Scaling Your Product: From 0 TO 1000 Customers and Beyond

Customers. That’s the only thing you need to focus on when you’re building product.

Getting more of them and making them more successful by using your product will create a sticky customer for your business.

Growing from zero to thousands of customers is tough. But if you have a proper plan in place and execute your strategy it can be done. You should be ready to put in a lot of hard yards and hustle to acquire customers. Identifying the customer segment and positioning your product in a way that it resonates with their needs is key to acquire and retain new customers.

Let’s break our strategy into 3 milestones to move from zero to a thousand customers

MILESTONE I: The first 10 Customers — Early Bird’s

If you don’t have a paying customer you don’t have a business. We see a lot of startups focus on only developing the product and are so afraid of selling that they never get their first customer.

They spend all their time building their website or designing their logo and no time seeking prospective customers

Don’t get me wrong: Logos and websites are great and it is important to represent yourself professionally. But in the beginning, it is more important to just get customers!

Stop stalling, stop planning, and start selling. Here are four proven strategies to land your first ten customers.

Step 1: Create a Landing Page

A webpage can be the most important tool to expand your reach to customers across demographics.

At this stage, your website should just be a landing page with a form for users to provide their contact information. Include a couple of social media links, drop your logo, and publish it online.

You can add to your site later right now all you need is a web presence.

Step 2: Reach out to your Immediate Network

Product introduction to people you know can be the easiest way to find your first customer.

Is there anyone in your direct network who would find your product valuable?

Friends or family? Coworkers?

What about pre-existing customers? If you run another business, would any of your current buyers benefit from your new venture?

Who are your competitor’s customers? Can you pitch your product to them?

If you don’t personally know anyone who would use your product, we guarantee that someone in your network does. Ask around for referrals and introductions.

Step 3: Start a blog

You’re going to need presence and credibility if you want to sell to prospects outside your network. The easiest way to do that is through a blog. With a well-run blog, you can:

· Discover and develop relationships within your market

· Pitch your solution and receive immediate feedback

· Establish yourself as a thought leader

· Increase your online searchability

You don’t need to be a great writer to provide valuable content. Just start generating content and see what kind of response you get.

Step 4: Hustle

Selling is the only way you can test the market for your product, so pick up the phone and boot up the computer.

Reach out to as many qualified prospects as you can and pitch your service. If they’re interested, close the deal right then and there. If they aren’t, find out why.

Milestone II: Growing from 10 to 100 Customers — Early Adopters

If you have your first 10 customers, congratulations! You’ve made it further than many startups.

But now what?

The game changes when you move beyond your initial 10 customers. If you want to move from 10 to 100, you need to shift gears.

Here are three tactics to grow sustainably from 10 to 100 and beyond.

Are your customers successful, or just happy?

Most businesses have a lot of happy customers but few successful ones.

Happy customers feel good about paying you money every month and have no complaints. They might like your product, but the real reason why they bought it is because they believe in you, your team, your company, your vision and what you stand for. Typically, there’s one person within the organization that’s really championing your product and company. If that person leaves the organization, someone else might re-evaluate and decide to cancel your contract.

Successful customers know they receive more value from your product than you charge. Even if your internal champion within their company leaves, anyone else evaluating your contract could look at the math and conclude: “We’re getting more value out of this than we’re paying, thus, it’s worth it to keep paying this company for their product.” These are the customers that will help you grow sustainably.

Short-term Hacks vs. Long-term Strategy

Most new businesses use short-term sales tactics to get their first 10 customers. That’s great at the start but terrible for sustainable growth. Transition to more long-term plans as you grow.

A short-term plan is one that you won’t continue doing in the future. For example:

· Handling every support call

· Visiting every new customer in person

· Personally following up with every new user

· Tapping into your personal and professional network to get customers

A long-term plan is one that scales with your business. For example:

· Cold calling and cold emailing

· Creating a drip-email campaign

· Search engine optimization

· Building a scalable lead generation process

As your startup grows, keep these numbers in mind:

0–10 customers : 90% short-term tactics | 10% long-term tactics

10–100 customers : 80% short-term tactics | 20% long-term tactics

100+ customers : 20% short-term tactics | 80% long-term tactics

Anticipate Today or Fix Tomorrow:

Transitioning from short-term plans to long-term strategies means shifting your focus from the present to the future. You need to know what your business is going to look like next month, in six months, and next year so you can prepare today.

Is your growth strategy proactive or reactive? Here are a couple of things you’ll want to consider after your first 100 customers:

· Creating Winning Teams

Many new companies start with a flat management structure. There are no teams or hierarchy. This won’t work as you begin to grow. Divide into teams before you need to and set up hierarchies or you’ll be scrambling when the moment hits.

· Reviewing your Employees

You need to take an honest look at your team and make sure that each member is still a good fit for the company. Just because someone was great in the beginning doesn’t mean that they’re a good fit for your company as it grows.

· Updating your Customer Profile

Are the majority of your customers still successful or just happy? As your company grows, your specialization and focus may change. Make sure that you review your customers after any major milestone. Invest your resources in people, processes, and prospects that are going to grow with your business not slow it down. It’s much easier to anticipate today than fix tomorrow.

Milestone 3: From 100 to 1000 customers — The Growth Engine

If you managed to land your first 100 customers, congratulations! You’ve already made it further than the majority of startups ever will.

The road to 100 was brutal, but it’s just the beginning. Now everything’s about to change. What got you here won’t get you there. To make it to 1000, you’re going to need a new set of skills, strategies, and processes.

It won’t be easy, but it is possible. To prepare your business for 10x growth, you’re going to need to master your metrics, ramp up your sales, and optimize your marketing. Ready? Let’s start at the top.

Master your Metrics

In their early stages, most startups don’t care about data. Those that do care learn pretty quickly that when they only have 25 customers, metrics aren’t very useful.

Even in the range of 100 to 1,000 customers, you often won’t have enough data to reach statistical significance. It won’t be perfect data, but it’s the best data you have, and that’s much better than just guessing.

Brute force may have gotten you to 100, but it won’t get you to 1000. As soon as you hit triple-digit customers, all growth should be centered around data.

The five most important startup KPIs

Just like salespeople have a set of core metrics they need to track, so does your startup. Here are the five KPIs you need to focus on to sustainably grow your startup from 100 to 1000 customers.

1. Churn

Most startups assume churn only tracks the customers who cancel their subscription, but there are multiple types of churn, all of which need to be measured.

2. Lifetime Value — LTV

The lifetime value metric measures how much revenue you get on average from a customer from the moment they start paying you, to the moment they stop paying you. There are many ways to calculate LTV but its essentially the money spends throughout their lifespan as a customer.

3. Acquisition Cost

How much do you spend to acquire new customers? Keep in mind that even “free” exposure, like content marketing, has a price tag. Find a way to calculate the cost of the time you invest.

4. Monthly recurring revenue

For an accurate look at your MRR, calculate the following: Profits from upgrades, profits from new buyers, losses from downgrades, and losses from cancellations.

5. Revenue per customer

This is a little different from lifetime value. This metric measures the revenue an average customer will create over different periods including daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.

There are hundreds of KPIs you could track and as your business grows, probably should track. But these five will create a strong foundation to grow your startup from 100 to 1000 customers.

You got your first 100 customers, but it’s those 100 customers that are going to help you get the next 900.

And remember: You’ve already accomplished something great. You’re on your way to something spectacular. Take it one day at a time and don’t get pulled in too many directions. Stay the course and you’ll get there.