Most cold outreach to small firms says some version of "we could build you something". I wanted to send the something instead. So before I email a firm, I build it a working client portal in its own colours, filled with made-up clients, and the email has one link to it.
This post is how that works under the hood, written in the first week, before I know whether it works commercially. I'll report that part when there's something true to say.
The pipeline, in order
- Research. I pick small US, UK and Irish accounting firms (and some law firms) and read their public sites. Each firm gets a row with where its email address was found. If the address isn't on the firm's own site, it doesn't go in.
- Fit check. The first demo template is a US individual-tax document portal, so it only goes to US accounting firms. Law, UK and Irish firms were held back until there were variants for them, so a demo never contradicts the email that links to it.
- Build. A generator takes one template and a "domain pack" (US tax, UK accounting or law) and produces a demo on its own subdomain. It uses the firm's colours and its own favicon mark, never mine. Any line quoted from the firm's site has to match the crawled page word for word, or the generator refuses to build.
- Test. Every demo runs an end-to-end test suite before it goes live, and again on the live URL.
- Plan. A firm only enters a day's send plan after checks at prep time: the demo loads and shows the firm's name, the email is still on their site, they're not on the do-not-contact list, and the day is under its cap.
- Send. A separate sender sends on a schedule, and only after I've approved the plan. Day-one emails are plain text, with one link and a "reply no thanks" line.
Rules I set for myself
- Sample data only. Demos never ask for real client documents, and they say so.
- No invented proof. No testimonials, logos, client counts or statistics anywhere. The one calculator on the offer page is labelled as an estimate.
- Quality over count. On the first planned evening, five firms passed the checks out of a much longer list, so five went in the plan. Firms whose pages had changed, or whose email domain didn't match their site, were dropped rather than sent a weak demo.
- Money last. The demo's closing section goes pain → what's built → bigger picture → free trial → price, because a price shown before anything else gets judged against nothing.
What I don't know yet
Whether firms reply, whether they trust a stranger who has already built something for them, and whether a 14-day free trial is enough to get a yes. That's what the next posts are for.