How to identify your ideal customers with Ahmad Fareed Al Saif

So we'll talk about how to get the first 100 customers in your platforms. Again, just to let you know, uh, we, we in Alifredo, we act in edtech space. We do interactive mock exams, we do digitized teacher summaries, and we do used book marketplace. All of this for international students who studying French program, American, and IB. We succeed to reach 8,000 customers over 16 countries in the last 5 years, and we still continuing to, to reach more and more. So first of all, let's, let's go to, to the business objective to make sure that everyone can know the difference between the regular business and startups. Just in a quick— regular business has different return on capital, and startups have different return on capital. Everyone here in early stage especially, they need to learn what the difference is between regular business and startup. So for example, if you need a very fast return, then the best option is, is not to go to startup business. Uh, it's better to go to regular business, but if, if you are looking to long-term, uh, returns, then you might think about the startups. Uh, and the capital is, is really different how to fundraise in a regular business versus startups. And the very important things to tell you, there is no right and wrong. Like, either if you have a startup, it's right. Either if you have a regular business, it's right. Either if you have— if you are an employee in a corporate, it's right. So all of these topics are good, but it's about you knowing that what's waiting you and what's the expectation of each. So, and I'll start as well because I believe most of the audience are from the early stage, and I'll start with that. Is it important to make a startup? So my quick answer here is not. So, or is no, like there is many pressure now on all university students, all youth to graduate from the university or from school and start the business, right, directly. And I think this is a huge mistake. Some of the donors make it. I think it's better for anyone to, to take, um, the experience from the corporate, because believe me, either if, if you get 100, even if you get 100 of courses, nothing compared to one day of experience working on a corporate or on a regular business with a good direct manager. So if we need to go to the second topic, if your motive now to open the startups is less working hours or you don't like to have direct managers, so I think this is a wrong choice to go to startups because everyone here knows that startups need long working hours, need like sometimes 18 and 20 hours per day. And I already feel you, like many of you doing this, like you need to skip many holidays. So you need to go with that perception that I really need to work more hours. The second thing is, is it less direct managers you will get? No, you will, you know, in startups everyone is your manager. Your team is your managers, your suppliers is your manager, your customers, your big customers are your main managers. So the, the solution that you need to deal or to learn how to deal with managers, how to enhance your communication skills, not, not to skip. So if, if we go to startup, then we should take some basic steps before we get into the sales, because sales coming from a human, a human need to learn some aspects, need to learn some topics before they start selling. Before I start, I just need to see the chat that everything is fine because I'm actually I'm showing two different screen. So yeah, what does Go have to do with getting clients? Okay, okay, till now there is— I'm happy. Okay, okay, let's go back to the slides. Then as we mentioned, if we need to go with a startup, then we should consider something. And I'll go quickly to— then we can enter the sales elements. So you have to be coachable. This is number one. And this is very, very critical points for everyone, even in sales process. This is the most important skills that you have to get as a founder, as a product manager, as a husband, as a wife, everything. You need to be coachable. Like, this is for— there's many uses for coachable skills. Number 2, it's a must to gain work experience before starting your own business. I believe like many of Middle East startups, like telling that there is many, many people from San Francisco, from US, they just graduate from the university and they start opening their business. But they don't know that like people in US or students in US, 90% of them are working during the university, which allow them to work like 5 years. So we are talking about senior worker, not a junior worker. However, the trend in Middle East is lower in terms of working during the university. So like, I believe it's 50%, not like 90%. So the perspective is different between the graduate when you work for 5 years comparing to someone like he never or she never works and she just graduated from the university and she needs to jump to the startups. So again, experience always, communication skills is the key. You know, as a founder, you will fundraise, you will pitch for investors, incubator, accelerator. And you will meet some silly people that you need to handle them because sometimes they are responsible in governments and VCs and venture capitals. So communication skills is a key. Sometimes with their customers, you know, there is sometimes like a very, very bad attitude customers. But at the end of the day, you need to not take things personally as long as they are in the framework of the professional skills. So you need to focus on your communication skills, even with your team, how to limit or to control, sorry, how to control your reaction. It's very important because like, you know, the resilience skills. Every day you will have bad news, every day you will have some bad updates. So you need to have this perspective. This skills of controlling your reaction and be proactive. Then to show humility and say sorry to your team always. This is very important as well. You know, some managers, they try always not to say sorry because they shy from that, and this is a very big mistake. Always say sorry, always give the credit for the team member. Because otherwise they will start hunting you whenever you do any mistake. You need to show them that, oh, I'm a human, I'm sometimes doing mistakes, sometimes I'm doing right. But yeah, this is a very critical thing. Be humble always. Now I believe most of you, you will, you will go with the journey of start doing fundraise or get money from grants, for example. So you will take money from social impact grants, organization grants, then you will maybe get money from accelerator, then from venture capital. My idea is you need always to be humble because, for example, I never— I don't like always to mention our story as a success story because I always believe Like, okay, we get maybe 2 right steps, but still we have 20 steps to be done. Because whenever you go deeper, you discover that, oh, you still need a lot of things to do. Okay, oh, Ahmed, some people they are raising in millions, some people they are listing on IPO. So always be humble because many of founders, many of startups, they, they, they just starting to act as, as they are multimillionaires or they are the experts. And this is something you don't need it to have it in your reputation in the ecosystem. So always be, be humble. Commitment and efforts, it's a key as well. It's need commitment and need efforts. And this is what customers need. This is what investors need. Search skills, you know, everyone search skills is a key. Yeah, you need to be a very efficient person in terms of search because I believe that we cannot copy from another models. Always we do, we have to provide a solution from our minds, from our thinking. So you have to have good search skills. Even this, we'll discuss it now when we need to reach customers, how to search about these customers, what he using now, how I can approach him, what's his challenges. So, so you need to have that small FBI agents in your mind and in your skills. And to be continue, English, Excel, Outlook. It's look simple in the slide, but believe me, 60% of people I met, early stage founders, they are not good in one of