Sales vs. Product/Market fit

Question

Hello everybody! I'm looking for consultation on an issue which I have read about a couple of times and which might affect our company's strategy. Basically, I would like to know more about a way to determine whether low performance of a product (or the whole startup) is caused by bad sales, or because there is simply no product/market fit. We developed an SaaS platform that had a huge impact with our early adopters, but we have had trouble scaling beyond that early stage. Is this something that we should seek external help for?

Answers: 1 public & 0 private

Lawrence lau
IP Broker

Are you sure it's not the innovator's gap that you're hitting between the early adopters and mainstream? This is common in all technology intensive industries. On the other hand, if you have got a lack of followon sales, then you've a problem in that you haven't identified the correct scalable sales mechanism (whether hard/soft touch, referral, direct, etc). There are different techniques for crossing the chasm (an industry shift or reframing) vs trying alternative distribution channels. I can't tell without more background and doing more detailed analysis on the value proposition.

A good example is AirBnB, they originally were just one of a bunch but found out that taking near-professional photos helped significantly (bridging from cheap bunking to the short-term rental market). versus say Xero (cloud accounting) rather than carpet bombing the public, trained professional accountants to be familiar with their tools and co-shared subscription payments.

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