First customers tend to migrate quickly into difficult customers because of a growing gap between their and your expectations.
Now don’t freak out quite yet – follow my train of thought for a second.
You launched your MVP or even your full v1 product and to get some momentum you have reached out to some close business friends to get this train moving. We all know those first few clients are the most important and most difficult to get on board. Now close business friends are such that their purchase commitment had some hooks probably like:
- a decently sized discount,
- an extraordinary amount of onboarding or service,
- a direct connection and impact on product features, or
- contract terms that are non-standard.
Wondering what these customers look like? Check out this article I wrote recently for INC.com. By all means, do what you have to do to get these business friends under the tent and please learn a ton from these experiences. You need these and I support doing what you must.
But, at some point in time, you must fire these customers.
You see these customers have an expectation outside of you scaled business customer set. You cannot afford to have these early friends overly influence your growing company.