them, either it's English or Excel or Outlook. So it's very important to learn this. For example, in sales, Excel is a key. Outlook, it's a key. How you send the email, how to communicate. Now we'll go through the sales process more and more. And maybe the last things, the expectation versus reality. As advice, because now you need to enter the market, you need to start sales. Many, many early-stage founders, they are thinking, if, if I'm putting an idea or if I have an idea, then like all TV shows need to shut down and just to come to my home to make videos, to make interviews with me and to say, oh, this is our new Robin Hood. This is our new hero. Where is your idea? We love your— and this is not the reality. The reality that you will keep working and working and working on your idea and no one care. Working, working, working, no one care. You need to start doing sales, sales, sales, and no one care till you hit some specific number on sales. Then people will start looking at you. I believe And for me, maybe because I'm an ex-salesperson, to, to, to prove your business with sales is much, much, much better to prove it with idea projections only. So to start the conversation with any customers, with any investors, with a track record of sales, this is— you will accelerate your process like 10x rather than go to with a regular approach that It's only idea on, on, on paper. That's why now we need to go to, to check some hacks for sales so you can start doing sales with low budget so you can attract more customers, more investors, more team members in, in Europe. And this is a quick tip as well because sales is coming from networking and to do a proper networking you need always to give before you ask. You know, I use this technique after I visit Tunis maybe 4 years ago. And like there's one organization called OST, Huda Guzzi she's called. And she learned me this. She learned me how to connect people together, how to help people before you ask for support. And this is really, really, really work well. I really, yeah, whenever you have any big clients, big investors, just ask him, what's your challenges? How I can help you? And don't underestimate your positioning as a founder. Some founders, believe me, we know more than venture capitals. We know more than government. We know more than organization in terms of connections, in terms of pure and really entrepreneurship spirits. So this is very, very important. Another quick one, because it's, it's, it's a package to start sales, you need to do the basics. So one of the basic as well to hire slow, fire fast. You know, sometimes we get bad employees and you know, you start thinking how I can tell him or how I can fire him or her. It's super easy if, if you really, if he's really or she's really don't care about the job or she deserved the firing, go ahead, give her all her right or his rights, like by the law, 2-3 months of salary, and then start with the new team members. But never keep any team members who's acting bad, who don't care about the business, because they look like the cancer. You know, one bad team member can destroy a team team members. So always eliminate any, any cancer in your team. And the, I mean, one more thing for early-stage startups as well. If you need to start up, to start your business, don't borrow the $20K, $1,000 from your parents, please, to start your startup. This is a many, many common exercise to go to your parents and get the $20K and start doing a marketing or sales activity from your parents' money in a startup. Never do this. If you need to borrow your parents' money, go and open a regular business, go and work as an employee. Then you can generate more income. Then from that income you can invest on a startup, but don't take this money and do, and you do a startup direct. There is a lot of easy money in a startup, especially on early stage. There is many application, many, many applications, many grants you can get, but you need to work. So if you get the money from your parents, believe me, you will not work hard. You will spend the easy money. And I think this is not the best approach. And always, always value the best practice. So whenever you go to any seminar, to any conference, you saw, for example, an offer given for a customer, or you see a pitch deck, always, yeah, impress. Okay, this is good, but learn how to make similar. Learn how, what's the sky of this offers, for example. So in sales, for example, if you go to a customer and you see another offer from another company and you see it's really nice, colorful, organized, then you need always to start thinking by yourself, how me, how I can provide similar for this best practice. So always increase your dreams and enhance your standards. So as well, before we start to, to, to, to the sales process, I just need to tell you that it's all about waiting and stress for some, some things. You will start waiting the grants and you will stress yourself, your team. Then you will start waiting your feedback from investors. You will still wait the news from the big clients. If he need to work with you or no. So it's a journey of stress. So I'm trying to do what I will tell you right now, but I still, I still trying. It's a journey, life. It's not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning how to dance in the rain. You should have this perspective, always work on this perspective. So you can start enjoying the journey. I hope I can do this as well. I'm like 30% still now trying to increase this. But yeah, this is my advice, especially on the sales process. It's a really, really huge storm that you need to pass. And the last slide before we start into sales. One day I was the the MC, Master of Ceremony, for some expo in our countries in Jordan and UAE. So I list some, some opportunity in Jordan who's really invested on the MENA region and some of them are invested globally. So please feel free to take any screenshot or take photo for this slide. And this is my LinkedIn as well. If, if you need to get the original slide, or if you need to get any connection with any of these incubator investors, later stage investors, or entrepreneur support organization. And something to tell you, one of the huge problems in Jordan for investors is the pipeline is not strong that enough. So that's why they are Sometimes they are investing in companies in Europe, in Saudi, and Tajikistan. I was yesterday with the Tajikistan companies coming to Jordan. So yeah, I hope this, this will help you. So before I'm— I am— before I jump to, uh, okay. So I need to check if there is some questions for now. Okay. There is some people asking about the sales. Guys, believe me, sales, we already starting in sales from the first second because sales, it's not about the products. It's about the backend. It's about the communication skills that you have. It's about the team who need to build the offer and need to do the follow-up. It's about the idea, your communication skills. So all of these soft skills and communication skills and perception, it's a key before you start doing any campaign. So if you are not really good in communication skills, don't start doing campaigns. Because people are buying from people who they like, not from the products. So for now, I prepared some techniques for sales where you can— okay, sorry, let me go. Okay. Okay, so now we will talk about the sales and marketing needs for gaining the first 100 customers. Now, the most important things to let you know that the first 100 customers, it's not only from sales activity, it's sales, it's marketing, it's operation, it's everything. And you as a founder, you need to be the one who's managing everything on the early stages till you get the money to hire other people to wear another hat. So if we need to ask the key objective of marketing for founders in early stage startups, it's that build awareness, acquire customers, conduct market research, craft messaging and positioning, engage and retain customers, and validate the products attract investors and establish partnership and utilize data and analysis. This is what we do all, um, always as, as a marketing. But the, the, the main objective of the marketing for me as an early stage founder