Re-engaging with old customers

I’ve always been of the philosophy that your first no is just a step towards getting a yes down the road.

At Tacit Intelligence, we’ve been out trying to close our seed round for roughly 3 months, and we have had 22 no’s from VCs to date.

Every no I got, I would ask: Are you okay with me sending you updates and staying in touch? Most said yes.

So every month I’ve been pulling together an update on what’s happening in the world of Tacit, which leads me to how you can re-engage old leads.

STEP 1 - GIVE THE PEOPLE SOMETHING ENTICING:

1. Write an email that can be read in 30 seconds that is going to appeal to the audience you’re targeting - in my case this is:
   

   • Audience: AU + NZ VCs investing in AI

   • What do they care about: Ask ChatGPT + use your own knowledge of why they said no to you

     

     Prompt for ChatGPT

2. Turn those things they care about into a bullet point list with a mixture of your own unique data (example below):
   

   

   A short email that takes 30 seconds to read

   
   Make the email subject line something related to the things they care about: Lessons from 58 AI demos from Enterprise to Start Ups & A Tacit Intelligence update
   

3. Create a longer form document (you can take a look at our one here) that expands on all of those points and set up a trackable link using Bit.ly to see how many people actually click it and embed a link to your site in the doc
   

   

   23 out of 58 people have clicked the link in < 12 hours

STEP 2: REPLY, FOLLOW UP & GET MEETINGS

1. Follow up with anyone who replies + run ads to anyone who has clicked through to your site using retargeting

   

   Had 5 replies roll in within an hour of sending

All of this comes back to the core principle I mentioned at the start: your first no is a step towards yes.

Too many start-ups give up after the second attempt; be the type of person who fails, iterates and improves.

Going AI First

I’m a news luddite, but even I’m aware of this: Chris Luxon tells business owners to grow up, thing.

And while that’s got a lot of people excited, there’s something else he said in the same speech that is good advice.

Use AI.

In a few of the articles I read about his speech, the pushback about AI was your typical “How’s a hairdresser meant to use AI” or “AI’s not going to fix the car”.

But here’s the thing: the businesses with an AI-first mentality are already adopting it in all sorts of ways that are giving them an advantage.

Let's just look at the mechanics, for example.

They could use AI to review their booking calendar at the start of each week and optimise their bookings around their garage bays and team to free up 20% more space for last-minute bookings.

Then, with that same AI, review their emails and find the customer enquiries that would make sense to book into that extra space.

Or share some photos of their workshop with AI and use it to help them reconfigure their workshop so their mechanics can work more efficiently.

And this is just basic stuff.

But you can imagine how the extra economics from that calendar review compound. That alone could put them 6 figures ahead per annum.

And in a year or two’s time, all of a sudden they’re expanding, building new bays, hiring more mechanics and so on.

And ole mate across the road who's been comfortable with “business as usual” can’t understand what’s happened.

The naysayers like the journo’s writing those articles can’t see it because they don’t want to see it.

They still think AI is a better Google search. And the same thing is happening to business owners who default to “I’m special” (“I’m an orchardist, AI’s not going to pick my fruit for me”).

No, you’re not mate — there are no exceptions here.

It’s happening quickly, and the tools are only getting better. Jump on board or be left behind.