We don't need positioning, we just need a better product

If you started a company to create better automation for developers, platform engineers or other teams working on cloud native apps, chances are you care A LOT about your product.

Chances are also that this product was fairly difficult to create — perhaps even more difficult than you imagined. If a tool/platform is going to be useful for software engineering teams, it has to be complicated enough that it doesn’t make sense for them to build it in-house, which is often the go-to solution for automation pains among software developers.

Let me make another wild guess: You wish your product were better. And when a prospect doesn’t buy after a sales conversation, your initial gut reaction is that it’s because your product needs improvement.

Here are some definite signs that your product might suck:

• Very high churn

• Proof of concepts that don’t convert

Note that those can also be signs of bad positioning… Anyway, my point is that if your prospects are falling out of the funnel before they have actually used the product, it probably isn’t because your product sucks. Your product would have to really stink if it can’t make it through a controled 15 minute demo.

It’s more likely that there is something about the assumptions your prospects come into the sales conversation with that doesn’t match your product. If prospects are constantly asking about features that your product does not have, it’s not a sign of a crappy product — it’s a sign of crappy positioning. If prospects ignore the cool things that your product does do, it’s once again not a sign of a crappy product, but of crappy positioning.

I don’t want to encourage founders to go to market with buggy products. However, I do think founders should keep an open mind about what could be behind a low conversion rate or questions about specific features.