is sales, sales, sales. Sales is the most important validation for your idea, not awareness. Only focus on sales on your early stages. How to start the journey with sales? Okay, if you have a paper and pen, then I suggest you to start. Just maybe write the application on yourself or to apply this exercise. First questions you will always ask question in terms of sales. Do I have to start with a website or with a mobile application? Or with the social media. So the idea behind this is always to start with— sorry. Okay, the best approach to start always for me and from the previous experience I get always to start with social media. Never start sales with mobile application or website if you still building your business because mobile application, it's quite expensive to develop and it's quite expensive to attract customers there. Website is the second step after you can validate on social media. You need to learn how to sell on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever your audience are existing. You need to start sales there. And after that, after you validate, after you spend your money on ads, on social media, you can, uh, try to, to go with the website or mobile applications. Um, and just one point to, to have it in your mind in sales always, and I, I use this a lot with the B2B especially, always be the second good options. If you are a B2B sales, for example, or you have a company offering B2B products and you start approaching the big companies to working with you, for example, you start approaching big brands, Total, Shell, Castrol. You need to go and start the sales process and you know that they already have a good supplier because this is a huge company. So definitely they have good suppliers. What strategy you need to do is you go, you propose your offer, and you aim to be a second good option. Because one time the first supplier will, will mess with the logistics part, the first supplier will mess with the pricing. During 1 year, definitely he will, he will, uh, did a mistake with the customers. Then you will be the, the second option for the procurement guys to call you. So the conclusion of this slide, if, if you went to any, uh, deal or to act as a sales and they just told you, oh, sorry, we're already working with some brands, tell them It's okay, I just need to produce, to introduce myself, and this is my offer. Just keep it on your desk. Whenever you need me, you can call me. So, and, and I use this technique many times and it's always working, especially with B2B, because it's really, really hard for any suppliers to keep all sales process right with the customer, like logistic, pricing. Some mistakes will happen. Like on 90% rate. So now if we need to go to the sales hacks and how we can really consider what's best techniques, you need to consider yourself as the customer and you need to wake up with this customer like from 8 AM and then to go to your bed at 11:00 PM, for example. And then you can start thinking what this customer is acting like. If he's at 8:00 AM, he's waking up, he's going to the school. Before he's going to school, okay, he's entering the bathroom. After that, after school, they going to after-school club. So you need to study the process of your customer behavior in simple way. You don't need to bring EY to do this. Technique, but you need to do this. For example, the high school students, the audience we have, okay, we all know that they are going to gaming, sorry, gaming centers. They all go to summer camps in summer. They all of them going to play bowling on weekend. So we start targeting these places where we can put our, uh, um, our presence. For example, uh, maybe 15 years ago, uh, I was a university student and I had a business of, uh, entertainment business. Uh, it's, uh, like costumes, birthday parties, jumping castles. So the, the main idea that make the company— I exited this company, 50% of it. The main reason of having a huge sales on this company, one day I went to a cake shop because I was thinking the behavior of the parents, of the mom when she need to do a birthday party. She need to go to salon, she need to go to the cake shop, a decoration, then she will handle with some entertainment the company. So I zoomed in on the cake shop element. I went to the most popular cake shop in Jordan and I agree with them to put some vouchers, brochures, and like a Barney mascots there and just writing for rent. And after that, days like many people, many companies, many schools start calling me to get this this service. So this is a sales hack. You don't need to spend millions. You go with the commission-based. So always, always think of these techniques. Whatever is your product is, always think how you can get a one-one, a win-win situation for everyone in the cycle and start tracking these places and always knock the door. Some people, they only need to send email. I believe with knocking doors strategy, always knock the door, try your best to talk to people. Now the second things you need to do in terms of doing your sales in a good way, you need to answer these 11 questions and you need to write it very well. You need to educate this for your sales team. For your marketing team, for your communication team. What do we do? And in a proper way, in like a short version of answers of all of these questions, clear script. Who do we serve? How do we different of ourselves? Because all of these questions gonna be asked, whether it's on Instagram comments or an interview or anything. What's the value proposition? What's our core strength? What's our achievements? How do we deliver excellent customer experience? If some customers talking about the price, how, how, how we need to defend this pricing strategy? What's your future goals? All, all steps and services you have. This is a very, very critical things. And many of founders, they doing this, but they are not communicate this with their team. They are not communicate this with their customers on social media and etc. So let's start the journey with, uh, with the B2C startups. They need to, to— now we'll talk about the commercial elements. However, as I mentioned, the Soft skills, communication skills coming first in sales. And if anyone here who used to work with B2B sales, they will agree with me that 90% of meeting with the big B2B clients, it's not including business talks. 90% of the meetings, like if you spend 2 hours, maybe 1 hour, 40 minutes, you will talk about footballs, about some topics, will become your friends. The suppliers, and the remaining time of the meeting you will talk about some business. Just send me this order, edit for me this price. So it's all about communication, connections, uh, and friendship. So let's now go with valid steps if you need to start your sales on social media. First of all, you need to verify the name, logo, and colors. Ask 100, ask any dozens of people about the names. Check the SEO when you select the name. Ask some mentors about the name, just because the name is very critical in the beginning. But not, not to overcook things. Go with the names. Logo. For logo, for me, as advice, don't go with the 1000th US dollar logo. And don't go with the free version logo, just go with the something in the middle, like $200 freelance who doing for you a proper logo and colors. Again, all of these elements, it's very important for you to start the sales, because when, when the B2C customers enter your social media, if he did not see a good names or good logo or good colors, they will skip and, or they will consider you as a basic. But again Do not overcook these things. Okay, now we need to focus on these channels and we'll talk about them. First, the social media, then WhatsApp Business, text messages, email shots, video content, cold calls, visits, SEO, and bazaars and partnership. Uh, till here, I would like to see if, uh, just to open the screen, if If there's any questions. Okay. Okay. Fiverr is the best for logo. Thank you for— thank you. So much for this. What makes a good logo? Are these channels in order? Okay, okay, excellent. Let me, uh, um, products. Okay, the mom test mine. Okay, uh, so most of the vlog is done now. For logo, I think maybe you can— please, Sana.

