So it turns out that your company’s growth is important to investors. With that being the case, we thought we’d send some inspiration on some great ways to grow in case you’re feeling stuck.

1) Incentivize referrals.

We all like to think our product is the best thing since sliced bread, and that our customers would have to be idiots not to tell their friends about it. But the truth is most people won’t think about it. Give them a reason to. Gift cards, credits, free stuff, merch, or even cash are a few great ways to do it. 

However, if you’re getting ZERO referrals right now, you might want to first make sure your product doesn’t suck or that your prices aren’t too high before trying this. 

2) Get better success stories / testimonials. 

Your prospects don’t trust you. Help them see that your solution will solve their problem by showcasing similar people or businesses who had the same problem, and who overcame it with your solution. 

3) Give, give, give. 

Even with great case studies, your prospects still might not trust you. The more skeptical ones may think you’re making everything up. So how do you overcome that? By making them your case study. Help them for free with content, a free consultation, a helpful connection, etc. 

You can do this at different levels of growth. For top-of-the-funnel lead generation, free content on popular platforms can be a great way to drive outcomes for prospects and get them to want to take the next step. 

Then you can have your audience opt in to something like a free weekly newsletter with more specialized advice and information (I’m a fan of this). 

Then finally, you can offer something like a free consultation to show them the value of personalized help from you. 

4) The rule of 100. 

If you’re doing cold outreach, do more. Many successful founders have found that the “Rule of 100”, or reaching out to 100 prospects/day is a non-negotiable if you’re going to spend time on this type of growth. 

5) Enhance your offer. 

Create urgency and scarcity with your copy and/or sales script. If there’s one business lesson you can learn from your college curriculum it’s this: no deadline means no action. Do your customers really need to make the decision to buy soon? If not, they might just forget about it and move on. 

6) If you have more money than time, run paid ads. 

We tend to believe if we’re not working 24/7 on our startup, we’re doomed. But there are founders who actually don’t have time to write blog posts or reach out to 100 people a day. So what can they do? They can buy prospects’ attention by running paid ads. 

7) Build something great. 

Growth is easy if the thing you’re selling rocks. If selling it is too hard, you may want to focus on getting customer feedback and improving your product before trying to hack around the fact that it stinks. 

Good luck with your raise and talk soon!

Best,

Nathan