Early Adopter to Product Growth - follow up story
When to halt sales restrictions on your product
What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.
This week’s backstory is about deciding to lift sales restrictions on your product:
What Prompted this Article?
The first few customers of a new product raise a lot of emotions throughout the organization. After the celebration of the new order, many pointed questions are difficult to answer. For example:
How come that customer got a bigger discount than another customer?
How long until the customer uses the product?
Why didn’t the contract cover that?
When will the customer be a reference for other sales?
The biggest question after a few early adopter customers is:
When can we sell the product without restrictions?
The last question on sales restrictions needs diplomacy, grit, and perseverance to answer.
I wrote this article to let product managers know there are process steps to take to lift sales restrictions.
There is no need to feel bad about the decisions you make to win your first few customers! It is normal to get questions like this.