A prospective customer asked for a feature! Should I build it?
Just wanted to share a bit more of the journey. I had a customer sign up for the free trial about a month ago and they emailed within a day asking to have their account deleted. No big deal but kind of a bummer.
Yesterday, they emailed me back, saying they tried some competitors and liked mine and wanted to use it if I only had this one feature...
It's a pretty small change in the grand scheme of things, and I see how it could be useful for other organizations so I'm tempted to implement it. That would allow me to add extra revenue and another customer without too much work on my end. I'm also thinking ahead, if I do not want to support this feature as a first class citizen in the future, I can disable it fairly easily while leaving it intact for legacy customers.
What has been your experience implementing features for prospective customers, especially if they are extremely early in your starting phase (customer #2 in my case)? Do you find the dev time is worth the risk to gain more revenue? Do you find those customers turn into evangelists and recommend your product more?
Can't wait to hear your feedback!
Without knowing all the specifics, I would consider a few things.
Does customer #1 also want this feature? Do other customers in your pipeline also want this?
How much is customer #2 willing to pay for this feature? Ask them if they are willing to pay for a premium plan?
Talk to customer #2 and ask about the feature, how it will help their lives, what is the real problem they are facing and how will this feature solve it? Often times there are easier and more ubiquitous ways to deliver the same value than their specific request.
Customer #1 is my day job (I work for an agency and we used a similar tool before I built mine) and we haven't had a need for it yet, but I'm going to talk to my boss about someone in our org maybe test driving it for a week or two.
I did talk to the prospective customer and their explanation makes sense. I think I will ask them to subscribe first and use the product for a week or so and see how it goes without the feature and see if they change their mind.
Thanks!
Hi Daron,
I won't give you the right answer because it mostly depends on your context (focus, cost, income, etc.), but here are some learnings from our journey.
In the first year of our beta (8 years ago), we have been approached by one colossal company, saying the same thing "If you had a feature X, we would buy.". Foolishly enough, we jumped on that wagon, excited about the possible new large customer.
After a month and a half of focused development, we have delivered the feature. The prospect said they are not interested anymore, even though they did communicate throughout the process when discussing the feature, its progress, etc.
Back to the present, here is the advice I would tell myself nine years ago.
If you are considering anyways - make sure:
Saying NO is not easy, but it is one of the best things you will learn, trust me.
In the future, you will find out, that you will not even want commit to when a certain feature is going to be delivered, you will start with, yes, this we can work on next week. You will say, ok this month, then this quarter, then this year, and you will end up saying that the feature you have on the plan for sometime next year if ever. Managing expectations is what will help you stay focused and on the course.
I remember this was a good talk from Steli Efti (close.com) - https://blog.close.com/podim-2016-learning-to-say-no-the-secret-power-of-hyperfocused-startups/, but I am sure there are more.
Thanks! Great reply. I think a lot of this makes sense. Luckily, the feature is very small, as I've stubbed out a prototype in an afternoon, mainly as a test to myself to iterate on the product for future customers.
I think I'm going to keep the work in a separate branch and get them to subscribe to a paid plan first for a bit and then see if they still feel like they need the feature in a week or two.
Excellent reply! Could not have said it better myself!
I wouldn't consider it it unless the customer is committed. Explain to them that you'd love to build the feature but can only offer this level of service for paying customers.
$5/mo is not really a huge barrier for someone to make a commitment, especially if they like your product.
You might think that it's only a small amount of work but when customers are paying $0 and start making demands like this, it's not a good sign and they will likely just make more and more demands of you.
The better option is to find someone who will pay first, then deliver an excellent service to them.
Yes I also second this. Do things that don't scale for sure, but at least make sure it pays its due
Excellent point. I'm going to send them an email and get them to sign up for a paid plan for a couple of weeks before I push anything to production.
Try to get feedback from a few more customers, see if there’s anything in common about the new feature.
Great thread, loved reading all these responses! I don't think I have any good advice as I should probably come up with better rules around this, but I've definitely built a feature for a customer before thinking others would use it, and they didn't. However, the feature made a lot of sense to me, the customer was happy, and also I was able to repurpose some of that work later on.
I think for me, if I estimate a feature will take only 2 to maybe 6 hours (which I know really turns into more given QA and fixing potential bugs) and I think it makes sense, I'll add it to the roadmap. How long do you estimate it will take you to build what they want (and what exactly do they want)?
If not a premium plan, perhaps you can ask them to give you a testimonial for your website (assuming they're happy with the product)?
The time is minimal, I've actually been hacking on it all afternoon and managed to knock out 90% of it. I've asked them to sign up for a premium plan and I'm going to sit on it for a week or two.
Getting a testimonial is a good idea! Thanks for your feedback.
If I don't think it'll make the product better, or fewer than 5 people ask for it, I don't add it.
It's a huge commitment to just upend your existing roadmap to implement a feature, unless you're sure it will move the needle.
Well, I don't have much of a roadmap and I don't have five customers 😅
Those are great points though for when I get a little further though 🙂
In the meantime, I'm going to ask them to sign up for a paid plan and use the product for a couple of weeks to make sure they're committed before I push anything to production.
Thanks for the reply!