Your First 5 Customers Are Waiting: Here's How to Find Them

If you're watching this video, I'm guessing you've just started up a new business and you've got this wonderful idea. And the next task is you've got to go out and find some clients. So I'm going to go through my step-by-step process on how to find your first 5 customers for your business. Now, it's true, we do live in an internet-generated world, the global marketplace at your fingertips thanks to the World Wide Web. And it does mean that you can set up a business anywhere on this amazing planet that we live on and also get customers from any of the 250+ countries around the globe. However, that does present some challenges. It does introduce an awful lot of confusion for many business owners, especially when they're first starting out, because they don't really know whether they should be getting a website done or doing their branding or going on to LinkedIn or Twitter/X or putting themselves out there on Facebook, or should they be doing some advertising or maybe writing a book or doing a podcast tour. So there's a million and one different things which you can do in order to get clients, but like I said, it's an incredibly confusing place So I'm going to give you some of my tried and trusted ways of reaching out and meeting new people who may indeed eventually become customers for your new business. The first way though is to actually get out and meet people in real life. Yes, it's super easy to sit on the other side of a computer screen and do Zoom calls and things like that, but actually you cannot beat meeting somebody face to face, shaking their hand, looking into the whites of their eyes, taking a selfie with them as well, and having a conversation with them over a cup of coffee. It's really, really important as well for your mental health to be able to out and about and meet people and have conversations. That's how relationships are formed, and it means that you can get immediate feedback from that person who sat across the table from you, because body language, tonality, pacing, and energy are hugely important when it comes to figuring out whether you want to go ahead and work with somebody or not. So I massively recommend finding some local networking groups in your area where there are lots of business owners who are all trying to meet up for the same reasons. One, because they just want to be social and meet some people, but also because genuinely they They also want to do some business as well. When you get out there, don't be overtly salesy because that will put people off. Just be your friendly, fun, vibrant self, and they will— people will start to gravitate towards you, and hopefully that will initiate that first part of the conversation. I always say to people, there's 3 numbers you need to remember: 7, 11, 4. 7 hours of engagement across 11 different touchpoints in 4 different locations. So a quick DM outreach on LinkedIn and maybe an email or 2 There's very little engagement there. There's very little ways of building trust with somebody. Google suggested that it takes 7 hours of somebody spending time with your brand and your business before they have enough trust and faith in you to buy your product or service. So we want to make sure that if you go out and meet somebody at a networking meeting, sit down and have a discussion with them if you're able to. Make sure you take some resources, assets with you. Like, if you have one, a book would be the ultimate one, but I'm guessing if you started out you haven't. But maybe a simple brochure or even just a business card is another little touchpoint to give somebody. Or a printed notepad, or some pens, or something like that. So leave them with a gift, it's another extra touchpoint. But also, be intentional, make sure when you have that conversation at a networking meeting, why don't you actually set up a meeting for a coffee on a one-to-one basis after that? Because spending 30 minutes or an hour with somebody over coffee is a huge chunk of that 7 hours of engagement. Of course, it's another touchpoint. You could also, in the meantime, send them your LinkedIn and connect with them there. You could send them some other resources, maybe if you've got your own YouTube channel, you could send them some videos. So you're introducing more engagement and more touchpoints as you go through the process. But definitely get out and meet people. If you don't want to do cheesy networking meetings where you have to stand up and do a 60-second pitch and force referrals, well, maybe book yourself onto a conference or 2 where you know there's going to be large numbers of people there who are similar to you, similar business owners, and start discussions and conversations there. But again, don't show up to those events and just be a passenger sat in the audience in the back row. Make sure you get involved, make sure you speak to people, make sure you sit at the front row. And if you can, why don't you go and speak to the person maybe who's up on stage or the organisers of the event and get to know them? Now you're on their radar as well. The second way to get your first 5 customers is through referrals. I haven't come across many business owners who don't have some kind of a network of connections already pre-built. So typically the most common one is LinkedIn. I can guarantee that your first 5 customers, you probably already know them. So it's really worthwhile digging into your black book of contacts, whether