Let me describe a very common plan.
A founder builds a product. Makes a nice PDF. Collects 200 email addresses. Sends one email to all of them. Then sits and waits.
Two days later, nothing. A week later, nothing. The founder decides B2B sales is broken, or that the product is not good enough.
Neither is true. The plan was the problem. Nobody has ever built a business by sending one email and waiting for a miracle.
Your first 10 B2B customers will come from effort that feels a little uncomfortable: finding the right people, researching them, calling them, following up, and showing up in person. You do not need a sales team for any of it. You need a list, a phone, a plan and a few weeks of consistency.
Here is how to do it, step by step, in plain words.
Why one email is never enough
A decision-maker gets a lot of emails every day. Yours arrives from a name they do not know, with a subject line that looks like every other pitch. Ignoring it takes one second. That does not mean your product is bad. It means you were easy to ignore.
Now compare that with someone who sends a short LinkedIn message, calls two days later, sends a quick WhatsApp with one relevant line, and then asks to drop by for 15 minutes. That person is hard to ignore. Not because they are pushy, but because they are real.
Founders who write about winning their first B2B customers keep saying the same thing: early on, reaching people directly, by email, message and phone, works better than waiting to be found. It is slow and unglamorous. It works.
Step 1: Decide exactly who you are going after
Before you open LinkedIn, answer two questions. Which industry are you going after first? And which person inside the company decides on what you sell: the owner, the HR head, the procurement manager, the marketing head?
Pick one industry and one type of person. Not five.
When we planned the go-to-market for a corporate gifting founder, we did exactly this. Instead of chasing everyone, we chose six target industries and three types of buyers, so every message and every call could speak to a specific situation. Selling felt easier the moment the target was clear.
If you cannot finish the sentence "I sell to [this person] at [this type of company]", stop here and fix that first.
Step 2: Use LinkedIn to build your list, by hand
LinkedIn is the best free business phone book that exists. Use it to build a list in a simple Google Sheet.
Here is how:
1. Go to LinkedIn search, choose People, and use the filters: location, industry and current company. Add the job title you decided in step 1.
2. Try joining job titles with AND and OR in the search bar. For example: "Head of HR" AND "manufacturing" AND "Noida". This works on a free account.
3. Open the company page and look at the People tab. It shows you who else works there and who the real decision-maker might be.
4. For every good prospect, add one row to your sheet: name, designation, company, city, LinkedIn link, phone or email if it is publicly available, and one line about what you noticed.
5. Note any common connection, same college, same former company or same city. You will use it later.
A few honest warnings. Do not use tools that scrape LinkedIn automatically or send messages in bulk. LinkedIn does not allow them, accounts get restricted, and the messages sound like a robot anyway. Building the list by hand is slower, but it forces you to actually look at each person. That is the point.
Also keep it small. Start with a list of about 50 companies and work through them properly. A list of 50 people you studied beats a list of 5,000 you never read.
Step 3: Do your homework before you reach out
Spend 15 minutes on each company before you contact anyone. It sounds slow. It is the biggest difference between messages that get replies and messages that get ignored.
Look at:
- What the company actually does, from its own website
- Anything recent: a new plant, a new product, a hiring spree, an award, a post by their leadership
- Who their customers and competitors are
- What problem you could realistically solve for them
- The person: their role, how long they have been there, what they post about, where they studied, where they worked before
Then write one line, in your own words, that shows you did your homework. Compare these two openings.
The first: "Dear Sir, we are a reputed company offering quality services at competitive prices."
The second, as an example: "Hi Rohan, I saw that your team opened a second unit this year. We help growing manufacturers set up simple gifting for dealers and employees, and I had a quick idea for you."
The first one goes straight to the bin. The second one gets read.
Step 4: Message and call, both
A lot of people say cold calling is dead. In our experience, the version that is dead is the lazy one: reading a script to a random list. A call to the right person, with a reason, is very much alive.
Why cold calling still works
- A call forces an answer. An email can sit unread forever. On a call you get a yes, a no or "send me details", and all three tell you something.
- Voice builds trust faster than text. In two minutes, the person knows you are real.
- You learn straight away: what they care about, who else is involved, what they use today.
- Many people have stopped calling, so a good call stands out.
How to do it, simply
1. Send a short LinkedIn connection request with one line about why you are connecting.
2. When they accept, send a short message. Do not pitch. One way that works well: tell them what you are building and ask for their advice. Several founders who have shared how they won early customers opened with a request for advice, not a sales pitch.
3. Two or three days later, call.
4. Follow up on WhatsApp or email with one useful line.
5. Call again after a few days if there is no reply. Try three or four times, spread over two or three weeks, before you move on. Polite and persistent is not annoying. Silent is.
On the call, keep it very short. Something like this:
"Hi [Name], this is [Your name] from [Company]. I know I am calling out of the blue, so I will be quick. I noticed [one specific thing], and we help companies like yours with [one clear result]. Would it be okay if I came by for 15 minutes next week to show you how?"
