To secure early user interviews with busy lawyers, Legora's founder offered to buy them lunch and pay their hourly fee. While most declined payment, the gesture showed immense respect for their time, leading to more willing and candid conversations that defined their initial product.
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To get meetings with busy leaders before her product was ready, founder Janice Omadeke explicitly stated, "I am too early for you to purchase this." This non-threatening approach lowered their guard, reframing the conversation from a sales pitch to a collaborative session focused on learning their problems.
Harvey's early sales strategy was to find a target lawyer's public court filing, use its AI to find flaws in the arguments, and present the critique directly to them. This hyper-personalized "attack" immediately proved the product's value and grabbed the attention of busy, high-value prospects.
Frame initial customer conversations around seeking advice on their biggest AI automation needs. This lowers their guard, provides valuable feedback, and often leads them to sell themselves on your future solution, making pre-selling easier.
A 'free' or 'pay-what-you-want' offer creates enough goodwill to ask tough, confrontational questions upfront. This allows businesses to filter for genuinely committed long-term customers, turning a lead generation tool into a qualification test.
Prospects often decline meetings to avoid another bad sales experience. Counter this by explicitly stating the value they'll receive (e.g., free ideas, best practices) even if they don't purchase, making the meeting a low-risk proposition for them.
Go beyond simple customization and build proposals using the customer's own words and lingo from discovery calls. Reflecting their exact language back to them proves you listened and understood their unique pain. This makes them feel heard and emotionally connects them to the solution, creating urgency.
In initial meetings with enterprise prospects, Nexla's founder didn't pitch a solution. He focused entirely on validating the problem. By asking, "Do you see this problem as well?" he framed the conversation as a collaborative exploration, which disarmed prospects and led to more honest, insightful discussions.
A key prospect tested the founder's commitment by requesting a demo at an absurd time. Agreeing without hesitation impressed the prospect, who then championed Spectora within his exclusive mastermind group. This single act of dedication directly led to 50-75 sign-ups from experienced users.
When validating their initial ICP, Blings struggled to get meetings. They shifted their outreach to ask for "advice" from industry leaders, framing it as picking their brain. This approach dramatically increased response rates and led to dozens of valuable interviews.
Shift the first meeting's goal from gathering information ("discovery") to providing tangible value ("consultation"). Prospects agree to meetings when they expect to learn something useful for their role or company, just as patients expect insights from a doctor.
