How to Find Your First 10 Customers

Develop a Customer Persona

First, you need to know who you’re looking for.

Think about the characteristics of your ideal customer. Consider the challenges they face and the problem you’re trying to solve for them. If you’re selling directly to consumers, you might also zero in on details like age, income bracket, values and favorite brands. If you’re selling to other businesses, factors like industry, company size, revenue model, and position in supply chains matter.

Ashley Griffin, founder of vintage brand The Nouvou, came up with personas for customers of her luxury handbags and identified the hashtags her ideal customers use on social media. She introduced people to her brand by searching those hashtags and engaging with relevant posts.

“Building that persona is very important. And then essentially reverse engineering, where you're working backwards to think about, ‘Where do they spend their time? Where can I possibly find this person?’” Griffin says.

Create Your Own Content and Partner with Influencers

At first, Griffin didn’t have the budget to hire someone to market her brand, so she invited a handful of friends to a dinner party and asked for their help. She created Instagram posts and TikTok videos of her friends modeling merchandise or making handbag charms. Using Shopify, she monitored traffic to her website and found that the homemade social content drove some purchases.

Next, she partnered with online influencers to spread the word about her brand. While established companies often work with mega-influencers who have millions of followers, Griffin recommends startups contact micro-influencers whose follower counts are in the 10,000 to 30,000 range.

“Micro-influencers are great just because one, they're not used to brands reaching out to them. So they're already 10 times hungrier because they're not getting the same opportunities as other big influencers. Two, they're more likely to build brand loyalty,” Griffin says.

She’s found that micro-influencers are often more accessible and engaged in their online communities. Plus, they tend to be grateful for their early brand deals, so they continue advocating for those brands as their audience grows.

Even the smallest accounts can connect you with customers or become customers themselves. One of the first influencers Griffin reached out to had only about 100 followers, but she created great content promoting The Nouvou and ended up buying a handbag for over $700.

Have a Presence Offline

When Eran Mizrahi, CEO of Source86, co-founded his company to supply food ingredients to consumer product brands and retailers, he prioritized attending in-person events like trade shows and industry gatherings where he could speak face-to-face with potential customers.

“I think a lot of times founders will sit behind their computer. It's a safety net; I do it too. But sometimes being out in the wild and meeting people in public and having more uncomfortable conversations can lead to the most value,” Mizrahi says.

Griffin connected with her audience in person through vendor fairs, then began hosting her own events when she realized customers were eager for more real-world interaction. In addition to displaying products, she offers cocktails and mocktails, a charm bar and a bar where attendees can customize their own lip gloss. She’s now expanding the activities to include flower arranging.

“The first event that I did for $300 literally equated to over 12 sales. So that night I was able to build community, but also build a community that was willing to pay for something as well,” Griffin says.

Holding her own events gives her the advantage of knowing upfront that all the participants are interested in fashion. Plus, she doesn’t have to compete with other vendors.

Look for Low-Hanging Fruit

Landing your first few sales may go more smoothly if you target customers who likely have the greatest need for your product or service.

Mizrahi knew from prior experience working in the food industry that certain product categories are difficult to source, so he sought out customers who needed ingredients in those categories.

“We knew roughly who our customer was in terms of the ingredients we wanted to supply them with, the things that we had experienced in, the areas where we felt we had a competitive advantage. And then we did try to triangulate that to our network to go after the companies where we felt like we could add the most value first, that would give us a chance—the customers who maybe were having the biggest problems,” Mizrahi says.

Pursuing marketing approaches that aren’t yet being tapped by others in your space can help, too. Mizrahi thought about spending on Google Ads, but that arena was already crowded with other ingredient suppliers. So instead, he and his co-founder used their LinkedIn networks to reach prospective customers.

“What I tried to do was evaluate different channels where our customer is, but where our competitors aren't. And so LinkedIn was one where our competitors weren't as active. And we knew that if we could leverage our LinkedIn profiles and our experience, we could maybe get in front of new people,” Mizrahi says.

Play the Numbers Game

Whichever marketing channels you choose, keep in mind that you’ll probably have to contact a large number of people to land your first sales.

“Sometimes people don't realize that you need to reach out to a thousand people to have 20 conversations, and of those 20 conversations you're going to get two customers,” Mizrahi says. He recommends using an Excel sheet to track interactions.

Michael Nova, CEO of Nova Custom Label Printing, originally started his company to offer branding and marketing solutions for musicians, then pivoted so that 99% of his business now is with corporate clients. He credits his success to prolific networking and recommends founders look beyond their industry to Chamber of Commerce events and business meetup groups where they can meet more people.

“With the six degrees of separation, everyone is connected to everyone. So you can meet someone who you don't think is going to be helpful to you, but in the end, they know someone that can be your ideal client,” Nova says.

Offer Incentives

Nova let people know that he was looking for referrals and grew his client base by offering compensation to people who sent paying customers his way.

“I went around to people and I said, ‘Look, if you can find me a client, I'll work out a finder's fee for you,’” Nova says. In some cases, people actually turned down the payment, saying that they were referring a friend and all they wanted was for him to do a good job.

If a finder’s fee or commission isn’t a standard arrangement in your industry, consider alternatives like revenue share or affiliate programs. You could also offer rewards like swag or a discount on the customer’s next order.

And you can offer incentives to potential customers, encouraging them to visit your site or buy a first item. Griffin messaged people with promo codes and drew visitors to her website with a free charm quiz.

Build Trust

People are understandably hesitant to buy from a company they’ve never heard of before. To overcome that obstacle, lean into social proof.

Nova asked each of his first clients to leave a Google review, whether they were happy with his service or not. He cautions that it’s better to have a mix of good and bad reviews than reviews that are 100% perfect, which might look fake.

“If you have five-star reviews and no bad reviews, people get suspicious of that. So it's best to ask for honest reviews. If it's a bad review, that's good, because 4.9 is better than 5.0,” Nova says.

Griffin invested in an Entrupy device and brought it with her to vendor fairs. The device uses AI to authenticate a handbag and prints out a certificate of authentication. Entrupy also provides a money-back guarantee if it authenticates a product in error. Some of Griffin’s competitors charge customers for the certificates, but Griffin gives them out for free, and she’s found it reassures people who are on the fence about purchasing.

“That was a huge thing for me just because I wanted to show, I’m a small business, why should they trust me over The RealReal? And I felt like having a device like that would build more trust with my customers faster just because in this world, replicas are taking over at an alarming rate,” Griffin says.

Partner with Other Businesses

If you can form relationships with other businesses that your target customers rely on, you might get some leads sent your way. Look for partnerships where your product or service is complementary to the partner’s business or where you can help the partner expand its capabilities.

When he was searching for his first customers, Mizrahi partnered with supply chain consultants who worked with consumer goods companies. The consultants could direct clients to Mizrahi’s company when they needed to source an ingredient—which was a win for the consultants, who were solving their clients’ problems, and for Mizrahi, who got new customers.

“We did a few of those at the beginning, trying to get into the five people who are already working with our customers, offering something different that we can bolt onto and add value, and that seemed to work quite well,” Mizrahi says.

Be Consistent

Commit to your customer acquisition strategy, and follow through on it. You’ll attract more customers if you show up enthusiastically day in and day out.

“If you just come in and dip your toe in and then leave and then come in a month later and dip your toe in and leave, you're not going to be successful,” Mizrahi says. “The compounding effect is real.”