That is all. You are not trying to sell on the phone. You are trying to earn a meeting.
If they say "send me the details", that is not a yes. It is often a polite no. Send a one-page summary, and say "I will call you on Thursday to hear your thoughts". Then call on Thursday.
Step 5: Push for an in-person meeting
Nowadays a lot of people try to do B2B entirely by email and expect a reply. But in B2B, people buy from people they trust, and trust is built much faster in a room than in an inbox.
In a meeting you can:
- Read the room. You see who is interested, who is bored and who actually decides.
- Meet more than one person. B2B deals rarely depend on a single person. A meeting often brings the second and third decision-makers into the conversation.
- Show you are serious. Someone who travels to meet a prospect is remembered.
- Move faster. Questions that take ten emails get answered in ten minutes.
How to ask: "I will be near your office on Thursday. Could I drop by for 15 minutes?" It is specific, short and easy to say yes to. Offer two time options.
When you go, be on time, carry a one-page summary instead of a heavy brochure, ask more than you talk, and leave the room with a clear next step. If distance makes it truly impossible, use a video call, but treat it as second best, not the plan.
In the corporate gifting plan we built, interns found the prospects and made the cold calls, but a person from the company's management attended the in-person meetings with high-value prospects. Seniority and presence at the point of decision matter. Even a small business can copy this: let someone handle the volume, and make sure a senior person shows up when it counts.
Step 6: Keep your presentation short, simple and about them
Most founders over-prepare the wrong thing. They build 30 slides about the company: our story, our team, our vision. The prospect cares about one thing: what is in it for me?
A good B2B presentation is short, simple and built around their situation. A structure that works:
1. Their situation, in their own words, from your research
2. What you do, in one sentence
3. How it works, in three simple steps
4. One example of a similar result
5. What happens next, including price and timeline
That is five to seven slides, or even a single page. Use big text, plenty of space and very little jargon. Put their company name on the first slide. Change the examples to suit their industry. Leave a printed one-page summary behind.
If you need 40 slides to explain what you do, you are not clear yet. Fix that first. When we help founders with their sales process, we build playbooks the team will actually use, not thick manuals nobody reads. The same rule applies to presentations.
Step 7: Use common connections, but honestly
A warm introduction usually gets a faster reply than a cold message. So before you reach out cold, check LinkedIn for who you both know.
- Mutual connections: ask the person you both know for a short introduction, and make it easy by writing two lines they can forward as they are
- Shared background: same college, same former company, same city, same community or event
- Shared interests: a group you both belong to, or a post they wrote that you genuinely have an opinion on
Mention these only if they are real, and never name-drop someone without their permission. People can check, and one false claim ends the conversation.
If there is no connection, do not wait for one. Go cold. Common ground is a bonus, not a requirement.
A simple weekly routine for a founder with no team
Pick fixed time blocks. Two hours a day is enough to start.
- Monday: build your list. Add 10 new companies to your sheet, with your research notes.
- Tuesday to Thursday: send messages, make calls and book meetings. Do the calls in one block, at the same time every day.
- Friday: follow up, update your sheet and plan next week's visits.
Track everything in a simple sheet: company, person, last contact, what they said, next step and date. A deal that is not written down gets forgotten. In one real estate project we worked on, follow-ups happened only when someone remembered, and deals went cold. A weekly look at the sheet fixes that.
Mistakes that cost founders customers
- Sending one email and waiting
- Sending a long PDF before anyone has asked for it
- Trying to sell on the first call, instead of asking for the meeting
- Giving up after one attempt
- Talking about yourself, not about the customer
- Asking for too much. Ask for 15 minutes, not an hour.
- Not writing anything down
Common questions
Does cold calling still work for B2B in India?
Yes, when you call the right person with a reason and keep it short. It works badly when you read a script to a long list of random numbers.
Do I need LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
Not to start. LinkedIn's free search with the filters, plus a simple spreadsheet, is enough for your first list. Paid tools help later, when you are doing this in larger volume.
How many companies should I contact for my first 10 customers?
There is no fixed number, because it depends on your price, your industry and how well you target. A sensible start is a focused list of around 50 companies, worked through properly, instead of blasting thousands.
Should I hire a salesperson or an agency first?
Not yet. Your first 10 customers teach you what works, and you can only learn that by selling yourself first. Hire once you have a process that works, and point the hire at closing, not at finding leads.
The bottom line
There is no trick. Your first 10 B2B customers come from knowing exactly who you want, learning something about them, reaching them in more than one way, and showing up. It is not glamorous. It does work, and it teaches you more about your market in a month than a year of waiting would.
One task for the founder
Today, choose one industry and one type of decision-maker. Find 10 companies on LinkedIn and put them in a sheet, with the name of the one person you want to meet at each. Do not write a single message yet. Tomorrow, research the first three.
Want help building your first sales engine?
We help founders at every stage build a simple, repeatable sales process: the target list, the messages, the playbook and the weekly review. It is part of our sales and growth strategy support.