Welcome to Decoding Sales, a podcast or an engineer. That's me, Alex. And a sales person. That's me, Alex. And a salesperson, that's me, Peter. Talk about the art and science of sales and however applies broadly across life and in business. In this episode we're going to talk about topic that is near and dear to many

founders hearts, which is how do you get your first customers and what makes them different from growing

a scaled organization? So Peter, let's just kick this off a little bit. What makes

those first early customers different from later customers for a company?

Yeah, I think there's a few things that are really unique and special about the first customers that will pay for your service

or that will actually utilize and deploy your product.

The first thing I think about is I think they tend to be first movers within their

industry. They tend to like to be innovators. They are not afraid of saying that they were the first enterprise company to buy a particular product even when it maybe wasn't fully vetted in the industry.

I think that's the first thing. The second thing is the

early customer base they understand that there's going to be evolution of the platform and

they actually like initiating conversation, initiating the partnership at a design partnership level,

where they're collaborating on the development of the product. So I think those are the two main things that really stick out. The last thing I guess I'll mention, these are all interrelated, but they're also publicly willing to be referenceable and willing to evangelize and talk about your product within their community, more so than what they might be used to in a very mature product or company.

And because you are early, because you are changing the way that technology is portrayed within your

particular industry, they want to be able to actually be a brand ambassador of sorts.

These sound like very nice people, people who are willing to take risk, support you, and

collaborate with you on your roadmap, which I guess has pros and cons.

Yes.

How do you find these people? There's a few ways. I think one of the things

actually right now that's very top of mind when I'm telling my team to go after new

potential customers for Twin Gate is to really research and look at their

prior history for what products they bought you know also research how they talk

about themselves in something as simple as a LinkedIn profile. Do they mention they like to be innovators? Have

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