Over the last 9 plus years, hundreds of founders have come to me for coaching on their sales and go-to-market challenges. And I’ve done my best to help. In the next few months, in the form of weekly episodes, we’ll be looking at the top startup sales misconceptions folks possess. And how I get them to think instead. Reading this series will make you smarter and more aware than most startup operators, as you’ll already know how to think about go-to-market and sales, and avoid some of the biggest pitfalls. Consider this your cheat sheet in shaving months off your revenue growth journey. Here’s your fifth installment. Read on.

“I need my product and website to be ready in order to get started with GTM.”                

Or I’ll also get, “Our product needs to be full featured before we actually can get it in front of customers. Without it, I’m concerned we might be able to sell it when we get into conversations with potential customers.”

Hey, I get it. We all want to look and feel our best when presenting ourselves to the world. There’s nothing like showing up to a date with lettuce in your teeth. Or to a job interview with toilet paper stuck to your dress shoe. Not great looks.

But in the quest for product-market fit, market interactions are actually more valuable than acting precious about our appearance or offering. And the sooner you start getting those reps, the better off you’ll be.

You know why?

Because it’s impossible to build a great product or website without market feedback. The perfectionism that’s preventing you from going to market is also preventing you from perfecting them. Not only a mouthful. But a mind f*ck.

I can’t tell you how much the above belief hurts startups. It’s insidious. And becomes a preferred excuse for not exposing oneself to the market. Not letting the rubber meet the road.

And I get it. Doing all that takes vulnerability.

‘What if I discover that my product is lacking once I get to market? What if my website doesn’t convert the way I thought it would?’

Let me help you with a reframe. Start with the premise that they’ll both certainly fall short. That’ll hopefully prevent you from experiencing any further disappointment. It’s what Reid Hoffman was trying to help us with when he said, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

You’ve got to realize this: once you raise a round, as a startup, you’re sitting on a ticking time-bomb. Meaning, you’ve got a finite, limited runway until your startup goes ‘poof’. The earlier you get started with go-to-market, the more time you give yourself a chance to find message-market fit. Which is the discipline of figuring out what message you can put in front of prospects, that will garner their interest and have them wanting to have an introductory conversation with you. The more time you give yourself to figure it out, the likelier your startup survives.

Message-market fit is also part of product-market fit. And usually a scalable lever for revenue growth. If you unlock PMF at the seed stage, you’ve got your Series A raised quite easily.

Finding product-market fit will not only take getting your product in front of potential customers, but also getting it sold. Without getting the at-bats of getting in front of customers, it’s impossible to figure out how to sell your product repeatedly. Or what things might be lacking in your product that need to be added in or changed. Every interaction or rep you get with the market, when properly analyzed, enables you to iterate, and get closer to product-market fit. And getting these reps – yes, you’ve guessed it – relies on you being in market.

You might ask, “How am I supposed to do GTM, if my product is not ready to actually sell, Paul? And how about my website? What if my positioning is not right? And prospects don’t get the right idea about what we do once we’ve reached out and they then head to our website?”

Those are great questions. Your product doesn’t need to be ready. First of all, finding message-market fit can take many months. I’ve seen startups take 6, 9 or 12 months to get there. Which means that you might not get an opportunity to sell to prospects until you get there. Also, one of the healthiest things you can do for your startup is de-risk it by pre-selling your product to them. If a prospect is willing to throw money at you to fix their problem, before you have a sellable product, and you’re able to find several of these customers, that means you’ve found intense pain in the market, and validation that folks need your solution yesterday.

As opposed to building in isolation. Which can lead you to catastrophic outcomes. There’s nothing quite like coding away in our product caves for six to twelve months, only to realize that nobody wants what we’ve built once we re-emerge into the market.

As for your website, there’s a lot that can be learned from go-to-market interactions that will make your website better. Sticking your neck out there, and listening to the market will allow you to figure out what value props and pain points you should be leading with in your website messaging, for example.

You might come to a realization like this one, ‘Man, I really thought CFOs were going to be excited about our software’s ability to turn around reports in no time. Versus the hours their teams used to spend. But after speaking with a dozen of them, it’s starting to feel like they care more about their ability to make better decisions thanks to the critical data we make available to them in real-time.’

The overarching lesson here is that you don’t need to have things dialed in to get into the market. Lean into your humility. Adopt a growth mindset. Think of yourself, your product and your website as works in progress. And just let it rip! You can thank me when you start learning valuable things from the market.

Next week, we’ll look at why it can be dangerous to ask customers what they’d like to accomplish in a free trial or pilot.