that be on LinkedIn or connections on Facebook or just in your, you know, the school dads or mums, for example, or just people who you already know may be really interested in knowing a bit more about the products or services which you're thinking about selling. So I would just get out there, speak to those people, and always finish the conversation with, hey, listen, maybe if this isn't for you, perhaps you know somebody similar to you who might enjoy my product or service. Would you be open to making an introduction between the two of us? So go out and proactively ask for referrals. It is so, so important. Most of my business which I get comes from some form of referral. It's through partners which I've got, it's through existing clients, It's through other associate— other associations which I've created from a coaching perspective. I rarely have to go out and market myself these days, which might sound counterintuitive because obviously I'm here making this video now for you. I do this because I get to do it, not necessarily because I have to. This is fun for me, albeit challenging. It's a great way to reach a new audience as well. But typically I would suggest 80 to 90% of my new inquiries typically tend to come from referrals. So it's a really powerful source of getting new customers. The next thing that you might want to think about once you've started these conversations is to introduce some kind of an unrefusable offer. Quite often with new businesses that maybe don't have the reviews or the case studies or testimonials when they're working with clients, they are very good at doing what they do, but they're not able to convey that message to somebody and elicit a lot— enough trust from them to want to purchase from you in that, that initial conversation. So one of the things you want to do, create an irresistible offer, some kind of unrefusable offer that they can't really turn down. So here's a couple of examples for you which I hope will give you a bit of a starting point. And By all means, if you're stuck a little bit around what your unrefusable offer might be, pop a question into the comments below this video and I'll make sure that I give you a bit of feedback on your unrefusable offer and we can create one for you. So here's a couple of examples. Perhaps if you're a website designer, you might— your unrefusable offer might be something along the lines of doing a website audit to see what the— how good the SEO is on somebody's website. You might do that for free, gift them the report. They can take that report and if they want to, they can book in a follow-up call with you. You could probably run off maybe 5 or 10 of those reports per day. Just going around local businesses saying, hey, would it be okay if I did a review of your website? I'll send you a free report. It's up to you whether you want to have a call with me afterwards or not, or you can just take this report and make your website better. And you can get some warm and fuzzies there from giving something back into your local business community and helping some people out. Another example might be if you're an email marketer or a copywriter, you might choose to write 1, 2, or 3 emails for free which somebody can test out in their list. Now, most of you will realize, hopefully, that when you work with an email copywriter, they typically have a whole suite of swipe files, and they'll just taken the emails which they feel are most appropriate to your business, and they're all templated, and they'll just swap in the relevant bits of content in that align with your business. So if you're thinking about doing email marketing copywriting, well, it's a relatively quick process once you've got those swipe files put together to build out a mini sequence of 3 emails. And in actual fact, this happened to me. An email copywriter approached me, and she had 3 emails pre-templated. She didn't even ask for permission, but the emails looked great. I ran them on my list, I got a good amount of feedback from those initial 3 emails, and I went on to buy a package of emails from her after that. And ultimately, some of those emails which are now in my sequence on Email Octopus, which is the CRM I use, they're still in that nurture sequence to this day. So that process worked on me. I'm sure you could probably come up with something which works for you. Another option, if you're running a coaching practice like I do, for example, and I know a lot of coaches watch this channel, you could offer a free coaching session. It's kind of an unrefusable offer. Why would somebody not not want to take you up on that if it was aligned with whatever their business or life goals are or whatever it might be. So creating some kind of unrefusable offer that removes the risk from that person engaging in that, that initially with you is a really great way to build up that trust. Again, thinking 7-Eleven 4, it's another hour or 2 of engagement for that initial coaching session. It's another touch point. You can always give them a report or something afterwards as well. With some feedback and some tasks to do which you can then follow up with, and from there you can then start to nurture them in terms of thinking about maybe entering into a longer-term commitment with you. This is something that Rich Litvin talks about a lot in the book The Prosperous Coach. It's one of my favourite books, you can probably just about make it out in the blurry background over there, so it has a very hallowed place