From Early Adopters to Repeatable Sales
Last week, we covered how to get your first 5–10 real humans to use, try, pay, or commit. If you haven't done that yet, start there. This week: you have a handful of early customers. Now what?
The Question Changes
When you’re hunting for your first customers, the question is: Does anyone want this?
Once you have a few, the question changes entirely. Now it’s: Can I get the same kind of person to say yes, again and again?
That shift sounds simple. It isn’t. It’s not about “getting more” — using more channels, doing more outreach, targeting more types of buyers. Doing that feels like progress. But it’s actually counterproductive. When you’re spread across too many types of buyers and too many ways of reaching them, you can’t tell what’s working and what’s not.
This phase is about finding the pattern, not just growing the numbers.
Instead of being scattered, be methodical and focused, targeting the same type of person, the same way, enough times that you can notice what repeats.
Your #1 Job Is to Find What Repeats
First, constrain yourself. This feels counterintuitive, but it works: pick one type of customer, one problem, one channel, one message. Work that combination until you’ve had 15–20 real conversations.
One customer: Not “kind-of” the same customer. The exact same customer. That means the same role, same industry, same situation. So, if you’re selling to HR managers at mid-size tech companies, don’t also go after operations directors at manufacturing firms because someone made an intro. Stay in your lane long enough to learn something.
One channel: Pick one way to reach people. Direct outreach, a specific community, LinkedIn messaging, warm intros. Whatever it is, stick with it until you’ve had those 15–20 conversations. If you’re doing cold email AND Instagram AND asking friends AND attending events all at once, you’ll never know which one is actually working. And right now, if a channel doesn’t let you have a direct conversation with someone, it’s too early for it. So, try to avoid ads, SEO, content marketing — those come later. Right now you need to be talking to people, not spraying your message around and praying for hits.
After you’ve had those 15-20 conversations, start asking yourself: Are the same kinds of people saying yes? Are the same objections coming up? Do deals follow a similar arc — or does every one feel completely different?
If every conversation still surprises you, you need to narrow further. You’re probably not talking to the same kind of buyer yet.
If you’re starting to predict what someone will push back on before they say it, that’s the signal you’re looking for. That’s a pattern you can build on.
Don’t Try to Overcome Objections. Catalog Them.
When someone says no, or not yet, don’t immediately try to talk them out of it. Write it down. Verbatim if you can.
“We don’t have budget right now.” “This isn’t in our plan for this quarter.” “I’d need approval next cycle.” Those are all the same objection: budget and timing. Hear that three times and you’ve learned something real — maybe you’re reaching out at the wrong moment, or your price needs to shift, or you need to be talking to a different decision-maker.
“We already use something for this.” “Our consultant handles that.” “We built something in-house.” That’s a different pattern: substitutes. Now you know where you need to be clearer about what makes you different.
When you hear the same objection five times, you can start building your sales story around it — address it before they raise it, or use it to sharpen who you target.
The goal right now isn’t to close every deal. It’s to understand why deals close or don’t, so you can eventually predict it and design your sales strategy around it.
Pricing Is a Teaching Tool Right Now
A lot of founders treat pricing as something to figure out later. That’s a mistake.
How people respond to your price tells you whether you’ve found the right buyer. If everyone says yes immediately, you’re probably too cheap — and you’re not learning who actually values this.
If everyone stalls after you mention price, there are three possibilities: your price is too high, the value isn’t landing clearly enough to justify it, or you’re talking to the wrong people. The way to tell the difference is to ask. “Is it the price itself, or are you not sure it’s worth it yet?” Most people will tell you.
Remember, you’re not trying to maximize revenue right now. You’re trying to understand who this is really for. Price is one of your best instruments for figuring that out.
Study Your Easiest Wins
By now you’ve had enough conversations to notice a difference. Some deals were hard. Some were surprisingly easy.
Stop chasing the hard ones. Study the easy ones.
The customers who bought quickly, with the least friction, who actually use what you built — they’re showing you exactly who to target and what to say. What do they have in common? What triggered them to take action? Where did you find them? What were they most desperate to solve?
Those answers are the beginning of a repeatable process.
How to Know You’re Ready to Scale
There’s a term you’ll hear a lot in startup circles: product-market fit. It sounds fancy but it just means you’ve found the right product for the right person at the right price, and you can reach them reliably. That’s it. It’s what every startup is aiming for because it means you’re ready to start growing.
You’ll know you’re getting there when things start to feel different. Conversations close faster. People refer others without you asking. You stop feeling like you’re pushing a boulder uphill and start feeling like something is pulling you forward.
Scaling means doing more of what already works. Not figuring out what works while you’re trying to grow. If you try to scale before you’ve found product-market fit, you’ll spend a lot of money amplifying your confusion.
Before you scale, you should be able to answer these without hedging:
Our best customers are ___.
They buy when ___ happens.
We reach them through ___.
Our messaging is _______.
This message works because ___.
Deals usually take ___ to close.
We lose deals mostly because ___.
If any of those are fuzzy, keep going. Keep narrowing. Keep looking for patterns.
When those answers feel solid, when referrals start happening without you asking, when conversations close faster, when you feel pull instead of constant push…that’s when you scale.
A Few Reminders
The same permissions from last week still apply.
You’re allowed to say no to customers who don’t fit. Saying yes to everyone at this point muddies the pattern. A bad-fit customer who stops using your product in three weeks is worse than no customer at all — it gives you false information.
You’re still allowed to (and should) stay manual. This is still founder-led selling. Don’t hire a sales rep yet. If you hand this off before you’ve found the pattern, you’ll never know what actually works — and neither will they.
The whole point of this phase is to stop guessing. Every conversation gets you closer to knowing what works. And knowing what works, repeatably, is the key to building a company that scales.
If you’re building something and want to see what AI-powered entrepreneurship support actually looks like, check out Builders Studio. Our latest AI agents can help you get your first customers and then turn that into a scalable sales model.
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