I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start?
Start with twenty companies, not two thousand. Pick people you can describe precisely (job title, company size, the specific problem you think they have) and write each of the first twenty emails by hand so you learn what makes someone reply. Keep it to four or five sentences: why you are writing to them specifically, the problem in their words, one line of proof, and a small ask like fifteen minutes. Your reply rate on the first batch will be embarrassing and that is the point, you are collecting evidence about your message, not building a machine yet. Only once a message reliably gets replies should you think about tools, sequences or volume.
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4 resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked.
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It orders the seven ways early customers actually arrive (network, cold outbound, investors, community, content, press, launch) by how much trust each one starts with, which is the missing map for a first-time seller. Built from interviews with founders at Figma, Notion, Databricks and Slack rather than theory.
The whole 400 page book is readable free chapter by chapter, written specifically for founders and first-time sellers rather than career sales people. Chapters 4 to 8 (prospecting, outreach, pitching, closing) are the ones to read first.
This is where the SDR and AE split came from, and the summary gives you the whole model without the book. The rule that no AE prospects and no SDR closes explains why GTM org charts look the way they do.
The counterweight if you have decided Indian customers will not pay: Unicommerce runs 10,000 to 12,000 dollar contracts with enterprise customers, has been profitable since FY18, and IPO'd. Useful when you are setting India pricing.