on my shelves. But Rich talks about 4 steps in, in terms of enrolling clients. And I won't— maybe I need to do a whole other video on this, but essentially what he says is you need to connect with people. So step number 1, you need to invite them to take the next step with you once you've connected with them. Step number 3 is to create. And what he means there is that you do this unrefusable offer in order to create clients and build the trust for them to want to move forward. And then the final step, number 4, is propose. And it's this beautiful little life cycle which Rich Litvin— which Rich has created in The Prosperous Coach, and he walks you through that entire process. And actually, even if you're not a coaching practice, practice. That book is still great for understanding about how to construct your offer, how to articulate your value around the offer, and then also how to get your first 5 customers on board as well. It's the methodology which I used when I first started out my coaching practice. I made sure that I was out there speaking and showing up to networking events and giving away my books for free and making sure I was giving away consultations for free. I think in my first year alone I did 125 free consultations with prospective clients. But what that led to was 44 clients in the first 12 months of running my coaching business officially. And roughly, I think I hit £89,000 worth of revenue that year as well, which isn't bad for, you know, my first year coaching. I'm still pretty proud of that, and I've actually hit 6 figures every year since. The 4th way to get your first 5 customers is to create something called a waitlist. This is a way of building up a little bit of energy, like getting people really interested and building up that— taking those registrations of interest so that people start to get excited about this idea that you're going to be launching these amazing products or services. So a waitlist essentially— and if you imagine you want to get those first 5 customers under your belt, I would remember the ratio, the golden ratio of 7 to 1. So for every spot that you want to sell on whatever product or services you're selling, you need to make sure you've got 7 people registered their interest in that. So in this instance, if you want to get your first 5 customers under your belt, you want to create a waitlist of 35 people in order to pretty much guarantee that you're gonna fill up those first 5 slots when you announce that this thing is launched. Now, a waitlist, essentially all it is, is just a list of people who have raised their hand and said, I'm interested in that idea, that product or service which you're selling. Tell me, you know, give me some more information, and when it's ready, I'd love to know when you're launching it. The idea behind it is that essentially you become oversubscribed, and this means that if there are more people who want the thing which you're selling than there are spaces, you've stimulated enough demand that hopefully can sell out when you launch it. And the best way to launch a waitlist once you've done it is essentially to announce, well, we've only got 5 spots, but we've got over 30 people who are interested in it. If you want one of those initial 5 spots, you want to make sure you get in there quickly and speak to me so that we can get you booked on. The idea as well is that you can then nurture those people on the waitlist for future launches as well, so they, they form the early part of almost an email list or a CRM, a customer relationship management tool, where you keep a list of the names, email addresses, and telephone numbers of people who've shown an interest in your product or service. So a waitlist is a really great way to do that. The tool I'd recommend to create your waitlist with is called ScoreApp. We'll make sure we link to that in the description below. But ScoreApp is a tool where you can collect all of that basic set of data, but most importantly, you can also ask a few pertinent questions of the people that are trying to apply to be on your waitlist. And what that allows you to do is then qualify those prospects to make sure they're a best fit for whatever product or service it is that you're selling. And you can qualify and disqualify out people if they're not best fit, because you want to make sure that when you do take on your first customers, that you get great reviews, case studies, and testimonials from those first 5 customers. And you can't do that if you take on customers just for the sake of the money and filling up those spaces, but they're not best fit. You risk damaging your brand reputation if they leave negative reviews or testimonials or don't get the desired outcome results. So it's really important to have the waitlist and leverage that to qualify and make sure you're taking on the right sorts of people. The 5th way that you could go about getting your first 5 customers is to do something which I call a podcast tour. So I leveraged this as well in my first couple of years of coaching. I think I did back in 2017 an interview on the Google Partners Podcast, and even still to this day, I still get inquiries from people who listen to that interview, which went live 7 years ago, which is utterly bonkers. But one of the best things about podcasts is that once you've recorded the podcast and it's out there on Spotify or iTunes, it'll live out there in the ether ad infinitum. And they're also searchable from a Google perspective. So