Your first 50 customers are holding you to ransom
You’ve nurtured your first customers, treated them like royalty and even soaked up the cost of expensive pet features they requested then failed to even use (they were apparently business critical at the time).
They are still your family though, you’ve grown with you and they are the foundation to your now expanded family – they believed in you right from the start with unquestionable loyalty and devotion.
But now, just like with children, it’s time to have the conversation about growing up. You can’t keep doing everything for them and they can’t keep coming to you with a list of demands every day. You’ll always love them and be there for them but things just have to change.
Your first 50 customers are in-fact holding you to ransom and stopping you scaling your business.
It’s time to teach a customer to fish.
How to transition past your first 50
- Gradually re-engineer the relationship with a long-term plan of how you will continue to recognise and reward early customers whilst transitioning to a more repeatable, predictable and scalable way of working.
- For every feature request you receive, respond with better quality and better support for self service. Make these improvements highly visible to users and promote their benefits.
- Set clear goals based on quality and self-service outcomes that work for all – this will help deliver the standardisation you need.
- Focus on building an interface with customers that sells this new relationship to them rather than simply continuing to improve the way you react and process requests for new features.
Scaling your product user base is never easy but these five steps should help you grow with greater ease.