we do these live streams like people are just curious a lot of like what we talk about they're not always the right fit to work with us or whatever and that's totally okay when it comes like these pilot programs you need to make sure these are the people

50:56that feel the most pain feel it today right and like and are genuinely interested in like for helping you form this product to be super helpful to them so that's kind of that's how I think about it like of course you can like scalability is always like the sexy thing like oh get out you know 100 customers get all this going have all the brand going like all these different things um but ultimately like if you're not actually providing value to somebody and helping them like relieve a pain point in their life in their business or whatever with their team like it just doesn't matter like how much brand you

51:28have like it's just like if there's no no one paying you to do it it doesn't matter so yeah the only the only thing I would add here as far as like you know how to get your initial 100 bid users like obviously start smaller and build that those case studies and that proof that we talked about that helps you maybe share your learnings as you're working with them or share the opportunities you see or the problems that they're having you know you can speaking to that can be really effective and kind of establishes you as a um as a de facto like leader in that

51:55space you know expert like you're working on kind of serving that market um but if you look at like um Brian Balfour is like four fits like this would all be like Channel like where are your customers hanging out out um and then how does that you know match with your offer you know it's not just product Market fit it's product Market Channel business model fit which is like pricing like all of that stuff coalescing together into like the value prop you have and so um you know I think for most B2B customers minus like construction or if you know small mom and pop trucking companies or

52:29things like that are probably pretty active on LinkedIn so I think a good place to start but you know owning a staking your claim in a in an area that you're building in I think is always good in building that audience it's just how many people do you let into that pilot program is kind of the next question If You're Building Products um that's how complex it is right if it's a utility you might be able to learn pretty quickly and within a month of your pilot program roll it out but if you're really Enterprise um you might need two three months to really hone four months to really hone

52:58and work with those early customers before you're ready to to open the doors yeah well cool I don't see any more questions uh and I don't have any more left from the folks that share their questions before we started today um but I think we can wrap things up I think it was a good chat we covered a lot of ground I feel like because I think there is a lot to doing these things and doing them well and making sure that you're getting the answers you need um asking yourself the right questions as you're doing these things so uh thanks AJ for putting all these kind of

53:27notes and slides together I I hope everyone got some value out of it I I learned a little bit of something today even though I work with you uh day to day so it's always good to have this opportunity to learn from you again um do you have anything else you want to share otherwise we can kind of wrap things up yeah nothing I mean if you have questions you know reach out I'm sure there's a lot of you know a lot of this stuff is very similar and so you know there's nothing new that that really that we've talked about that isn't um in you know nuggets in other places

53:55and so the I think the resources Jacob mentioned um you'll see aspects of this throughout it and really it's one one cohesive whole and that's kind of our unique perspective at Headway being a full product team is like we get the experience of you know bringing these products to Market product strategy management design engineering product marketing like all those things we kind of get this unique perspective of onboarding not just hate can we build a great product it's like how do you get that product to Market how do you get people to care about it how do you build more understanding for the people you're serving and that sort of thing so

54:27hopefully yeah it's valuable if you have specific questions reach out and yeah thanks again for tuning in yeah I'll just share this link one more time if you go to headway.io resources we have all the videos that we kind of referenced today in the presentation or in there there's other stuff for if you work with designers um or developers there's resources in there we have different templates and figma we have some eBooks and stuff like that on like the Moscow process like prioritizing what features you build next all that kind of stuff and if you have any questions you know after watching this you know if you're watching on YouTube

54:57or on the LinkedIn recording um just drop drop a comment or just head our website and just uh shoot us a uh a question in the contact form or book a call we're happy to help you figure figure this out so um yeah thanks again everybody and have a great day