Sorry to cut you off. I just wanted to let you know that it's better to leave. I will help you out with the Q&A section at the end because we do have like some questions in the Q&A section, not the chat.

Okay.

Don't worry about it. I will take care of it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sana, please stay with me whenever you need to tell me anything for— I'll open a full screen and I'll dive into the slides.

Okay, okay, sure, sure, I'll be here.

Okay, excellent. Thank you guys. You can fill it on the, uh, Q&A. So, uh, let's go back to, uh, to the slides. Uh, for now it's, it's not on, uh, series. For this you need, you need to, to do all but with optimization techniques. Um, So if we need to start with the— wait, let me just— sorry, give me a minute. View full screen. Okay, so let's start with the social media posts. My advice here always to create the media shot templates. I used to do this with the designer. What does that mean? If, if you are selling, uh, let's say shoes, uh, or, or you are selling, uh, mobiles, covers, focus always when you get a design to get a template for this media shot design so you can use it hundreds of times, but you change the picture of the product. Always focus on, on this type of, of designs that you pay for it. So it, it helps you to be efficient with your budget. So for example, we, we really bring the best designer to do a one media shot for books to be sales, like, uh, offer for the books. And we start just changing the book covers and the price with some junior staff we have, or some interns. So you don't pay much and much and much. And the most important things to consider, that your clients are not looking for some very, very, very advanced company in, in marketing and media shots. They are not waiting Nike or Adidas to promote. So you need to optimize your budget. You pro— you introduce and provide good and nice feeling products And that's, that's enough. So after you creating the media shot templates, like for example, you do Q&A and you're just changing the questions and answers about your company. You do the products offers, you do the celebration posts, all of them. You can categorize your needs like you have 10 needs and then you build this 10 template. Then you, you need to go to start creating the social media accounts. And again, uh, you will hear a lot of from, from experts that if you are working with consultant, go only to LinkedIn. If you're working— my small advice, you have to be everywhere in, in terms of accounts, in terms of organic posts, but you need to pay on on some platforms, like where your audience are. But it's good for you to be everywhere since it's free, it's organic, and you already have the content to share. Uh, and this will help you later on in SEO, in search engine optimizer. For example, one of the top search results we have, we have it on Pinterest. And this is really, really strange for us, was, but we, we appear on the search because of the posting and the organic posting on everywhere. So this is, this is my opinion on, on this topic, but you can put the budget for some certain points. Then you need to do a posting plan, schedule, goals, dates, scripts, audience. You do a file, sheets, Excel, and you sit with your marketing team and you put your targets of the post. I, I know all of the founders, they have some touches, especially when you hire a junior in marketing. So you need to support him in terms of scripts and your commercial techniques. So just to make it— to utilize your time, because you cannot sit every day, every post time, you sit with them like 3 hours meeting, 3 hours workshop. And you, you just list all the goals of, of your posts. Like, this is a sales post, this is a hiring post, and etc. Then you put a calendar, a semi-calendar. So for example, inbox, we have in, in June, it's the end of school, so we promote people to sell their products. So we put this like June, the campaign is selling products, and this is the scripts and this is the audience, and so on. By this, you empowering your fresh or your junior marketeer to, to do this, and they will start to learn, and you build on, on something already existing. I know sometimes you can hire the marketing manager and you don't care about all of this as a CEO, but for the reality, a CEO with a $2,000, you need to do this. Believe me. And you need to do— but by doing this, you can hire intern and doing a good marketing. If, if you need just to leave it, then you need to go with the director of marketing and spend a lot of money for this. A very nice topic you need to be aware when, when you deal with your sales on, on social media: if the responses are how How, how you respond for comments, for messages. There is automation part, there is innovation, and there is timing. Automation, it's telling about you need to utilize all the techniques you have in social media in terms of quick reply and to write something in a proper way, professional way. Innovation, it's, it's very good to engage with your clients. Sometimes to make some jokes in a professional way. Sometimes you to ask questions on comments just to make more and more comments. If you have a page and you have innovation in, in responding, you will increase, uh, the engagement 100% in minimum. And the timing, make sure always to put a schedule for your intern or for your marketer to check the social media accounts like each 2 hours, each 3 hours, whatever the time. You should do a checklist to, to, to go through all the things. Because I'm coming back to the reality now. If any customer send you anywhere on any platform, please, please, please don't put on them conditions. Don't put them, oh, please go to application. This is no. In first In first building, you need to build a conversation with every single person writing you everywhere. You need to understand, then you can gain the number and you can communicate. Many startups fail because they only telling people a quick reply, oh, sorry, we don't act here, only go to the our website. No one need now to go to website. People need to get the answer from Instagram. So please catch this comments, catch this inbox, uh, and spend the much time with them as, as a beginning and even, even later on. Step C, you need