What actually works for getting the first customers for a new UK small-business SaaS?

[Zoltan Hegedus]

I'm building a new software platform aimed at UK small businesses and trades, and I'm currently focusing on getting the first real customers rather than adding more features.

For anyone who has launched a SaaS or online service in the UK, which organic channels actually brought you your first paying customers?

I'm currently looking at LinkedIn, relevant business communities, direct outreach and useful free tools/content rather than paid advertising.

I'd especially be interested in what worked in the very early stage — first 5–20 customers — and what turned out to be a waste of time.

 

[AI Helper]

Direct outreach wins at this stage. For trades especially, LinkedIn is thin. Most plumbers and sparks live in Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and trade counters at the local merchants, not on LinkedIn. Pick one trade, find 50 firms with 2 to 10 staff on Companies House or Checkatrade, and message or ring them with a specific problem you fix. Ten proper conversations a week beats a thousand impressions.

Partnerships punch above their weight. Accountants and bookkeepers serving trades can hand you five customers in one referral. Offer them a free seat and a small commission.

Charge from day one. Even £10 a month. Free pilots attract people who never convert. Onboard every early customer yourself and ask each one for two introductions.

Wastes of time before 20 customers: SEO and blog content (too slow), polishing the website, and broadcasting on LinkedIn without DMs behind it.

 

[Zoltan Hegedus]

Direct outreach wins at this stage. For trades especially, LinkedIn is thin. Most plumbers and sparks live in Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and trade counters at the local merchants, not on LinkedIn. Pick one trade, find 50 firms with 2 to 10 staff on Companies House or Checkatrade, and message or ring them with a specific problem you fix. Ten proper conversations a week beats a thousand impressions.

Partnerships punch above their weight. Accountants and bookkeepers serving trades can hand you five customers in one referral. Offer them a free seat and a small commission.

Charge from day one. Even £10 a month. Free pilots attract people who never convert. Onboard every early customer yourself and ask each one for two introductions.

Wastes of time before 20 customers: SEO and blog content (too slow), polishing the website, and broadcasting on LinkedIn without DMs behind it.

@AI Helper Thanks, this is exactly the kind of practical answer I was looking for.

The “one trade, 50 firms, 10 proper conversations a week” approach makes a lot of sense.

The product is HEGEVA AI and it's already live. It brings customers, quotes, invoices, follow-ups and day-to-day business admin into one workspace, with UK small businesses and trades as the initial target.

If you had to choose just ONE UK trade to start the first 50-company outreach with — electricians, plumbers, property maintenance, builders or cleaners — which would you test first, and what single pain point would you lead with?

I'm particularly interested in whether you'd lead with unpaid invoice follow-up, quoting/admin time, missed customer follow-ups, or something else.

 

[AI Helper]

Pick electricians

Of the five, electricians are the best first test for a product like HEGEVA AI, for a few practical reasons:

• They already pay for software. Most registered sparks run a certification app for their EICs, minor works certs and EICRs, so a monthly subscription for business admin is a normal cost to them, not a strange new idea. That is the single biggest factor. Cleaners and a lot of small builders still think software should be free.
• Quote-heavy work. Rewires, consumer unit changes, EV chargers, landlord EICRs. Almost every job starts with a written quote, and a typical one-van firm is sending several a week. That is where admin time actually goes.
• Landlord and letting agent work is recurring. EICRs every five years on rentals in England and Scotland means a steady stream of repeat customers who need reminding, which suits a follow-up feature nicely.
• Easy to find. The NICEIC and NAPIT registers are public and searchable by postcode, Checkatrade lists them by area, and every electrical wholesaler counter (CEF, Edmundson, Rexel and the local independents) is full of them at 7.30am. You can build a list of 50 firms with 2 to 10 staff in an afternoon.

Why not the others as the first test:

• Plumbers: much more reactive, emergency-driven work. Fewer quotes, more "turn up, fix, take payment". Good second target, weaker first.
• Builders: real pain with quoting and late payment, but slow decision-makers, long jobs, and a lot of them are one-man bands who hand everything to the wife or an accountant once a quarter.
• Property maintenance: good fit on invoicing, but they often bill through letting agent portals (Fixflo and the like), which fights your workflow.
• Cleaners: thin margins, high churn, very price sensitive. Save them for later.

Lead with quotes going stale, not unpaid invoices

Unpaid invoices feel like the obvious hook but it is a weaker opener for electricians specifically. Domestic work is mostly paid on completion, and the ones who do get chased for money already have Xero or QuickBooks sending reminders. It is a defensive message about a problem they think is under control.

Quoting is different. The real revenue leak in a small electrical firm is this:

• Survey done Tuesday, quote written Sunday night at the kitchen table.
• Customer has had two other quotes by then and gone with whoever replied first.
• No one ever chases the ones that went quiet.

So the single message to test is something like:

Send the quote from the van before you leave the job, and have it chased automatically if they go quiet.

That covers your quoting/admin time and your missed follow-ups in one line, framed around winning more jobs rather than saving admin. Tradespeople respond far better to "more work" than to "less paperwork".

A few notes on the pitch itself:

• Do not lead with "AI" or "all-in-one workspace". Both sound like effort. Lead with the outcome and let them discover the rest.
• Ask one qualifying question before pitching: "How many quotes did you send last month and how many did you win?" Most cannot answer, and that gap is your opening.
• Offer to set up their first quote template for them during a 20-minute call. Doing the setup removes the main reason a busy spark never logs back in.
• Time your calls for 7am to 8am or after 5pm. Midday they are on a job with the phone in the van.

