I agree! Thanks for sharing.

This is a great resource, @German! Since this Twitter thread was just published a week ago, what did you do differently to your sales process after reading this thread?

Haha that's awesome. Nothing like a good jam session to settle the nerves. Good luck!

Totally understand.

My ultimate goal was just to figure out how to get as many of those 1000 people as possible to starting using Stormy. Making it available to use is one way.

I have a quick follow up question after re-reading your update though.

When people clicked through on your advertising campaign, did they go to your home page or to another specific landing page only for that campaign? If it's another page, could you please share the URL?

Here are some things you should keep in mind:
- I would make the color of your call-to-action button stand out and different than the text
- Understand the sessions vs. views, % new sessions, average session duration, and pages per session
- There's no human element to it so they can trust this has been validated before. Do you have any testimonials or case studies?
- Do you provide support? If so, how.
- Most importantly, I would find a way to enable someone to begin using the product on the front page. People that build love their favorite tools based on how they use them; make it as easy as possible for them to test and use it.

3 ways: online communities, virtual events, and cold-calling

The best online community depends on your industry. It could be on social media, by a government organization, or on a Slack/Discord workspace.

Every event, conference, or webinar (at least in America) is either cancelled or rescheduled. In my industry, I found people were networking with each other at these virtual events by providing their email, phone number, or LinkedIn. Because events are meant to center around a specific need, it didn't take long to find qualified users interested to hop on a Zoom call.

Cold-calling sucks but it can be the fastest way to create a genuine connection with decision makers. Find a way to do super-targeted prospecting, then create a script that's genuine, respectful, and personalized.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Enterprise

Focus on creating a community and using tools to facilitate communication and transparency.

We recently created a Slack community to funnel all existing and prospective users to. We created private channels for paid members and public channels for all members. Some helpful sub-channels have been:

* #work-in-progress: Have your engineers create GIFs of features being built to show community members to get them excited and receive immediate feedback
* #updates: Make it the first place you post updates and link to GIFs in the #work-in-progress channel
* #introductions: Request people to post their name, company name, a link to their website, and why they joined your Slack channel. It helps people to see the type of demand. In addition, if a competitor of theirs joins it will give them more incentive to use your solution because they'll want to provide more influence.

We also launched a Trello board so people can always view the progress of a requested feature without having to reach out. It's also helpful to link these to the #updates Slack channel

People want to help startups and I believe using tools like these will compound the ability to build trust with existing and prospective customers. Please let me know if you have any questions about this approach.

ReferenceUSA

Happy to have been a part of the community for much of that time. You made it what it is Rishi. It's been inspiring to see you guys iterate and experiment on so many new features. Good luck in year 3!