to be a professional on advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. You don't need to bring any agency. All what you need to do is to spend a one day watching videos on YouTube, how to make ads on Facebook and Instagram. This is a really important things. And if, if you don't manage to do advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, it's a red flag for your company. And if it's outsourcing, it will be cost on you, and you will not learn and see how, how the trend of, of people responding to, to your accounts. So, uh, uh, for example, uh, you start studying this Facebook and Instagram, then you, you start promoting Because in, in sales, you need to, you, you need to know a very important stuff. There is organic post and there is a paid post on all social media. For people who don't know this, organic posts, it's maybe reach 5% on the Facebook, 3% now, maybe, uh, 15% and maximum on Instagram and so on. So all this platform Even if you post hundreds of times without sponsoring, it's nothing. It's nothing. But it's good to keep putting an organic post and like each 10 posts you sponsor one post so people can see that this company are up and running. It's, it's not, uh, only a 4-post companies. No, it's, it's full of life and they always posting something interesting. Uh, so this is how to create ads on, on Facebook and Instagram. And as I told you, there's many, many resources and it's super easy, guys. I promise you, if, if someone don't know how to do it, you will start do this while you are in the transportation, while you are in the elevators. So it's super easy, just go and try to, to learn. Uh, and the most important things after this campaigns, you start evaluation the process and results. I go to the post, open, I can see, okay, there is a metrics. Comments, if, if there is a high comments on the post, this is an indication for something. If there is many shares for this post is indication for something. It's like you have a 1 million views and no one comments, then there is a problem with the communication or the messages on this. So it's always important and you can check this on any resources. So for me, the— my favorite post who's got the most shares because this look like, uh, interest and the pain for many people. So it's, it's very important to go with this process, uh, after each, uh, campaign to, to gain your first 100 customers. So, uh, in, in conclusion, you need to go with the growth, uh, sorry, with the sales hacks. To go to where your customers spend time, to go and to do offline deals to gain customers, plus the social media elements as we discussed. For me, you have to focus on the offline elements, uh, the same that you focus on online, especially for the first 100 customers. For example, consider that we are, uh, do— we are, uh, we are selling a cosmetic product for women and you are struggling on selling this online. It's the easiest way to go to 5 to 6 to 7 salons and do some agreement with them to go there, to show up, and to present your products. And you get, uh, like the traditional school, because traditional school will learn you what is your product's outcomes, what's your customer gain, why your customer will like or Don't lie to your customer. But the most important things, if your campaign didn't work, don't stay just at the laptop monitoring the results. No, go to the market, go to the customers, and remember always your solution, your products. Someone already sell from this service or from this product a million of million products traditionally. So don't underestimate the traditional way just till you enhance your platforms, you enhance your online presence. We go to the WhatsApp Business. This is a very important thing to go, all of you, with the WhatsApp Business. They have many, many features for you as a business. And there's a one trick, um, I, I, I tried to understand this earlier, but I didn't get it. Like, only the last year I understood the technique. So for example, if you have 3,000 contacts numbers and you start doing a broadcast, broadcast, sorry, on WhatsApp. The rule on WhatsApp, if, if the user of, or if the contacts, they didn't save your number, you cannot send him any WhatsApp number on the broadcast. So sometimes we try to send always thousands of broadcasts and no one responds for us. Like, what's this, bad products? Like, It's— we need only one response out of 1,000 contacts. Then I read more and I understand that if any customers didn't save your number or your contact, then he's not— he, he will not be able to receive any messages from you, uh, like for security. However, WhatsApp Business solves all of this problem, uh, so you can send campaign for all your data And you can go through the resources to understand more, but it's highly recommended to go with the WhatsApp Business, some chatbot, and some campaigns through WhatsApp Business. Text messages, it's a key as well to start doing a campaign. Sorry, I try always to go with, uh, with an optimized provider. Try always to go with a one-length message so you can send more and more and more messages for your customer from the same budget. So don't go with the long messages. Text messages is a very important key. And you know, it's, it's a learning curve. No one will tell you what's the best technique. You need to go some of this, some of this, some of this, and then you can start understand the behavior. Where is your customer based on your country? Oh, they like text messages. Some of them, they like WhatsApp. I've been on Georgetown last month, so like the WhatsApp was like all people using text messages. It's not WhatsApp for me. And even that was my third time in the US, but how people you don't use WhatsApp? Like many of friends I met there, they told me we use text messages. So you will start, start understand the metrics on, on behavior. Email shots, it's excellent, and I recommend the email shots for the update for your company, for your stakeholder, for your potential customers, rather than to send spam emails. Just utilize your, your potential customers, keep sending them updates quarterly base, monthly base. But this is a very important things because you need the part of the awareness. You need to be always on the customer radars, on