2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Work a hand-built list on launch week
Build the list yourself from directories, trade rolls and anyone who has engaged with you, then contact each name individually. How hard you push volume is the open question, but the list has to be assembled by hand either way.
Where this splits
One member treats launch outreach as a numbers game across at least fifty contacts, another argues a single carefully written message now beats a hundred generated ones.
3 claims against 1
Justin Welsh · Tyler Tringas
Work the numbers, contact at least fifty people
- 01Alongside the posts, contact at least 50 people directly: message anyone who reacted to your content, search out people publicly describing the problem, post in groups you already belong to, and mail any list you have.
- 02Build your prospect list from your personal network plus the entire published membership roll of the industry's trade association, then work it from the top.
Send one carefully written message instead of a hundred
Send one carefully written email or direct message instead of a hundred machine-generated ones, especially now that AI has flooded inboxes with generated spam.
- 03For trades and professional-services buyers, assemble a lead list straight out of online directories, then phone each one, ask what is painful in their business, and introduce the product.
What it returned
- 400
The author combined his own contacts with every member listed by the industry's national trade body for solar energy, started at A, and made roughly 400 pitches by email and cold call
Welsh describes the outreach as largely a numbers game.
Yelp, Craigslist and Google local listings named as sources; plumbers, real estate agents and attorneys given as easy-to-list markets
Sources
- The $1,000 Weekend ChallengeJustin Welsh · justinwelsh.me · Saturday Afternoon: Reach Out · 2024-08-24
- Chapter 5: Getting Your First Customers - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Business directories (or hit the streets) · 2017-01-19
- Closing SolarList: a cleantech post-mortem - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Going it alone · 2014-11-14
- Using Coding Skills to Make Passive IncomeCory Zue · coryzue.com · The transcript · 2025-01-14 · dissenting
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
More in sales
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