Pre-Product StartUp Founders: Start Sales Motions Now, Don’t Wait For Your Product To Be Ready
Many founders believe that they need to wait until their product is perfect before they start to sell it, but this can be a costly mistake.
One of the most common mistakes I see founders make is waiting until their product is ready before starting their sales motions. They assume that they need to wait until they have the perfect product or feature set before they can take it to the market. However, this is far from the truth. In fact, waiting until you have a product ready can be a costly mistake that burns cycles and cash.
Instead, startups should start their sales motions immediately. Start prepping and doing the pre-work while your product is still in the engineering phase. You can start by understanding your pricing, how you’ll price your product, customer success, onboarding, training, sales channels, distribution channels, partnerships, and identifying your economic buyers and audiences. There’s so much you can do literally right now, so don’t wait until your product is ready.
As Eric Ries, author of “The Lean Startup”, says, “The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.” This is especially true in the world of startups. The faster you can learn what your customers want and what they’re willing to pay for, the faster you can iterate and improve your product. The earlier you start selling, the earlier you’ll be able to identify and address any issues with your product.
In fact, many successful startups like Dropbox and Slack started with a minimum viable product (MVP) and began selling before they had all the features or capabilities of their product in place. They used customer feedback to iterate and improve their product, which helped them gain traction and attract investors.