the procurement officer pages. So this is a good technique we used, and it went well. The cold calls— and this is the funny story here— is because, you know, we as founders, as entrepreneurs As busy people, I believe 90% of us, no one will answer the cold calls, or you will apologize quickly and tell them, oh, I'm not interested in this insurance, or etc. We tried this on a real experiment for our customers, like the parents, the moms, and we tried to learn the team how to enter the call and keep the parent or keep the mom on the call. After we start, after we implement this on, on the ground, we start get the feedback that these calls with some moms are stay to 40 minutes and 45 minutes. So we start learn the, the call center team how to close the call quickly. So the, the lesson behind that Don't consider your customers have your lifestyle. Some people, they need to call. Some people, they still sitting at home. They need someone to, to call. They need to ask questions. So you need to try this as well. And now we have 3 employees who's doing only cold calls with parents. Even Jordan, Jordan and UAE, even it's one of the top countries in terms of technologies, lifestyle. But still, cold calls can get for you a customer. So this is very important. And the very nice aspects from cold calls is you really, you, you talk to your customers, you know what they need, you can do any extra questions, you understand the market. Believe me, as a founder, e, e, why? PwC, name it, any consulting company will not make you understand the business, the audience, as when you start calling these customers, listening to them, do some focus groups. This is the key for you to understand your customers. Otherwise, we, we, we get some donor support and get some fancy roadmap, fancy customer understanding from consultants, it's good to show it for the investors. But if you really need to, to understand the customers, you need to talk to them. And it's highly recommended for the founder not to do the cold calls, maybe in the beginning, but after that to, to, to see the feedback from the employees who's doing the cold call. This is the element of, of the sales visits. Always do visits. If it's a B2B, if it's a B2C and you can do the visits, always do the visits. It's very important. It's open the doors. Don't only sitting behind the scene and you need everything to be done like movies. It's not like this. When you do a visits, people, you do a networking. When you do a networking, you do a business. When you do business, you do sales. So visits, it's the key. Always go spend time in the field. Sales on the field, it's very important for you again to understand the market, to penetrate the market, especially for people who's, who's making, uh, red ocean products like saturated products. You need to go and, and see who's the big fishes in the market. And as you know, like, all our services or most of them are already in the market, whether it's on the traditional way or it's on the software, on sophisticated way. For example, if, if you do an application to connect the trackers with the customers, you have two scenarios: to keep sitting on the home trying to connect these people together, or you go to the tracker by yourself and start asking them why not to get into our application. Maybe you start doing for them offline sales just to, to penetrate these segments or this part of your equation. The 8th step is the SEO. SEO is the search engine optimizer, and this is one of the most critical elements. You need to focus on it, and you need to read a lot about it. And, but In, in general, it's about when anyone typing your— what, what service you do. Like, I'm looking for used books in Jordan. I'm not looking for Alfredo, I'm looking for used books. This is the SEO, and we try to always to be in the first, uh, row of results in Google. This is a very, very important things. You need to spend money in SEO and in Google Ads Because there is a rule of thumb like telling the, the Google customers are willing to buy from you 10x like from the social media customers because Google customers already searching for the product. So always try to, to, uh, to be on the top of SEO. There is SEO growth hacking strategy as well. So for example You utilize all your customers to put Google reviews in, in the platforms, so you start your, your software or your company ranking better. Uh, you go, you put some tools like for articles. Uh, it's, it's a wide, very wide topic, uh, but it's very, very critical to start understand this. If you remember the posting strategy we mentioned before, this increase your SEO visibility. If you go to any newspaper who's need to put your names on their site, be specific with some keywords to be mentioned in that article. For example, if some like popular newsletter, they need to talk about you, just put for, for them some words that you need to be typically there. So people, when you, when they search on online, you will be nominated by Google or ranked by Google. So this is for the SEO. I'll share for you now before we go to the questions some tools I think it's very important for you to use. Similarweb.com. This is how you can see your competitors, how they act, how they do sales, from which funnels, how they spend money, what's the, uh, like, uh, what the breakdown of, of their customer base, which countries geographic, and many, many information. The second tools, as you know, all, all of you, the ChatGPT, uh, try to master it always, even in scripts. After you get the script from ChatGPT, post again and tell them that I'm employee, give me a regular script, give me a simple script. Keep asking, and as much as you put for ChatGPT a content, you will get a better answer. So feel free to put 3 pages of context, then start asking questions. Then you can normalize the answers to be ready. But this is excellent way to be used, especially if you need to target some other languages. You need to go local with UAE accent, for example, for Nigeria accents. To do it in, in local way. So I think this is an excellent tool. Uh, Mailchimp as well, for, for, uh, all marketing, digital marketing aspects. It's automate all the process. For example, they have the mail stuff, but if we need to go advanced, you, you