You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince

You will have to talk to many, many customers before you get a first sale, or even a next sale. At one of my start-ups we found that it required 3000 leads to get 300 decent potential customers to get 30 face-to-face meetings to get 3 contracts.

Don't worry about talking to too many prospects at once, even if they all book it is a high class problem to try and expand to meet demand and you can always sub-contract part of the work or share it with a competitor (I call this co-opetition). Many customers you think are in a hurry for your product or service will either re-prioritize internally, hit a snag or spend ages negotiating your contract. In the worst case you can easily slow down negotiations with your more 'corporate' clients until you can resource-up.

Keep kissing frogs!

Stay alive long enough to become an overnight success

Great successes are rarely created overnight, companies often develop their product too early (it is a lot easier to figure out when you are too late for a market). If you really think your ideas is going to take off then sell what product you can, keep advocating, and stay alive until customers realize you were right and the time is now. Then get irritated later when people point out how easy it was for you to become a success overnight.

Follow the sound of opening checkbooks

Too many entrepreneurs fall in love with their own technology and end up with a “build it and they will come” attitude. They try to preach the benefits of their product to the customer instead of identifying and solving the customer problem.

Don’t tell your customers what they need – listen to find out what they will pay for. If they really need it they may even pay something up front, the surest sign of commitment.

Make every customer a reference customer

In the 1970’s Saab Motor Company in Sweden conducted a customer satisfaction survey and found that, on average, a happy customer told one friend about liking the car but that, on average, unhappy customers told 7 friends about problems with their car. They had to have 7 happy customers for every unhappy customer just to get a neutral view on their product in the marketplace.

As a start-up company the situation is much worse, you are already fighting the preconception that you do not have the resources to support the customer and that your product is unproven. You must pull out all the stops to support your customers and to obtain positive references as soon as possible. Some procurment managers will find this total customer focus and dedication just attractive enough to take a chance on you.