How to judge the test

Give electricians four weeks and 50 firms. If you get 10 real conversations and 3 paying customers, stay there and go deeper before touching plumbers. If you get plenty of polite interest but nobody paying, the pitch is the problem, not the trade. Swap the opener to unpaid invoices for the next 50 and compare.

Keep a plain spreadsheet with the firm, who you spoke to, the objection they gave, and whether they signed. Those objections are your next three months of product decisions, and they are worth more than any feature request from someone who has not paid.

 

[Zoltan Hegedus]

@AI Helper This is extremely useful — thank you. The distinction between selling “less admin” and selling “more won jobs” makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to test this properly: electricians first, a focused list of 50 UK firms, and the quote/follow-up problem as the opening rather than trying to sell HEGEVA as an “AI all-in-one”.

One important point with HEGEVA is that I don't want to promise automation that isn't there yet — external actions remain owner-approved — so I'll keep the message focused on getting quotes out faster, keeping track of opportunities and making sure follow-ups don't get forgotten.

I'll track conversations, objections and paid conversions as you suggested. Once I have some real results from the first batch, I'll come back and share what happened.

Thanks again — this has given me a much clearer first test.

 

[AI Helper]

Good call on the owner-approved point, and it is a selling angle rather than a limitation. Small electrical firms are wary of anything that sends messages to their customers without them seeing it first. Reputation is everything when your next three jobs come from word of mouth on the same estate. "You see every quote and every chaser before it goes out, one tap to approve" lands better with a spark than "fully automated". Say it plainly and early in the conversation and it removes an objection before they raise it.

One thing to add to your tracking sheet: note the time it takes each new customer to send their first quote through HEGEVA. If most are sending one within 48 hours of signing up, you have a product that fits how they work. If they sign up and go quiet, that is the number to worry about, well before churn shows up in the billing.

On the wording of the follow-ups themselves, have a look at what the customer receives, not just what the electrician sees. A chaser that reads like it came from a person ("Hi Sarah, just checking you got the quote for the consumer unit, any questions give me a shout") will convert. Anything that smells like a template or a marketing system will get ignored and reflect badly on the firm. Worth writing two or three of those yourself and shipping them as defaults so the first customers do not have to think about it.

Last practical point: when you get your first three paying electricians, ask each one for a short quote you can use, ideally with their firm name and town. "Won two extra jobs last month, Dave, DJ Electrical, Wigan" is worth more in the next 50 conversations than any feature list.

Do come back with the results, including the objections. The ones that made you wince are the useful ones.

 

[Zoltan Hegedus]

@AI Helper That's a really useful point about owner approval — I hadn't thought about positioning it as a trust benefit rather than an automation limitation.

“HEGEVA prepares it, you review it, nothing reaches your customer until you approve it” is much closer to how I want the product to work.

I'll also add time-to-first-quote to the test alongside conversations, objections and paid conversions. The 48-hour signal should make it pretty obvious whether people are actually adopting the workflow rather than just signing up.

I also agree on the customer-facing follow-ups. They need to sound like they came from the electrician, not from software.

We've started the first electrician outreach batch now. I'll come back with the actual responses and objections rather than more theory.

 

[AI Helper]

That line is a good one. Keep it. "HEGEVA prepares it, you review it, nothing reaches your customer until you approve it" is short, honest and answers the question a cautious spark is already asking in his head. Resist the urge to polish it further before you have heard how the first 50 react to it.

One small suggestion while the batch is running: apply your own product's logic to the outreach. Most trade owners will not reply to the first message, not because they are uninterested but because they are up a ladder. Plan three touches over ten days, each shorter than the last, and log which touch got the reply. That number tells you a lot about how the electricians will behave with their own customers, and it stops you writing off a firm after one silence.

Watch for "sounds good, send me something". It is the most common response from tradespeople and it usually means no. Rather than sending a brochure, offer a 15-minute call where you set up their quote template live. The ones who take the call are real prospects. The ones who do not have given you your answer without wasting a week.

Handle the geography honestly in the pitch. If your list mixes England, Scotland and Wales, the landlord EICR angle changes slightly, since Scotland has had the requirement longer and Welsh firms deal with Rent Smart Wales. Nothing you need to solve in the product, but knowing it stops you looking like an outsider when a Glasgow spark corrects you.

Looking forward to the real responses. The objections will be more useful than anything in this thread so far.

 

[Zoltan Hegedus]

Thanks — that's really useful, especially the point about applying the same follow-up logic to our own outreach.

I'm going to keep the approval line exactly as it is and stop polishing it until we have enough real reactions.

We've started sending the first batches now across electricians and a few other UK trades. I'll track not just replies, but which touch actually gets the response — first email, first follow-up or final follow-up.

I also like the distinction between someone saying “send me something” and someone actually agreeing to a 15-minute call. I'll use the call as the stronger signal rather than treating polite interest as a lead.

And good point on geography. I'll make sure we don't use England-specific assumptions when speaking to firms elsewhere in the UK.

I'll come back with the actual numbers and objections once we've got enough responses. That should be much more useful than guessing what tradespeople want.