remember when you put some, some stuff on your cards then suddenly you will receive an inbox, oh please, you need to continue your checkout because you already put this item on your cart. So all this stuff, they are automated in MailChimp. I highly recommend you to explore it and use it. Canva, everyone know it. Make sure that your interns, your marketing team are familiar with Canva. It's, it's a 3, 3 days YouTube course. You can be a professional or your team can be professional, but it's a must because you will always do promotion offers. You cannot always spend, spend money on the beginning, uh, for graphic designers. Uh, the other tools is analytics platform. This is very important. Everyone needs to download analytics platform from Google. So you can see how your customers entering your website. There is the bounce rate metric. It's very important as well. If it's very high, then this indication that all customers are entering the site and they are leaving from the first page. So you can consider, oh, my marketing strategy is good, but my landing page is not good. You start doing analysis, you start Analytics platforms do, um, uh, analyze how much people spend on your platform, which pages are spent the more. So this is very important. Um, the, the, the other tools is the gtmetrix.com. It's giving you a quick analysis about your website, the strength. It's not 100% accurate, but for the early stage, it's it's good enough to, to understand, uh, the, the, the technology, uh, level, uh, because if you are e-commerce or if you are application, uh, your, your, uh, your landing page, or you deal with the customers only from, from the websites. Upfluence as well for, for connecting with, uh, influencers. Uh, for me, I, uh, sorry, it was just Okay, for me, I don't recommend you to go the first time with influencers. Rather that, uh, I consider you to go with the content. For example, I'll give you a real example. In Alfredo, we tried everything in marketing. Uh, we got maybe 100K on Facebook, 35K on Instagram, or 50K, 2 pages on Instagram. Now we start filming a podcast Showing a content for parents, not for our products, a content for what parents are looking for. Like, I need to explain what's the difference between British program and American program. We do it on reels, uh, podcast. Then we, we split the, the long video with 30 reels. So I recommend you to go with the content with the podcast style because it's the most efficient way to, uh, to do this, uh, and to communicate with your team— sorry, with your customers, B2C, and minimum, uh, budget. Because when you divide the budget over 30 videos, I doubt you will find any better pricing when you deal with the graphic design for video by video. So content always is the king to uh, to upgrade your, uh, customer base on social media and to start doing sales. Content is, is the king. Uh, Excel, Excel, Excel. As I told you, uh, there is a platform called Kins. This is covered like 10 countries. Uh, I recommend you to see it and see similar companies for other markets. This is showing you a huge database of many, uh, companies, uh, and, uh, number of employees, contact details, and they are really doing well in Jordan, UAE, Saudi, and many countries. Uh, there is a company as well called Tinder Jordan. It's not the dating app, it's, uh, it's a company for, uh, connects all Tinders, uh, from organization, all calls, all applications, uh, and I believe each country they have the same platform, so they combined all opportunity in, in one, in one page. This is a good opportunity to do a sales, early sales. Text message providers, you need to, to talk them all. From my experience, communication companies or telecommunication company are quite expensive. Always try to find more and more providers. You will see a very variation on pricing. So make sure to do this. Articlefork. This is extremely excellent platform. And this before ChatGPT, by the way. This is one of the best platform to enhance your SEO. If you remember, we need to do sales. So we need to do shown on the Google results. To show on Google results, we need to enhance SEO. SEO need articles. Articles you need either you pay money for writers like every day, or you go with such softwares. These softwares are optimized to enhance the SEO. If we need to go deeper in SEO, the article should include, for example, a video. They should include, uh, the H design on, on the writing skills. They should appear headlines, um, they should make a mention for another platforms. So they show that you are introducing other, uh, sites. All of these factors giving you a better rank on your article for SEO. Article Forge are already doing this for you and making sure this is on, on a high rank. And there is integration on WooCommerce, on multi sites. And the good things, it gives you 95% unique content each time. And this is their promise. So I highly recommend you. It's $200 subscription, by the way, yearly. It's not cheap, but it's worth it for me. WordPress, as you know, it's very excellent platform. And advice for me to start your sales, don't overcook it with everything. Don't wait the best platform. Don't wait to build something from scratch. Please go to WordPress, get some ready themes, do your first $100,000 of sales. Then you start doing your empire of technology. Uh, in Alifredo, we sell the first $100K US from a very simple WordPress website, from Instagram, from Facebook. So don't pressure on yourself, just go to market, bring customers, and then you start enhancing everything. And you will keep enhancing your platform even if you hit, uh, 5 million revenue. You will stay think how to, to increase this, but always do a balance. For me, for early stage founders, I recommend always to spend $1 for your team resources, $1 for technology, and $1 for marketing. If you have $3, just split it like this. Don't go with technology and to forget the marketing. Don't do everything in marketing and technology and you don't have the proper team to, to answer these responses. Thank you so much. I hope it's, it's, it's help you. And please, this is my LinkedIn. Please reach to me. I would like to connect to help based on my capabilities, and I'll leave the floor for Q&A as well if there is some.

