Make them users
What you’ll learn
How founders get products into prospects' hands—from design partnerships to custom demos to paid trials—and how to push through the discomfort of actually closing.
Why it’s important
The gap between “great conversation” and “paying customer” is vast. How you bridge it—the vehicle you choose and the conviction you bring—determines whether your pipeline converts or stalls.
Keep reading if...
- Your demos are met with blank stares.
- When you offer a trial, you struggle to convey urgency.
- You're offering free access in the hopes it will lead to a sale, but you're not getting meaningful feedback or commitment in return.
You’ve done discovery. You’ve had the first sales call. Now it’s time to close.
Early sales loosely follow a three-step process:
Step 1: Discovery Call
Filter the prospect: Are they a good fit?
Next action(s)
Try/demo the product. Or disqualify.
Step 2: Demo Call
Show product value, generate excitement, get them to use
Next action(s)
Use product
Step 3: Buy Call
Payment
Next action(s)
Pay for product
Take your time and don't wrap all of these steps into a single call.
“Originally, the mistake I made was that, on the very first call, the outcome I wanted was for them to buy,” says Amanda Zhu, co-founder of Recall.ai. “But that's just too much to fit into one call.”
Once the prospect has expressed interest, it’s time to get the product in their hands. Our founders had two approaches here: design partners and demos.
Design partners
Everybody's first version of their product usually sucks. When you find people excited to help you build the product as a design partner and join the rocket ship, that can be invaluable.
A “design partner” is an early beta user who gets the product free or heavily discounted in exchange for offering product feedback.
The prospect benefits, as they get quick turnarounds on their needs. You benefit because you get instant feedback, a little revenue, and another marker of product-market fit (PMF) (or lack thereof).
“We had a number of design partners and early customers,” says Riya Grover, co-founder of Sequence. “We put the product in people's hands, we saw that it worked, but we didn't have a meaningful enough differentiation in the market to build a really generational company.”
(They later successfully pivoted.)
He took my laptop off me, signed into Gmail, connected Superhuman, made it the default email client, and did the same thing on my phone.
Des Traynor
Co-founder, Intercom
Not all design partners are created equal. You want to make sure they are your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and have the same problem set, otherwise you’ll get conflicting feedback.
“You want someone who needs your solution so much that they're willing to partner with you to bring the solution into existence, and who understands the ups and downs of that. And from your side, you need generosity to make them feel like they got a great deal—you commercialize them slower and on worse terms,” says Steve Hind, co-founder of Lorikeet.
"It's not just about whether the company profile and stage fit the eventual buyer set that you want to go after,” says Riya. “Also important is the persona. Is the person in the company motivated to be involved here? Are they actually going to even be the decision maker at the end when the thing is built, and you come to the contracting stage?"
Demos
With discovery questions answered, you can now deliver a unique demo or instance of your product—either live on a call or by granting access in a trial. AI makes loading custom data into demo instances easier than ever, and more founders are accelerating this process.
Tweaking your process
There are few untouchable rules. Example: Counter to most others, Tofu’s Elaine Zelby says she’ll do the custom demo during the first discovery call.
"We set up an instance that has leads and accounts that look like who they would target,” she says. “They can actually understand how it would work for them. We just found that so much more effective than us showing on a demo instance that's trained on something else. It's really powerful. Going from that first demo to the next steps has a very, very, very high hit rate."
Sometimes, some friction before showing the first look at the product is a good thing. It helps you qualify and set up an A+ experience.
Lorikeet does their demo after a discovery call, using what they’ve learned to power it. “Usually, we'll assign people homework after a call to share with us some documentation of a really difficult process that they're not sure that AI can solve,” says Steve. “And we want that demo moment to be really about challenging their perceptions about how good the AI can be by showing them something that they didn't think AI would be able to do.”
Equals loads its custom data to run a company-specific report for its customers. “The prospect would be like, 'Holy shit, I've never seen [this ARR report] before in my business,'” co-founder Bobby Pinero says. “So we'd say, 'Great, you can play with it for a week. And if you want to keep it after that, sign the contract.'"
If someone's not willing to pay anything [at the start], chances that they're gonna be willing to pay for it at the end are also probably limited.
Riya Grover
Co-founder, Sequence
Persevering to the close
This part hurts and will feel awkward. At first. Keep the following tips in mind to help you steer through the uncertainty.
It’s a numbers game
"I think people are sometimes afraid of messing things up. It's not even a fear of rejection. It's a fear of 'I just did three calls, and the deal went nowhere.' You can't, you have to just move on,” says Elaine.
You will have to be persistent
There’s a reason salespeople are always in contact with their champions. Don’t be afraid to follow up and follow up again.
No is a gift
Not pursuing a dead lead for months is a gift. Your time is a gift. "We should be getting to ‘no’ as quickly as possible. We should be talking to customers where they want to be spoken to. We should be trying to solve real problems,” says Marty Kausas, co-founder of Pylon.
It may feel out of character
“Superhuman visited me in 2016 and very delicately and nicely, but firmly, the founder took my laptop off me, signed into Gmail, connected Superhuman, made it the default email client on my laptop, and did the same thing on my phone,” says Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom. “Sometimes, there is a necessary bit of provocation that actually gets you a customer. And I think founders might shy away from that if it's not in their core DNA. It’s a learned muscle.”
Reflect
When was the last time you were rejected? How did you handle it? Learn to navigate that emotion now, because closing means hearing “no” more often than “yes.”
What’s your reset? A workout, hanging with your family, or a hobby? The “nos” can hurt. Have something to step away to.
Are you giving the demo you want or the demo they need? Get them to value as fast as possible, even if they don’t use the product in your preferred way.
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