From Early Adopter to Product Growth

Transitioning from sales limits to a wider set of customers

You've worked out the issues with your early adopter customers.  You feel ready to take on a broader set of customers. 

Now that you have weathered your early adopter customers, what are the signs that you are ready for a broader launch?

Wait a minute…why pause before a broader launch?  Isn't it enough to do the improvement plan from the early adopter customers?

No.

You need to overcome a few more challenges before going to the broader market.  There are 2 issues to tackle BEFORE considering a broader launch of your product:

1. Your organization agrees the early adopter restrictions can be lifted

2. You have invested in comprehensive sales enablement to transition to the broader customer base

At this point, only you and a few others know the product, the market, and the competition well enough to handle a broader launch.

While the pressure is high to generate new sales, you don't want to rush the launch.  If there are a lot of restrictions on sales, then the broader launch could be poorly received by sales. 

This week's newsletter dives into removing the early adopter restrictions.

What are Early Adopter Restrictions?

Product managers often limit early adopter sales to reduce the risk of scaling issues.  The downside of these limits is the organization has limited experience with your product.

Some of the typical limits on early adopter customers:

• Customer opportunity has to be in a certain size band

• Restrictions on discounting

• A special customer agreement is needed

• Special configuration checks by internal teams before ordering

These limits end up slowing sales or preventing sales.

With the restrictions, sales teams prefer to use other products or wait for the restrictions to be removed.

Without a sales team looking for customer opportunities, your sales plateau.

Lifting the Early Adopter Restrictions

As the launch honeymoon wears off, sales growth is needed to sustain the product business.  But so far, the early adopter restrictions are holding back new sales.

The product management team takes 2 critical steps to remove the early adopter restrictions:

1. Fix any product limitations to broader usage

2. Align the organization to broader usage

After being on restrictions, the product and the product team must be ready for scale.

Step 1: Product Stability and Operational Readiness

Make sure the product is ready for broader usage with an outside-in review.  Imagine using your product as a customer.

Consider these questions:

• Is the rate of new support issues from early adopters slowing down?

• Has the support team had enough hands-on time to be comfortable handling customer questions?

• Have all the support escalation processes been exercised?

• Does the product team agree the product is ready for general availability to customers?

If you are not comfortable with the answers, then work on guardrails to cover the risky areas.  A few guardrails are ok as you lift the early adopter restrictions.

Announcing the change in restrictions and opening the sales opportunities needs product leadership too.

Step 2: Unified Marketing Readiness

Product leaders, marketing leaders, and sales leaders set a strategy for effective sales enablement before lifting early adopter restrictions.  The go-to-market readiness strategy includes a comprehensive sales training plan, announcement of the change in restrictions, and performance monitoring.

The sales training plan covers:

• Sales training and playbooks

• Sales support system with rapid responses

• Smooth transition of new sales to onboarded customer

In support of the transition to general availability, the sales enablement strategy includes:

• Announcement that the restrictions are lifted

• Process to monitor key performance indicators

Collaboration between the product leaders and with sales enablement team is important.  There are limited opportunities for sales training due to fiscal cycles and organizational events.  Coordination and planning take time.

Ideally, the go-to-market training and announcement are aligned with product readiness.  The sales growth comes after the typical sales cycle time.

Conclusion - Lifting Restrictions Opens Product Growth

Product managers can avoid confusion in the transition to the broader market with clear communications, comprehensive training, and organizational alignment.

Product managers keeping their fingers on the pulse of early adopter customers can feel the need to open their product to the broader market.  When the product is stable and product operations are scalable, the broader sales enablement transition can begin.  Product managers, sales leaders, and marketing leaders take the steps to train sales and lift the early adopter restrictions. 

---

Want to know what happened after a recent article? Premium subscribers get a peak behind the scenes of a recent newsletter. Last week’s backstory was about strategies to reach your career goals. Learning tips for a career setback.

Connect to Amy on LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram and X/Twitter 

---