I emailed 70 consulting partners. No replies. What it taught me

PaulHoule

"It’s not a CRM."

BeetleB

"I have no idea what the answer is, so it must be ..." A phenomenon I call "Out of ignorance, comes certainty".

andrewstuart

>> Hermann Simon — the founder of Simon-Kucher, one of the world’s most respected pricing consultancies — was one of the few people who did reply. He told me directly: we have no structured process. No structured process. At a firm that has advised thousands of companies on their most important strategic decisions. Quotes like this won’t lead to people replying to you. Herman would likely be unhappy to see this published from what he probably considered a private email exchange. Since you’re only 15 years old I’ll give you the most important business tip you’ll get - respect your clients and potential clients, don’t quote them in public without their permission, NEVER say anything that might make someone look bad, especially if they went to the trouble to reply to your cold email. That’s the basic of sales.

mhitza

Hi Willem. I think the info you're getting from LLMs is misguiding you. And having LLMs write your content is not going to help. Even if you see other adults around you do that recklessly. Cold emails have not been the recommended marketing approach for a long time. And if the emails were further composed by LLMs (even if you did the research on those leads) does not help I've worked for, with, and run a boutique consulting company. Hundreds of clients managed is not the norm, it's far below that, in the tens, for the happy path. I think you're building a model, for ideas that might be reinforced by a LLM, but niche in practice. I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit, and I'd recommend applying to YCombinator, if you're old enough for their program.

Imustaskforhelp

My friend, I am 17 so its nice to see that you are 15 but here are some discussion points I'd like to share. Your writing sadly feels AI to me. I want you to know to NEVER use AI for writing purposes. Second point, Mass cold out-reach (especially using AI) is not a good thing to do (reputation-wise). That's my opinion but maybe that can change. Third point, Try to take things slow. At some point saying that we are 15 or 17 isn't the thing that one expects (that's my opinion). Because I think that stable businesses take a risk of migrating towards a product and they want to know that they are betting "safe" Somethings don't require this concept of safety like say new businesses but even they would like to see previous reviews. A bit of chicken-and-egg issue to get first customers even and this is why cold-outreach didn't work for you Fourth point, Everything doesn't has to teach you something right away. Things take time to teach you sometimes. Something like delayed-feedback rather than instant-feedback. Fifth point: Realize why you are doing this. Are you doing it because you had wanted this yourself and you want to share this to others, or because you want to make money or want to make fame and that's all great as well fwiw :) I can't speak about yourself but I have had multiple ideas shift, they come and go and singular digit ideas stick in mind and even they get crossed and changed to get to one and that's my point too, all you need is one business as well. Sixth point: Never compare yourself to anybody or chase trends even if short-term could be fine. Maybe this is just my opinion but its not so good chasing trends and trends personally as your moat becomes timing and you might scroll say twitter to find the newest AI thing and this would just suck the joy out of building. have a nice day.

boothby

> I sent 70 emails. Personalised. Researched. Each one had a PS line referencing something specific about that person — a career pivot, a published article, a podcast appearance. I spent real time on every single one. > Zero replies. . . . > Hermann Simon — the founder of Simon-Kucher, one of the world’s most respected pricing consultancies — was one of the few people who did reply. I know when I'm being lied to. I stopped reading here.

jmye

Does anyone reply to cold emails, regardless of the content? Like, I’m not ignoring it because I need your tool.