The product is never going to be right there. Right? Like I hear this a lot from Tech startups where sellers are coming into it. It's like, “Oh I could sell it if it did that” or “I could sell it if it did this”, and, “But that”. 

There are a few of things that you can do if you're a business owner and you're just building out your product. Or if you're working in a start-up and they're just building out their product and it's not “perfect” yet, but it does some stuff. 

Make sure that you align with the things that you do do where that lies on the priority list of the person that you're talking to. 

Not perfect but does solve a problem

If the one thing that you do really, really well is the number one thing that they need to be able to solve a problem, then it's a match. And don't worry so much about every little other thing on the checklist. You just have to be able to understand what number one is and be able to focus on that. 

The other part of this --and this is actually advice that I heard from Mark Roberge who was early at HubSpot which is you know, a well-known tech startup company, now, teaches at Harvard. But one of the things that he said early on in our conversations was, “You have to be able to sell the vision of success”. 

Don't just sell the products and the features

• The commitment and the partnership that you're building with the customer as an early-stage adopter.
• How you're going to partner together.
• And while solving their most immediate problem, work with them in a collaboration to build the product out. Alongside of getting the problem solved in the end.

I said this to one just the other day:

I love working with early-stage tech companies start-ups. Because it's an opportunity for me to be able to feed to you what I actually need. So you're kind of like my development team right now.

And for him, it was like, “That's great because now I know exactly how to build out my product. So that it appeals to other people like you who are our ideal customer”.

So even if your product is not perfect, you can position yourself right and gain early adopters and evangelists, who will sing your name on the mountain tops.

When you enable them to contribute back to the division or the creation of different things in your company, they feel like they have part ownership of that.

• They feel like they have skin in the game.
• They feel like they're being listened to.

And that sometimes is more valuable to the customer than something that's perfect that they have to figure out how to use.

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