2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Hand-hold the first customers one at a time
Run the first onboardings personally, on live calls, before you build anything that scales. What you learn in those sessions is the process you later automate, though the response you get back is not guaranteed.
Where this splits
One founder ran over a hundred hand onboarding calls in weeks and rates it as what worked; another sent every early customer a personal offer of help and calls, and got near silence.
1 claims against 1
Corey Haines
Onboard the first customers by hand, personally
- 01Onboard your first software customers by hand on a live call, one at a time, before you try to scale acquisition.
Personal offers of help often meet silence
Do not count on early customers to give you feedback: personal, hand-written offers of help and calls will often be met with silence.
What it returned
He and cofounder Connor Lindsey ran more than a hundred calls inside a few weeks to onboard early SwipeWell customers by hand.
Zue sent every early Pegasus customer a thoughtful note offering live chat, calls and new features, got very little response, and could not tell whether the product was fine or they simply did not want to talk.
Sources
- 2022 Year In Review | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · What went well · 2023-01-01
- 30 Days of AccountabilityCory Zue · coryzue.com · 2. Delight my early customers · 2019-08-01 · 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.
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