1. Among all your products and services, choose the one that theoretically closes the biggest pain point for companies in the country where you are going to go. Or the one that you already had a precedent of selling abroad.
2. Write a cold letter in your native language with this structure:
- Hi Name,
- Why are you writing to this person (you have exactly 2 seconds to let the person decide to read on or not)
- what you offer
- Why is it profitable for him (for the marketer will benefit one thing, for the owner of the company another, for the investor a third)
- how it works (very briefly and only if nothing is clear without it)
- who you are and social proof (testimonials, known customers)
An open-ended question on the topic (don’t offer a call right away), for example for an outsourced company it could be «Would this be relevant to you? What kind of stacks do you usually work with?»
Each paragraph is a separate paragraph. The paragraph is 2-3 short and simple sentences.
3. Come up with a subject line that makes you want to open it. Don’t write a spam ad in the style of «How can you save a million with so-and-so product?» Imagine that you met this person at a conference, and now you’re writing an email.
If I were a packaging supplier and I were writing to Amazon, I would write, «Amazon x MyCompany | about the packaging.» I didn’t lie, because I’m really writing about packaging, but if you don’t open that email, you won’t understand anything.
The main thing is not to put «Re:» in the subject line of the first letter, this kind of deception irritates everybody. Your letter will open without «Re:» if it is sent to the right audience and with the right title.
4. Translate your letter through an online translator. The best one is DeepL, but if you are going to translate large texts for free, you should use Google Translator.
5. Give your letter to a native speaker for «proof reading and editing» (that’s the name of the service) at Fiverr. After prüfried check that the meaning is not distorted (it happens).
6. Make a website landing page with free templates for the mono-product you have chosen. Translate it into English. Next, prufried on Fiverr and check that the meaning is not distorted.
7. Buy the domain of the country you want to work in (if it’s UK — .co.uk, if France — .fr, etc.). This is important.
8. Make a corporate e-mail with your name on it, e.g. [email protected]. Emails from your personal Gmail or generic email will not open. Put a photo of yourself where you can see your face.
9. Remember your LinkedIn password. Go in, translate it completely into English, delete any information that might scare off potential clients (weird HEIs, places to work, projects, posts). If they like your letter and offer, there’s a 90% chance they’ll look you up on LinkedIn before responding.
10. Describe your first customer segment. What does the company that could potentially buy from you look like?
- What industry is it in? (SaaS marketing, Mobile, Gaming, Hardware, etc.)
- What size is this company? Does it employ 10 people or 1,000?
- Who is your decision maker at this company? (CEO, Founder, marketer, HR, VP of Sales, etc.)
- What is this company’s minimum revenue?
- What city is it headquartered in?
- What technology do they use?
- Have they raised investments or not? When and in what amount?
11. Take a free trial on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo. Use their filters to find companies as similar as possible to the one you described in the previous paragraph. It’s easy enough to do, there are many filters and they are flexible.
12. In Apollo or Snov you will find the business maker you are looking for.
13. Copy the mail and check if it is real via ZeroBounce, DeBounce or Verifalia. If it is real (Valid) — you can write. On Catch All mail it is better not to write.
14. Send letters to the first 100-200 companies by hand, at intervals of 3-5 minutes (so they do not go to spam). The main thing is not to send through mailing services, designed for mass sending letters to those who signed up for mailing (for example, MailChimp), so they are guaranteed to get in spam.
15. 15. After two days, write a follow up to those who haven’t responded. And then another follow up after another 2 days.
16. If you have done everything correctly, you will get replies from about 10-20 companies. Of those, 1-3 companies will be warm leads and they will offer to call. These are the average conversions for quality marketing in almost any niche.
Yay, you have your first leads! If your English is B1 or better, call them yourself. If you don’t speak English, find someone who can make the call with or for you.