The Lie SaaS Sold You: Stop B2B Waitlists, Celebrating our Cohort, and Speaking at #HEXPO2025

👋 In this Growth Drop, we’ve got…

• A mini ‘Sell Anything On Tour’ to congratulate the July Cohort 👏 

• A longer read: Are waitlists worth the… wait? ⏳

  • Buyer’s journey beyond the waitlist

  • Turn intent into action

  • How to measure leads and go 0-20 customers

• And a #HEXPO2025 reminder… Grab your tix, catch me speak, and don’t burn the ToFu 🍲

SOCIALS + UPDATES

We’ve been moving pretty fast this year, so it was amazing to take a step back and look at how much our community has grown.

We couldn't visit every city, but special mention goes to Stef Cola and Mark Cola from Ligantic, who drove down from Bendigo to Melbourne, and Roland Illyes from GRACEX, who travelled from Katoomba to Sydney 👏

Whether you live remote, regional, or overseas, we can support you.

Want to take part in our Sales Accelerator? Book a time to speak to Sean 🗓️

SALES INSIGHTS

Written by Sean

Ditch the Waitlist and Close Founding Customers

Every week, I meet founders burning real opportunities by using waitlists when they shouldn’t be.

A waitlist is not a B2B strategy. It’s a short-term tactic that has been popularised by companies selling SaaS to SaaS or viral D2C.

Waitlists can work for certain markets and customers. But for the founder building in an underserved market dominated by incumbents, a waitlist can kill momentum.

Are you in one of those markets?

If you are, you’re likely hearing prospects say, “we’ve always done it this way” when referring to outdated solutions that “get the job done”. Think: healthcare, construction, and education markets.

These are markets that aren’t built for a model of…

1. Engage lead

2. Put on a waitlist

3. Hit with an email funnel

4. Convert

These markets are also not full of people with time to spare. If the average exec receives 120+ emails a day, your waitlist funnel isn’t likely to convince them to spend $3K+.

This is also why investors don’t get excited when they hear you’ve got a waitlist.
They want to see revenue, contracts, and paid pilots. Not email captures.

You need a real buyer’s journey.

What to Do Instead? Build Founding Customers

At my first company, I closed $200K+ in pre-product sales by using a real buyer’s journey, engaging first believer customers and those willing to come on as founding customers.

Example of a multi-six-figure, tranched roll-out we landed (I got to tier 4) ⤵️

Here’s Why We Didn’t Use a Waitlist

1. Intent Is Lost

If a prospect has energy towards your product now, even if you’re pre-launch, you need to harness it. Capture the momentum and turn it into more than just email capture.

Want to turn that intent into action? ➡️ Book a call with me ⬅️

2. B2B Buyers Don’t Self-Serve

If your clients are not SaaS businesses and your contract value is higher than $3K a year, you need to guide your buyer.

It’s your responsibility to:

• Reduce friction for the buyer

• Prove there is a real business case for your solution

• Influence action to be taken

You are a problem solver and expert on the problem sets you answer, and this is why your customers will work with you.

3. Not All Leads Are Created Equal

Speaking with three startups recently using waitlists, I learnt they were not segmenting leads.

Segment post-capture into:

• Industry

• Vertical

• Location

• Deal size

• Business insights

This will inform prioritisation and trends to assist in winning your first deals and finding your ideal client profiles.

Engage them in a priority order based on the data insights or what you learn in research. Your goal should be to engage intent and action-takers fast. Speed to lead is still important, and even if that lead is willing to wait for your solution, you must have a guided next step to meet their intent, such as a feedback or discovery call.

4. Money Is Left on the Table

Waitlists assume that once your product is ready, the waitlist lead will sign on.

But will they even remember?

Your product may be your life, but it’s not theirs. 

They took action for a reason. And they’re probably taking action elsewhere too.

Getting a prospect to go from ‘lead in’ to ‘invoice paid’ when you’re growing your first 20 customers can take 1-14 months, depending on your customer size and product maturity. 

Starting now, even if all you have is a demo or Figma file, you can get them through those first weeks or months and possibly even have them signed and paid before your product goes live.

5. Demonstrable Proof in Delivery

You won’t be the first startup they've spoken to, but you can be the first to deliver what they said they would. 

We can win founding customers by showing that we always deliver and have real momentum.  

A customer-centric and considered sales experience builds early adopters, and when it comes to committing, they know you as someone of your word. 

There are no doubts on if you can deliver, it becomes when. 

This can manifest in various ways, such as attending the first coffee meeting, gathering feedback, iterating, updating business leaders, following up for co-design, or developing new features. 

So when you guide them to take action and purchase, there’s no question about delivery, as you’ve already proven you deliver 5, 10, 20 times.

What’s Beyond the Waitlist Model?

If you’ve never built a buyer’s journey before, this might feel vague or fluffy. 

We’re talking about a process that shifts depending on how the lead comes in.

That lets you:

• Qualify the prospect as an ideal client

• Learn what solutions they’re using now

• Work out how to displace those solutions

• Understand if and when you can serve these prospective customers

• Know who to engage at each stage internally to make this happen

• Handle objections like “we’ve always done it this way” 

• Turn coffee catch-ups into customers

• End the cycle of “just one more meeting”

• Get real revenue in the bank

How Do I Get from 0 to 20 Customers?

Once your first sales process is defined, begin using your insights, successes, and new processes to find deal repeatability and build out your serviceable obtainable market.

Not time wasting, but actually talking to buy-ready prospects. 

The secret is not to serve everyone, but to narrow this ideal client using your deep understanding of data, signals, product maturity matching, and where you can win.

What this looked like at Neat ⤵️

If you need help getting started and want to consider how you move from your first customer to your next 20, book time to speak with me about our Sales Accelerator.

Founders from our last cohorts…

• Won their first Paid pilots

• Closed $50K+ in new sales

• Added $100,000s in qualified leads to their pipeline

• Built the confidence and competence to manage the process from cold outreach to contract signed

Express your interest now, and let’s spend 5 weeks building together so you can nail the rest of 2025 💪

EVENTS + COMING UP