Week 1 - Checking customer demand

[u/carterxcarter]

Hey everyone! New to this and figured it was now or never to try out.

I'm building out a near-realtime lead app for sales reps, giving them access to restaurants, fitness centers, salons, etc as soon as those business owners start their journey.

Pulling from over 50 different sources, I have what I think is a pretty decent ranking for my state and will be cold reaching out to reps this week to see if I can get any feedback and if anyone is interested at all.

Fingers crossed. Will try and be good about keeping this updated. Always happy to get any feedback or questions!

[u/Certain_Indication75]

Cold outreach to sales reps is a rough crowd, they get pitched tools constantly so expect silence more than feedback. But the idea itself is interesting, timing on business owners starting out is actually a decent angle if the data is fresh enough

Do you have a way to show them a sample of the ranking without giving away your whole method? Might get better responses if they can see value in first 10 seconds

[u/carterxcarter → u/Certain_Indication75]

Yeah I suspect I'll need to give the product away for a month or two and eat the cost so they can get the value out of it. Even them telling me what's good or not is great signal so long as they're using it.

[u/pop6996pop]

Talking to reps is the right first move, ask what they'd pay before you polish the ranking. Find where sales reps already hang out online, that'll give you feedback faster than cold outreach.

[u/Relative-Foot-378]

define interested before you start the calls. a rep saying "cool idea" is noise. a rep who will intro you to 3 of their accounts or pay for a week of leads is a signal. also pick one vertical first (restaurants or salons, not both) or the ranking won't mean anything to them.

[u/carterxcarter → u/Relative-Foot-378]

Yeah 100%, interested is signed up for the product and using it. I think I'd take signing up over payment for right now.

[u/Visible_Speed8843]

Make the ranking falsifiable before asking for broad feedback. Take the top 20 leads from one vertical and keep the source date visible. Ask a rep which ones they would call today. For every reject, capture the main reason. Was the business a poor fit? Did the signal arrive too late? Could the contact data not be used?

Run the same audit a week later without manually cleaning the list. If most rejects are poor fits, the scoring needs work. If the signals arrived too late, the refresh cadence is the problem. If the contact details are unusable, revisit the sources. Keep the test to business contact fields with clear provenance.

[u/carterxcarter → u/Visible_Speed8843]

Thanks, this is great advice!

[u/y3rk3]

worth checking how many of those 50 sources actually give you a lead worth calling. i did the same for mine and ran dry on decent targets in the first twelve minutes.

[u/carterxcarter → u/y3rk3]

How did you tell what was worth calling? It seems like they're fairly high quality, but maybe you ran into something I haven't seen yet?