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Ask HN: B2B sell is super hard. What shall I do?
3 points by beijingchen 50 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
We are building a B2B product. We are currently using LinkedIn, but responses are slow and our conversion rate is around 3% to 4%. The product we are building can be considered a tool and there are many alternatives in the market. All alternatives except a couple are focused on B2C market.

We don't have blog and haven't invested in SEO but as far as I understand both of these are long games that is not going to pay next month.

I need results now to survive.

How do I get people to respond to me? Either Yes or No is fine but silence is the killer.

Everyone complains about email spam, LinkedIn spam etc. How are other B2B companies are selling? Are you all using email, LinkedIn or something else?

What is that something else that makes people respond to you?




When cold calling, 3% - 4% conversion rates are considered good.

You chose to enter a crowded market. It is always difficult to compete with more established, better known vendors. You really need to differentiate substantially in order to make your product more appealing than your competitors.

LinkedIn has become yet another spam infested quasi-social network.

Perhaps you should look at who your current clients are. Create profile(s) of them and then actively target using phone calls, direct mail, in-person calls. Those might be old school but since nobody uses them these days, you can stand-out by being different. But remember, you still need to quickly demonstrate the value of your product -- increased revenue, profit, productivity or a significant reduction in costs, time to market, etc.


Silence = no.




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