>So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers/admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros. To say it didn't go well is an understatement. Our success rate, of even a phone call, was nearly 1% (roughly one answer per 100 or so emails/calls). We eventually locked down a core group of users simply by contacting so many people. Aside from other bureaucratic factors in the public schooling system we failed simply because we couldn't establish a growing user base.
I've found that walking into the school gets much better results. I work in test prep.
There's no magic bullet for learning about clients, and it depends on the niche. In my case (LSAT prep) I learned about LSAT students because I had been an LSAT tutor. In fact, I still do a bit of tutoring just to stay in touch with what students are going through.
Other niches would require completely different approaches. Steps:
1. Identify target client
2. Find out where they congregate, how they communicate
3. Use *that* approach.
4. Once you find some, ask for referrals.
I found targeted cold calls worked pretty well. Targeted in the sense that a meaningful % of whoever I was targeting would say "woah, I gotta get me some of that", even if they had not previously heard of me.
The way you get that reaction is by knowing the needs of the prospect, putting yourself into their shoes.
I've found that walking into the school gets much better results. I work in test prep.
There's no magic bullet for learning about clients, and it depends on the niche. In my case (LSAT prep) I learned about LSAT students because I had been an LSAT tutor. In fact, I still do a bit of tutoring just to stay in touch with what students are going through.
Other niches would require completely different approaches. Steps:
I found targeted cold calls worked pretty well. Targeted in the sense that a meaningful % of whoever I was targeting would say "woah, I gotta get me some of that", even if they had not previously heard of me.The way you get that reaction is by knowing the needs of the prospect, putting yourself into their shoes.