Avenue · B2B · booking widget for trades
Walk into local businesses and show them the product in person
Founder says it got early traction quickly; no customer numbers given
Workedin-personoutbound-sales
What they did
Got initial traction by going door to door and showing the widget in person to local businesses. Pitch framed around the problem they have ('You can't get sales outside of hours. This fixes that.'). Businesses were open to trying something shown in person by a real person. Businesses that had no use for it sometimes referred them to a friend's business where it would fit. Tom's advice: it is intimidating at first, but the blunt in-person feedback is exactly what you want.
What happened
'Quickly' got very early traction; later helped land bigger clients who had seen them everywhere
- Stage
- Pre-launch (Pre-revenue to early traction (2025))
- Effort
- Main early acquisition channel
“Door-to-door sales, essentially.”
“when you show someone the problem they have and you can explain it quite”
“sometimes we've even had certain types of businesses refer us to the right business being like, "Ah, this has no use to me whatsoever. However, you should speak to my friend because this”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Avenue: Demo the website widget on iPads instead of phones and leave printed brochuresCleared up confusion that it was an app; early traction followed quickly
- Avenue: Pitch every open business on the street, then focus on whoever responds bestTrades responded best; product adapted for them and they became the core customers
- Avenue: Sign lots of small local businesses first so bigger ones have seen you aroundBigger clients signed because they'd 'seen you guys everywhere'; no numbers
- Avenue: Hire a designer and two developers before any revenue, paid by your agency incomeGave confidence to sell to bigger companies; founder calls it a terrible idea on paper
- Avenue: Have a developer friend build a rough version to prove it can be doneSeeing it come to life convinced the founder to go all in
- Avenue: Put a 'Book online' button on each client's Google listing, not just their website