A customer compares your offer with the current alternative, including doing nothing. The relevant improvement includes switching effort, learning, integration, risk and ongoing use. A superior feature can still lose that comparison. In consumer markets, the outcome may be enjoyment or identity; it need not be relief from a painful problem.
Use this principle when: choosing a problem, assessing a pilot, prioritising a feature or deciding whether interest is strong enough to justify more investment.
What to do
- Specify the customer, situation and outcome. Describe how the job is done today and why a change matters now. In B2B, identify the user, buyer, budget owner and person who can block adoption.
- Observe a recent real example before asking for opinions. Then ask for a commitment appropriate to the stage: access to a workflow, scarce engineering time, a purchase, a deployment or a repeat order.
- Define success before delivery and check afterwards. Measure the complete outcome, including work shifted to the customer. Record why customers decline, abandon or fail to return.
Evidence that changes the decision
Proceed: relevant customers make meaningful commitments, achieve the intended outcome and show reasons to keep choosing the offer. Repeated independent examples strengthen the case; the required evidence depends on the size of your next commitment.
Change the plan: users benefit but the buyer has no budget, the improvement disappears during implementation, or the value only exists for one unusual customer. Revisit the segment, scope, price or buying proposition.
Stop this route: well-targeted attempts repeatedly fail to find an outcome or commitment that could support the intended business, and you have no credible new explanation to test.
Where founders misapply it
A paid pilot may buy exploration rather than operational adoption. Agree who could approve normal use and what must happen first. For a one-off machine sale, follow-on use and field performance may matter more than monthly retention. Customer requests reveal needs; founders still design the solution.
Blank’s search framework and Graham’s early-customer practice support this approach. They are practitioner guidance, rather than causal estimates of success. [11][12]
Next decision: identify the next customer commitment that would materially strengthen your case, and ask for it.