How can I sell to or convince my ideal customer profile when I lack deep industry understanding?
Use AI to explain the typical operations of a small‑to‑mid‑size business in the target industry. Ask the model to walk you through the full customer journey—how they find the business, what documentation they exchange, which platforms they use at each stage, and what their common needs are. This gives you roughly 80 % of the knowledge needed to speak confidently on a call. Once you’re in the conversation, ask targeted follow‑up questions about pricing, packages, or specific pain points to deepen your understanding and tailor your pitch.
I always have clients walk me through their full client journey, from the first point where a customer sees the brand to the last point of engagement. I ask them to show me the first touchpoint, often an email referral, and request to see that email. If they treat me as an authority, they’ll share it, and I’ll critique it—pointing out why it’s ineffective. The reality is most business processes aren’t thought out; they develop organically as short‑term fixes that owners never revisit. By simply sitting down with them and asking how we could improve, we uncover half the battle. Doing this almost always reveals immediate opportunities to improve the business, assuming you’ve spent even a few minutes learning from my channel or similar sources.
But anyway, how do you acquire more upmarket clients? I mean, I wish I could say there's a special system for upmarket clients. A lot of them tend to be more referral-based and gated. They won't take you seriously unless you can accomplish the first hurdle: finding a plausibly deniable reason to reach out to them. That means perusing the network of the people you want to get in touch with, making preliminary introductions or leveraging relationships, then using those connections to find your way to an intro. That's a big thing, but it's very manually intensive and not something you can automate. Aside from that, it's really just the same thing: sending cold emails and working your way up a decision-maker chain, delivering exorbitant value upfront. They're more bureaucratic, with longer sales cycles, but that doesn't mean they're impenetrable. Many cases exist of people in Maker School with zero experience who throw enough outreach to get the attention of a mid-level SVP or similar, then use that to ramp themselves up to a $25–$50 million per year business. It's uncommon, but it occurs.
Your job is not to sell at this stage; your job is to learn everything you can about how the prospect is running their business. Approaching the call from a learning perspective rather than a sales perspective actually increases the probability of selling. Many people rush to sell too early and miss that building rapport and perceived authority is the best way to sell. You can build rapport by paraphrasing what the customer says in slightly different words, showing you understand them. Approach the call with curiosity and ask questions; genuine curiosity increases the chance of closing a deal. Set expectations at the start: let them know you're just there to learn about their business and that a firm decision isn't required by the end of the call unless they want it. Your goal is to see if you can help them, and ask a couple of quick questions to verify that. Now, to frame the conversation, ask what made them respond to your outreach, what they're looking for, where they're coming from and where they're going—think of it like a doctor diagnosing.
Even with zero credibility you can still get traction by using a conversational tone in your outreach. Write longer, personalized emails that give context about who you are, what you’re building, and why you’re reaching out. Make it sound like a genuine conversation rather than a sales pitch. This approach works well for beginners because it feels authentic and helps you stand out from the generic offers flooding inboxes. Give it a try – the personal, story‑driven style often lands the first leads when you don’t have a brand reputation yet.