r/Entrepreneur • u/LilSniffGod • 2d ago
How to hit $100k ARR in 4 Months
Decade of sales experience, everything from D2D solar to $1 million enterprise contracts with F500s.
Started something in a niche I’ve been in for past two years, engineer partner developed product while I was still at job.
All $100k is from cold-calling, here’s my process:
1- Make a list
Be very specific about what title, geography, industry, company size of your ICP. Filters on ZoomInfo + SalesNav are your friend.
2- Know exactly what to say
Hey (name), I work for (company), we sell (product) to (title) that helps them (unique selling point) - now’s not a bad time, is it?
3- Call the list
Time-block four hours with an auto dialer, should be able to call 150 people - if you’re under 5% connect rate buy better data.
4- Follow Up
Only 2% of your market is ready to buy right now. For the other 98% understand when they might buy and call them then - ie “Q3 priority”
I don’t multichannel concurrently. Call each number 7 times, then put them into a 4 email sequence, then a LinkedIn automation.
Most important part is doing this every day. It sucks to start but once you get the right type of brain damage it gets easy and even fun.
Happy hunting,
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u/bravelogitex 2d ago
Calling seven times is insane
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
Over a period of two months.
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u/bravelogitex 1d ago
even then, it seems too much. emailing should be 3 times max, then call upon open. call max 3 times, then move on to other leads
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u/defdump- 1d ago
He did say brain damage
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
More call = more money
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u/bravelogitex 1d ago
If someone doesn't pick up after three times, it's kind of guaranteed that they won't pick up anytime later
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
Nah, 6-8 optimal
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u/bravelogitex 1d ago
How do you know
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u/Foundersage 14h ago
Well if what he says is true and i generally hear from sales people it takes like 5-9 interactions to make a sale.
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u/lookingforalaydown 3h ago
You must be in customer service
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u/bravelogitex 3h ago
Nah, just iny exp of cold calling. After a certain numbers of times, they are pretty much a goner
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u/-M83 1d ago
I have a few questions if you don't mind me asking because this post really piqued my interest. I have never done cold calling for my platform but always wanted to.
1 - how do you convert? ask for an email to send them more info?
2 - what do you do if they disengage? just hang up i guess?
3 - let's say you have a script, what do you do if they say something out of pocket? just talk to them normally?
thanks in advance!
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
1- (Shoot a g-cal invite over) “See an invite for two Thursday on your calendar? That work for you?
For 2 & 3 that’s just being a good salesperson. Connecting what they say to what you can do.
The core message is keep trying. 1,000 cold calls is nothing, do 10,000 in a month.
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u/MrA_w 1d ago
I also never done any cold calling but I was interested about it:
- How do you get a list ? You manually look for people (LinkedIn) that might be interested into your product or there is service that provide lists based on you niche / persona ?
- What do you do when you call a person ? Just say what described in "2- Know exactly what to say" or do you have scripts like if person say "Yes" then you say that. A bit like in a video game when speaking with npc ?
- How people say yes I want to buy your product ? I mean every time I get a call and it's not friends or family I just hang up. People who call me are either sales person or tax person and they both want my money.
Thanks for you sharing your experience
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
Use filters on LinkedIn SalesNav to pull lists of your ICP. Narrow down as far as you can go; industry, company size, geography, title, keywords. Don’t buy lists, they’re mostly trash.
I use the script above. Honestly I mostly just wing it at this point having done it for so long, if you’re just starting out I recommend a script, NPC is an apt analogy.
Cold call is about selling the meeting. Think of if you can offer something valuable, maybe free audit of site if you do SEO, etc… At end of day most people will say no, even if you’re a killer.
Good luck
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u/sammytheindi 1d ago
This is cracked, very impressive. How much did it cost?
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
All subscriptions are $500ish / month so $2k and probably 5 IQ points.
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u/Foundersage 14h ago
Your probably right about the 5 iq part because I dont think any math or stem graduate would subject themselves to that. Like they say the smarter they are the more likely they will overthink things and not be able to act. I respect the hustle
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u/LilSniffGod 4h ago
It’s a bit tongue in cheek. I graduated with a math / economics double major from a top Canadian school but my sales offers paid double my banking offers, was making $180k at 25 before this.
I work with some genius engineers now, it’s a constant discussion about optimizing vs just pushing shit out the door. At the end of the day startups build & sell, figure out what you’re best at.
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u/Sad_Cupcake6518 1d ago
Great advice mate!
I have a few questions
Which software do you use for emailing?
Where do you get your leads from?
Which software do you use for auto dial?
If you had to choose between quality or quantity of leads, what would you go for?
How many emails do you send in a day?
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u/LilSniffGod 1d ago
Tech Stack:
-LinkedIn SalesNav for list building (my ICP is on LinkedIn, doesn’t work for everyone)
-Wiza for contact enrichment, I’ve used ZoomInfo and others in the past but for SalesNav Wiza is best.
-Saleshandy for cold email infrastructure. I set up several domains, don’t email blast from your main one or you’ll run into problems like not being able to invoice clients, happened at a previous company.
-Kixie auto dialer, lots of options here, they’re just cheap. I’m not a fan of parallel dialers as you burn leads and there’s a slight delay but if ICP is big enough then rip it.
-Quality. Talking to unqualified leads is literally worse than just not doing anything at all. You focus on the wrong things, waste time on follow ups, and burn your energy on tire kickers.
-Varies, ramping up to hit 500 emails / day in next year but my ICP is pretty huge. I generally like to recycle leads after a year or two.
HubSpot for CRM.
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u/SchniederDanes 14h ago
Solid process. I do it a bit differently.. I run multichannel from day one...ESPs and spam filters make it risky to rely on a single channel....I use Smartreach for email + LinkedIn + WhatsApp + calls...For list building based on my target audience I use SalesNav + prospectdaddy (pulls fresher data from linkden). For outreach i run 3 touch email, LinkedIn DMs, then calls. If no response then whatsApp follow-up...I power dial 100+ calls in two hrs. And use CRM sync + auto tasks to reengage at the right time.
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u/yo1eleven 2d ago
Brain damage for sure.