if somebody's searching for your product or service or the topic, whatever it is that you do, hopefully they might land on your podcast, and from there they might then choose to go on to buy from you. Also, the great thing about podcasts is it's leveraging other people's networks So, you just starting out probably don't have a particularly big network. You certainly may not have an email list or a community built just yet. And so, there are people out there who have already gone to the trouble. They've been in business for longer than you, and they already have large communities of people, like-minded people, who might be interested in your product or service. So, ideally, if you can find podcast hosts who've maybe got an email list or a number of subscribers to their podcast or a community somewhere of 1,000 or 5,000, 10,000, or maybe even more people, people within that audience, jump onto their podcast, and you never know, you might get some leads and inquiries of people who listen to your podcast if you do a good job of it, and then they reach out to you and inquire about your products and services. So doing a podcast tour, again, I'd probably look to get 10 to 20 podcasts under your belt. The first couple are probably going to be a bit rubbish. You'll probably ramble and meander through the conversation and maybe not make a suitable point, a bit like I'm doing now. But what you might get from it is It's the ability to be able to practice and hone your message, to articulate the value around this new product or service which you're about to launch out into the marketplace, and then also to be able to hone your call to action. So, call to action is really important at the end of a podcast to say, hey, if this resonated with you, come and jump on and get my unrefusable offer, book a call with me, book a website audit, or whatever it might be. So, practicing and honing that call to action is massively important so that people then start to gravitate towards you. It's this same methodology which I used when I appeared on Ali Abdaal's Deep Dive podcast. That one podcast alone ended up creating 3,000 leads for my modest little coaching practice. You know, it was absolutely transformational. It's probably created somewhere in the order of about 30 or even more clients now. And even to this day, over a year on, I'm still getting leads and inquiries dropping into my inbox almost daily, still from that one podcast. So doing a podcast tour and growing your personal brand that way is a really, really great way to get those first 5 customers under your belt. I've got 2 final points to go through. And really, one of the important things is that people, when they're thinking about getting their first 5 customers, get very attached to that as an outcome and very focused on selling. And the goal here when you're doing your outreach isn't to sell. And I know that sounds really, really counterintuitive, but the challenge is if you focus on the wrong goal, it can be very destructive to your mindset, your motivation, and the direction that your business goes in. So laying out the stall of getting your first 5 customers and making your first $25K or whatever your goal is, it— if you don't achieve that, it can be incredibly detrimental. And I've seen many people either give up or just really struggle with their motivation and mindset because they, they see themselves as some kind of a failure because they haven't achieved that financial goal or got their first clients under their belt. I liken it to, you know, it's one of those things, you get your first 3 clients and like, oh, but I 5. That's a bit like running a 3-hour marathon and then complaining that you didn't win the marathon. You know, a sub-3-hour marathon is incredible. Like, that's something to be celebrated. Getting your first client, 3 clients, is a massive thing to be celebrated. You learn so much from that. So there's some— a slightly different way to look at the goal which you need when you're getting your first 5 clients on board, something I did touch on earlier on in, in the video. And these are things called consultations. So I won't go into too much detail here, but an optimal conversion rate for a service client business is somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5. So if you want to get 5 clients, it means that you've probably got to sit somewhere between 15 and 25 consultations. Now let's say, for example, that you set yourself a target of 90 days, 12 weeks, to get those first 5 clients under your belt, and we want to get 15 to 25 consultations booked, it means that realistically you're probably sitting somewhere between 2 to 4 consultations per week max in order to stand, you know, swing the odds in your favor of being able to converse and convert those first 5 customers out of those consultation slots that you're booking. Now, the mistake a lot of people make when they're first starting out is they look at their diary and they go, oh, my diary is empty, I've got nothing in there, so I'm going to fill it up with marketing and all some of the other things which I've talked about, so it's a little bit contradictory here, but I'll fill it up with marketing and networking meetings and doing LinkedIn posts and getting my website done and writing blog articles and this, that, and the other. And then somebody picks up the phone and says, hey, I'm interested in your service, and they look at their diary and they're like, oh, it's, it's full, I've got stuff booked