Don’t Panic: What to Do When You Don’t Have Product Market Fit
There’s nothing more gut-wrenching than that nagging feeling the product you’ve been working on for years isn’t quite right. Maybe you didn’t ground your decisions in user research. Or maybe you started out with one idea, but the waters got muddied along the way. No matter what the cause may be, if you don’t have product market fit then nothing else really matters.
Better Product Podcast guest Jon Gilman, CEO of Clear Software, can relate to this problem. If you would’ve asked Jon at the start, he would’ve told you he knew exactly who his software’s users were. But after he discovered that the product’s messaging wasn’t resonating and demos weren’t converting, they faced a decision: Throw in the towel, or change the strategy.
If you discover you’re lacking product market fit, there are things you can do to change that. Here are some lessons that Jon Gilman learned when he had to course-correct:
A buyer needs to be told what their problem is. You can’t just tell them that you can solve any problem, because they may not even be aware that there is a problem to be solved. Your messaging should be hyper targeted to the specific pains you address, and to the specific person feeling those pains. Speak to those problems, then once you’re in the door let them see your other capabilities.
- “Just because we can solve any business process and efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean you go to market that way and say, ‘we can solve any problem for you, just tell me what your problems are.’ Generally, a buyer needs to be told what their problem is.”
Just because your target market may change, doesn’t mean your mission needs to change. You can continue to drive your business toward the same high-level mission, but you need to explain that mission in a way that people actually care about. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, explain what your product does in a way that addresses the specific pains of your target audience.
- “It was a little bit of an identity crisis. You can’t just you can’t boil the ocean and say that we can fix all of your problems. You have to let them figure that out over time.”
Just because you’re on the cutting edge of a new category doesn’t mean you have to be first. Because Gilman’s software was so new, for a while people didn’t get what it did and he couldn’t succinctly explain it. But instead of trying to paint a picture of the new world all on your own, you can follow others into the new category to more clearly communicate your product’s value and get through the door. And even if you aren’t the first to claim the category, you can take it a step further to create a new “sub-category” that differentiates you while still maintaining a level of familiarity.
- “We did our own sort of marketing case study to say, all right, how many of these guys actually have an attended solution? We found out none, zero. And it’s kind of the holy grail of process automation. And the big three are scrambling and spending tens of millions of dollars to build out a solution that, guess what, already exists here in Indianapolis.”
While product market fit is a critical for the success of a business, if your product doesn’t have it there is no need to panic. Clear Software was able to find a new path to tell their story, and with a few impactful shifts they found the slot that their software fits in, and found the right way to explain it.
To hear more about one software’s journey to find product market fit, tune into this week’s episode of the Better Product Podcast.
