Cohesive

Distribution is everything, but a good product drives distribution. This week, we added 18 customers for our SaaS, but only 6 were from outbound. The rest? All inbound from affiliates and existing customers. Focusing on specific verticals (e.g., janitorial, kitchen hood cleaning) has helped a lot - there are over 1M commercial cleaning businesses in the US, but the communities are small. Do good with one, and suddenly inbounds start coming in.

Local business sales is different because... ...location data changes outreach focus For example, we've incorporated the following logic into getcohesiveai(.)com for commercial cleaning (and other facility svcs like HVAC) outreach: 1. If the business is customer-facing (e.g., restaurants, clinics, daycares, etc.), they manage their own cleaning. For these, you want to be reaching out to the business owner 2. If the business is in a smaller building (typically suburbia), they manage their own cleaning. For these, you want to be reaching out to the business owner also 3. If the business is in a large building (e.g., if the address contains a suite # or office #), the building mgmt likely manages cleaning for all tenants. For these, you want to be reaching out to the building manager/property manager 4. If the business is a large company (e.g., enterprise with 20+ locations), above rules still apply but replace business owner with store/location/branch mgr * Should clarify it's different vs other types of sales, not different from 2024 -> 2025 ??

2??0??2??4?? has been a mixed year (our first full year in business...) Looking back, it's cool to see how our goalposts have shifted as we've hit our goals...started with a target of 5K MRR, then 10K MRR, then to be profitable, then 25K MRR, 50K MRR, and now beyond. And with it, so has our ICP, for good and bad. Cohesive first got started helping private equity funds better find acquisition targets in the LMM. As our clients started acquiring local service businesses, we then started to help them with business development for their post-acquired companies, such as the 20+ janitorial businesses we now work with (among other industries, such as advisory, landscaping/tree care, business brokers, etc.) Through these clients, we've learned that local business outreach is an untapped market and unsolved problem, and it starts with generating the most accurate data and implementing best practice workflows using our AI agent. What's next for 2025? We have some ideas - but the reality is it's the same as always: we'll let our customers tell us

When doing local business sales, you don't want to be emailing the CEO of McDonald's (Chris Kempczinski) Always first check if the company is part of a chain/franchise, or a standalone business Obvious when it's McDonald's, but a lot less obvious for other companies, like ServiceMaster Clean? or Paul Davis Restoration It's the perfect use case for ChatGPT (like with Cohesive AI's Google Sheets extension) - don't even need to have access to external data as it already knows most large companies We've enriched 1 million + addresses for a few clients and have had consistent success with directly asking ChatGPT to classify the business

For local business outreach, owners often have a generic email This is especially important for our clients that need to specifically target the owner, like private equity & business broker clients The hard part is knowing when the generic email reaches the decision maker vs someone else on the team At Cohesive, we use our product ourselves - our ability to more smartly point to the decision maker even if they use a generic email helps us reach more for our own internal business development P.S. we do this based on probabilities from size, industry, alternate emails available, and a few other factors

For Cohesive, we only work with one local client per service area, and it's helped us grow faster. For example, we work with 30+ janitorial businesses on local business development, but only one per area. This "exploding offer" aspect helps: 1. Increase sales conversion rate 2.Decrease churn rate FOMO (+ continuous value delivery) works wonders ??

We recently started working with our first enterprise customer, a public 5B+ revenue company On one hand, it's validating to know that local business research is a hair-on-fire problem for companies of all sizes On the other hand, it's made me realize that targeting enterprises initially isn't always the best choice (thankfully our problem isn't an enterprise-only problem) True outbound enterprise sales requires a totally different and dedicated GTM approach For most VC-funded startups, enterprise deals are often through investor intros, meaning there isn't a consistent & repeatable enterprise GTM motion For Cohesive? We'll likely continue focusing on our current ICP until we feel consistent market pull to move upmarket to enterprises

This past week was exhausting 80 hour weeks (so far) are never easy, but hearing product love from customers like Grant McClure makes it worth it Essentially when it simultaneously solves two problems: sourcing for Brightleaf Holdings, and local/SMB business development for their portcos ??

Sometimes the best marketing comes from your customers This was a tweet at 9pm that brought us 4 new customers the next day, with 5 more demos scheduled for this week Why was it so effective? Simple: if you're solving a problem for a customer, they likely know a ton of others in the industry that face the exact same problem (...also in your ICP!) Combine that with social proof and you're ?? P.S. this applies to acquisitions as well. A business owner in a target industry, even if not looking to sell, may know others in the space that are #sales #businessdevelopment #M&A #sourcing #marketing #inbound

No valid email? Quick tip: chances are they go by a nickname, or vice-versa. For example, Chris' email may be Christopher, or vice-versa. Getcohesiveai(.)com accounts for this automatically ?? P.S. targeting doctor offices? Many use dr{name} in their email, like drkevin #emailvalidation #sourcing #businessdevelopment #SMBsales