into there, I've got loads of stuff on, you know. Or conversely to that, you know, when you do start to get busy, and you will, and that you fill up your diary with client delivery, client fulfillment, actual work, and then you've got no time for sales. So people tend to leave sales calls as consultations, as a reactive thing, and kind of dot them in around all of their other commitments. What you should actually be doing is having blocks in your diary, empty spots in your diary, which are left to protect that time for those consultations. So you don't book anything else into there. So you might have from 1 until 2 and 2 until 3 on a Monday, and the same on a Wednesday afternoon, 4 slots a week which are there. And now the goal becomes what do I need to do in order to fill those consultation slots? So it completely changes the game, and hopefully you can see the benefit of that, because if you fill up those consultation slots, at some point you are going to convert some of those consultations into new business. It changes the game entirely for me, and what it means is it's like if you look at your week ahead and you've got those 4 empty consultation slots, you're thinking, oh, I've actually got nothing booked in my diary to to force those— how am I going to fill those consultation slots? So you can start thinking, right, well, if I want to book some consultations, I need to get out to a networking meeting, I need to do some outreach to see if I can get some referrals from my network, I need to make sure that I've got my unrefusable offer and, and that's landing on people's inboxes throughout the week so that I can start to get— fill up some of those consultation slots. So set up those empty consultation slots and then gamify it. How do I fill That's really, really important. The final point which I've got, and this is probably the most important, is most business owners, service client businesses especially, when they're first starting out, they base their business around writing proposals. Please get out of the habit of sending proposals and waiting and hoping for those prospects to come back to you. I spent 12 years running a marketing agency, and for the first 8 years of that, we wrote proposals, and every week I'd check in with my business partner, and he would ask me, hey Rob, how's it going? How many clients have we got signed up? How many, how many opportunities have we got? And I proudly announced to him, well, we've got hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of business in proposals, and if they all come back to us, you know, we're going to be millionaires, Rodney. And unfortunately, inevitably, proposals tend to cause more confusion than resolution. And a lot of the time when people are confused, they tend to ghost you and you never hear from them again. So it's really, really important that you have a process after a consultation has happened. Well, one, I would be having the pricing conversation with the person during the actual consultation and try and ask lots of questions to figure out if there's any extra details they need in order to make their buying decision. If they do ask for a proposal, that is absolutely fine, but what I would then do is I would ask for a micro-commitment, which is, yes, it sounds a bit like this. Yes, by all means, I'm happy to send you a proposal. How long do you need to consider that proposal. And they might say, oh, give me 5 days or give me a week. Okay, great. Well, what, what I'd like to do then is let's book you in in 7 days' time, and then we can review and I can get your feedback on that proposal, and you can make a decision whether it's yes or no. I don't mind, but I'm sure you don't want to keep me waiting, so let's get that follow-up meeting booked in. It's so, so important to make sure that you follow up with prospects after a consultation in some way, shape, or form, whether it be some kind of automated email asking for a review, whether it's a micro-commitment for a second call, whatever it might be, do follow up. And the thing is as well, most people struggle with making sales because they only follow up once and they don't want to be intrusive, they don't want to be annoying. They follow up once and then give up. It's been proven in a number of studies that people tend not to make their decision until they've been followed up with up to 7 times. So you're leaving potentially tons of money on the table if you're not prepared to follow up afterwards. And until there is such a point that they turn around to you and they definitively say, no, Robin, please can you leave me alone now? I've made my decision and I'm not going to go ahead with you. That's a good answer. That's a good place to get to. And I don't— I think it's respectful for that person to give you a yes or a no, and respectful for you to chase them until they've made that decision. Because ultimately, you're going to be here to serve them, and you want to make sure they get the best possible outcome, even if that means that it's not working with you. That's absolutely fine. So there you go. So there's my 7 steps or tips around getting your first 5 customers under your belt. If you have anything which you would like to add to that, or ways that you've found to successfully enroll clients, please do share them with us in the comments below. I always respond to comments, and I love seeing what ideas and creative responses people come up with in those comments. And yeah, see you on the next video.