Distribution and implementation belong in the business design. They are not tasks to discover after the product works. An offer can fail at procurement, trust, integration, training or a partner hand-off even when users want it.
Use this principle when: demonstrations go well but sales stall, pilots do not convert, onboarding needs founder rescues or a partnership is expected to produce growth.
What to do
- Trace one real customer from first contact to a useful outcome and continued use. For each step, record the decision-maker, action, delay and reason to stop. Locate the step where progress actually breaks down.
- Learn the initial selling process yourself or alongside the person doing it. Test whether acquisition works beyond warm introductions. Separate a customer’s willingness to buy from your ability to reach similar customers economically.
- Include onboarding, qualification, integration and support in the offer. Give each essential step an owner. For partners, establish the incentive, capacity and specific activity that should produce customer progress.
Evidence that changes the decision
Proceed: customers move through the path, reach the intended result and do so with increasingly understood effort. You can explain which acquisition route produces suitable customers and why.
Change the plan: interest is real but one step repeatedly fails. Fix that step before adding more leads. The answer may be a smaller initial deployment, a different buyer, a clearer contract or implementation capacity.
Stop this route: an essential channel, approval or complement remains unavailable and no workable alternative fits the business. A partner logo does not overcome that dependency.
Where founders misapply it
Founders should not wait for a perfectly scalable channel before serving early customers. Personal acquisition and manual onboarding can reveal what the eventual system needs. Record the work so it is not mistaken for effortless product adoption. Own the customer outcome; you do not have to own every company or asset involved in delivering it.
Graham explains the value of early manual work. Teece explains how control of complementary assets, including distribution, affects who captures innovation’s returns. [12][9]
Next decision: choose the single broken step in the buying or adoption path, assign an owner and test a repair with a real customer.