#Asia Post-mortem: 5 things that helped us hit our first US$10K in 2 months

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Keep innovating, be persistent, and treat your customers like family

Concierge

Editor’s note: As of publishing, the domain prabot.com is no longer operational, and the last update on the company’s Facebook page in May this year. Still, given the nature of startups and serial entrepreneurship, we feel that the advice herein is worth sharing. We have reached out to the author for an update.

In its first two months, Prabot marked its first US$10,000 in sales. It’s not a huge sum, but it feels great knowing what we’ve gone through the first few weeks. They were tough. We were closed to no getting any sales, burnt our money in shoddy operations and spent nights after nights solving customer nightmares.

Also Read: Respect: This Founder bares all and shares exactly why his startup failed

Against all odds, we managed to sail through the storm. Here are the five things that have helped:

  1. Incremental improvement. Every week, we reflect on what we did well and wrong. We list down in bullet points the things that worked and what could have been improved. We make sure not to repeat the same mistake and implement the necessary changes immediately by the following week. It is crucial to keep the momentum going and constantly make progress, no matter how small.
  2. Constant experiments. We got many things wrong at the start. Each week, however, we experimented with various marketing strategies and product improvements — we changed how our site looks, ventured into different sale channels and repositioned our messaging. Gradually, things start to fall into place. Don’t plan too much, get it out quickly, analyze, learn, and change along the way. Keep experimenting, and you’ll eventually get it right.
  3. Excellent service. Most of our big sales came from our returning customers. As time-consuming as it is, it is important to attend to every single customer with excellent care. We always go beyond in helping them and never talk back to them no matter how shitty we felt. And it paid off. We’ve got customers who bought from us one month after disappearing from their first enquiry. Don’t give up on your customers, treat them like your family and always follow up.
  4. Persistence. It will be tough. There won’t be rainbow and sunshine and you will be bound to do a lot of grunt work at the start. There were times I pondered whether it was really worth spending every morning and night doing such tedious work. Can this work out? Is this really the right venture for me? When you’re in the dark, it’s easy for the negative thoughts to cloud your mind. Don’t give in. Look beyond where you are and believe what you do everyday will amount to something great.
  5. Time. I truly believe that life is what you make of it, but there are things that are just not within your control. There will be things you never see coming, expensive mistakes that you keep making. And it’s OK. You won’t get it all right the first time. Great things don’t happen over-night, they happen through nights and nights of hard-work. Give yourself some time to learn and improve and you will eventually see the light at the end of this long tunnel.

Also Read: More than a bubble: A breakdown in the sudden boom of bike-sharing in China

It’s a small achievement, but I’m proud of our progress. With constant improvement, persistence and excellent service, I’m sure we, or anyone, will keep advancing.

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This article was originally published on Medium.

The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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