Thank you, Ahmed. That was pretty insightful. Thank you for the presentation and for the tools. I have already noted some of these, so thanks a lot. So we have a lot of questions, but I don't know if you're able to answer them all.

Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm But I'm ready.

Yeah, let's try to take some questions. So, uh, first one's from Maria. She's asking, what if our target market is located in a different country than ours? How can we effectively reach and engage with potential customers without being able to visit in person?

Okay, uh, what if we target located in different country than ours? How can we effectively reach and engage potential customers? Okay, uh, If there are, uh, B2C, then I recommend you to, to do the social media communications. Uh, I recommend you to hire ambassador team. We tried this in UAE and it's really work to hire ambassador team, uh, from college, from students. And there is some solution to, uh, to connect calls globally. We have company called Maxam in Middle East. They allow you to do calls from, for example, from Spain to Germany, like direct, same tariff, same everything, if you need to connect directly. For B2B, I think it's a little bit hard because most of B2B provider, they need their company registered in the same company. But for B2C, as I told you, the answers— I hope this clear.

Yes, thanks. Thanks, Ahmad. So let's take another question from Andrea, and she's asking, I have a small 3-people mobile app development company. Customers do not come because they do not trust us, and we can't find initial customers because we don't have portfolio to show. It's a dependency loop. How to find the first clients for this?

What? Okay, I have a small 3-people mobile app development company. Customers don't come because they don't trust us. And we cannot find initial customers. OK, I was preferring to have some context about the product, but for a general answer. OK, now Andre, you develop a mobile application. OK, this mobile application already serving some traditional service. For example, you connect the tutors with, uh, students. For example, this is your application, so you develop the application to connect these tutors with these students, and it's, it's not working. What I'll do, I'll reach the parents offline and start, uh, introduce for them our products and what we do. And doing a regular— we go to schools, to tutoring centers, anywhere you can find the parents. You do cold calls and you start doing this offline, and you start doing the online by yourself. And by the way, sometimes we as early-stage founders, we put ourselves under pressure that everything's needed online. Believe me, there is some Series A companies and startup, they have 40% of their revenue offline. Some of them are having the orders by phone and they put it on the website on behalf of the customer. So this is my recommendation to, to have the offline techniques to start build this like 100 customers, then you onboarding them on, on your platform and then you will penetrate the market.

Thanks, Ahmad. So let's take a question from Ahmad as well. So he's asking, sometimes we want to build a website or mobile app to offer value in form of technological solution. I would say that social media will then be just a marketing option but not the real value to say. How about these kind of cases?

Okay, um, listen, this is always the questions for, uh, Uh, this is always a, a trendy question that I get after the sessions. So listen, let's, let's have example, a ChatGPT. Where is the top technology used and top AI model used? If, if I need to introduce the ChatGPT on social media to validate the idea, what, what I'll do as Ahmad if I don't have that budget? I'll start doing, as we said, the, the branding, the good looks and feel on the social media platform. Then I'll start on social media offering a service for a research package. If you are students looking for research, please pay for us $20 per month and you will get this. Any solution, and 90% of solutions, you can just simplify it, make a one conversation and start to sell this one conversation. If you are a Careem, for example, Careem applications, and you connect driver with riders, you go with the social media, you start offering riders some trips from this area to this area. Are you willing to pay $5 and I'll secure for you this seat? So you will— yeah, the conclusion: simplify the offering. Do one conversation and reflect it on, on, uh, because mobile app is the way to, uh, mobile app is the way to connect and organize thousands of inquiry together at one time. But for the time being, you, you can just simplify this. I saw some questions, Sana, like if you can validate your idea by talking to customers. Uh, it's, uh, from Tanzim. It's, it's good approach. However, make sure when you talk to these customers, they are willing to pay. Like, ask them now, just give me money from your pocket and pay your first order. Because sometimes you're sitting with friends, with some families, and they will, oh, this is good, this is nice, but always put the money on the table. Like, ask them to pay for this. And this is the real validation if you need to do it like theoretically. Okay, I'll see. Come on, I have Uh, when you're from the importance of— okay. Will the slide be available to go over information missed? Yeah, please. Uh, if you need, just send me a message on LinkedIn. I'll, I'll write my LinkedIn right now. Uh, wait. Okay, this is how it's written. You can just, uh, And I'll send it direct. Okay, let me go with the— okay, I'll go up to see some questions. Okay. How you— okay, how can you identify your product's first adopters? Listen, a product-market fit is, is really, uh, hard stuff, uh, and the best thing is, is to keep exploring who has the who has the main pain out of these products. Whenever you see where is the main pain, then you can consider, oh, this is my right segments. Because sometimes you build the products, but you need to explore more and more to find where is the most pain. For example, in, in Elifredo, uh, we start doing for national business this use bookmark place, then we find, we find that it's, it's not important for national system, it's important for international system because the book price are 100x. So that's the way. I don't go out.

Sorry, I was audible earlier, I had some issue with my mic.

Yeah, I see.

I don't know what happened. I'm so sorry about that. So yeah, I was gonna tell you thanks a lot for the session. I think we we can, uh, that's, um, this is enough for the questions. However, we still have the networking lounge, which is, uh, if you leave this session, you will find a table with your name in it. People will be joining the table and asking you, uh, all these questions. So if your question did not get answered today, so please go ahead and ask Ahmed on the networking lounge. So thanks again, everybody. Uh, you will be receiving the recording of this session after 24 hours of this event. And please feel free to connect with each other in the networking lounge. It will stay for as long as you guys stay. So thanks again and see you on the upcoming events. Bye!

Thank you, thank you, Sanaa, and thank you everyone for joining us.

Thanks, Ahmed.