# Earn your first customers

Win your first customers with personal outreach, a scoped pilot, fast onboarding and a conversation log that records why people said yes or no.

Canonical URL: https://worldenterprise.org/playbooks/earn-your-first-customers/
Last updated: 2026-10-10
Publisher: World Enterprise, run by World Enterprise Group Incorporated

## The steps

1. **Name your first ten.** List ten specific people or companies by name, drawn from your interviews and from the problem brief. A named list is something you can work through. A market is not.
2. **Reach out personally, with a specific reason.** Write to each one about the problem you heard from them or from people like them. Say what you would like to try together and what you would ask of them.
3. **Scope a pilot in writing.** Agree what the pilot covers, how long it runs and what result would count as success. Write it down with the customer so both sides can check it at the end.
4. **Shorten the time to first value.** Walk each new customer from sign-up to the first result, and note every point where they hesitate. Time to first value is the time between starting and getting something worth having.
5. **Ask for the commitment.** At the end of the pilot ask for what a real customer would give, whether that is payment, a renewal, a referral or a written reference. A clear no teaches you as much as a yes.
6. **Log every conversation.** After each conversation record what they asked for, what they objected to and why they said yes or no. Review the log weekly for patterns and change the product or the offer when the patterns are clear.

## What you will have at the end

- A named list of first customers
- A one-page pilot scope that the customer has seen
- An onboarding checklist
- A conversation log