Hi Leonardo, When you haven't got the use cases (or social proof) yet it can be difficult, and I like the fact that you are up front about just starting out. The fact that you are gettuing the interest shows that you are doing it right. One strategy you can use is to suggest a partnership: for the "right client" you will bend over backwards to over deliver on the results. Make this a limited time offer and have scarcity, so you're only doing this for 1 or 2 clients. You could offer a discounted rate though ideally you want to retain your margin as much as possible. If the prospect agrees make sure that you agree the scope and terms so that expectations are set correctly. I've used this approach myself during the learning process where I want to test or pilot systems with clients. It reduces their perceived risk but also gives you a great testimonial at the end. An alternative strategy is to adopt a risk/reward approach e.g. I don't deliver the results, you don't pay. Or a 30-day money-back guarantee. For me, both of these depend upon your current cashflow and whether you can deliver results for the duration. You need to balance the risk. A 3rd option is to check your network for friends and/or referrals that might be more willing to invest/take a 'risk' on your service. The actual risk might be minimal but it's how you put this across and the confidence you show during the process. I'm sure there are plenty of other approaches out there.

Secret

You can have a look at individual tools like those you mentioned. An alternative is to use something like clay.com which is what I’m using. Think of it as a data aggregator. Clay allows you to search or import data, add it to a table and then enrich it using various tools and integrations. As an example you can import your list from Apollo then enrich it with email addresses for the whole list, or just those not already found (eg, search only if this field is empty). You can also verify the emails at the same time. It has a load of integrations and pre-built workflows, or you can create your own by describing to the AI engine what you want to achieve and it creates the code and shows you sample results, asks if it was what you expected as an output, or whether you want to change something. For things like finding emails it uses a “waterfall” approach so if it doesn’t find the email using the first search tool, it goes to the next, then the next, and so on. As soon as the email is found and verified (you can specify whether you want to include or exclude “catch-all” email addresses) it stops and moves to the next row. It uses a credits based system and you get so many credits depending on your monthly fee. Where you have licenses already for say, Apollo.io or Prospero or others, you can link them to clay using an api key and this will reduce the number of clay credits required. Same for OpenAI. I think there are about 170 integrations available with a whole variety of tools. It is a very powerful tool itself and has a learning curve (which I’m still on as I’m just scratching the surface), but a good community where you can pose questions like “how do I…” or “I want to achieve this…” or find pre-existing templates. As an example, I’ve just used it to clean and enrich a clients database and identify which of the companies on the revised clean list have subsidiaries or offices in a specific country, then find the most senior person running that office, get their LinkedIn details, verify they are still in that role, then find and verify their email address and export as a csv for them to upload to their crm.

Linker