#319 · sell service first, build saas after

youtube ↗Sales

Nick, how's the sales cycle for Clarvo?

On average, the sales cycle for Clarvo is about 2‑3 weeks. When discussing deals closed, it’s per seat—closing 10 one‑seat deals a month doesn’t matter much; we focus on multi‑seat deals. Recently we closed a deal for about a dozen seats, and before that we’d onboarded a few very small shops (1‑5 seats). Our calendar is full of sales calls, but many are unqualified—people reaching out just for my opinion, not to buy. We need to pre‑qualify form‑fillers using Clarvo to show the platform’s value and ensure they provide a real phone number, not fake inquiries from teens. Despite hit‑or‑miss results, we have some big deals in the queue, including a potential insurance company with several hundred seats and referrals from a PE portfolio; landing one of those could yield $1 M ARR (e.g., 300 seats at $300‑$500/month). Clarvo stands out because it delivers high initial reply and pickup rates, though other dialers fade quickly due to poor phone‑number management. To get more mid‑market or enterprise deals via cold email, rely on volume and iteration, understanding that these sales involve multiple decision‑makers and require a warm referral or a strong foot‑in‑the‑door approach.

sales cycleclarvomid-marketcold email

Related answers

youtube ↗AI & Automation

I have a new AI receptionist optimized for German that can set appointments, forward calls, and call leads to qualify them. I'm trying to sell the setup to lawyers for 2K since it's just prompting, and doing cold email plus some calls, but I'm struggling with confidence to sell it. Some lawyers voice data-security concerns — should I switch niches to something like real estate management or car dealerships instead?

If that's an option, I definitely wouldn't sell to an extraordinarily regulated industry, where they're exactly the kind of client who'd take legal action if something went wrong. Sell to less-regulated industries wherever possible, and look for situations where businesses take calls and speed-to-lead is critical to winning that call. Voice agents work so well in receptionist settings like hair salons and appointment-based businesses because of buyer behavior: someone wants a service today, searches 'salon near me,' calls the first listing, and if nobody picks up, hangs up and calls the next one, and the next, until someone answers. If that's the main bottleneck, a voice receptionist makes perfect sense, and you can scoop up market share just by being first to answer with 24/7 availability. But some businesses don't care about speed-to-lead at all — private equity inquiries, for instance, aren't going to hinge on getting an instant answer; they're sending outreach to 10-15 people anyway and expect a 48-72 hour response window. So focus on businesses where speed-to-lead really matters, and generally on lower average-order-value businesses, where the voice agent messing something up can't blow up a $100,000 deal.

ai receptionistvoice agentniche selectionspeed to lead
youtube ↗Marketing

How did you go about growing Clarvo and finding its specific pain point? Was it cold outbound at scale testing offers until you found a winner, or did your business partner already know the exact pain point? Would love to see the copy you used.

Honestly, we've grown Clarvo almost entirely through word of mouth up to this point — we haven't even started a dedicated go-to-market strategy through things like cold email yet, though that's coming. What I am sitting on is a massive asset: my personal brand, with over a million followers, a chunk of whom are in the exact niche Clarvo serves. That's not something replicable for most people since you don't have a brand like that, but I'm going to take full advantage of it — if I can convert even 0.001% of my following into a company that onboards 100+ seats, that's $10M/year without much problem, and at current SaaS multiples (roughly 8-10x at our growth rate), that business could sell for around $100M, largely just from leveraging the audience.

saas growthaudience leverageword of mouth
youtube ↗Lead Generation

What did you implement to take that company [a Texas home services / HVAC business] from $3M to $9M a month?

The client (a Texas home services business selling AC/heating installations) was previously spending inefficiently on media buying to generate leads that went nowhere when called. We implemented a full speed-to-lead stack — when someone opts into a form or offer, they get a call within a couple minutes, not after a 5+ minute delay to reach a team member. We also significantly improved follow-up and dispositions using our calling startup, Clarvo, which streamlines routing someone to the right place post-call with deliberately-designed follow-up sequences. Combined, we roughly doubled their pickup rate — and doubling pickup rate on offer responses roughly translates to something like 1.7-2x revenue. We also fixed dialing hygiene: a huge, underappreciated issue in this space is outbound numbers getting flagged 'Spam Likely' on caller ID — roughly half of home-service-style follow-up calls get flagged that way, and if you're an older or middle-aged person seeing 'Spam Likely,' you're not picking up, no matter how good your speed-to-lead system is.

speed to leadhome servicespickup ratedialing hygiene
youtube ↗Cold Email

I started cold emailing a month ago, using a book-a-call funnel to get emails, but after booking a call, why not pitch my service on the call?

The issue with that is most people will hate you because they're trying to make money off you, and now you're trying to make money off them. They'll also assume you're wasting their time. Usually, if someone runs a good book-a-call funnel, they have qualification structures that will flag you as someone trying to sell them, which is quite common. For example, with Clarvo, my AI-enabled power dialer, we get about three or four bookings a day; roughly half are qualified people, while the others just want to talk to me. They often fill the calendar app with nonsense, but when we actually jump on a call, it's just 'hey, just wanted to talk to Nick,' which isn't what the form is for, so I don't think highly of you when you fill it out.

cold emailbook a call funnelpitch