A Blessing and a Curse

When you sell a B2B product you spend a lot of time explaining how you’re different from the competition. We do X and Y and Z and they do A and B and C. They’re obviously wrong. Choose us.

If you’re selling the same thing long enough you’ll find that you probably have gotten some things right - X and Y were brilliant differentiators - but you won’t have gotten everything right. You picked Z when you should have done C.

The frequency and fanaticism of your sell inhibit you from realizing you made the wrong choice in your product. We've been saying Z is the way to go for so long...in fact I've been calling C a total joke of an approach...Z is our differentiator, we can't change course on this.

With some regularity, reconsider your narrative and decisions from an unbiased perspective.

When you do realize the right move you need to fix it sooner rather than later. You instinctively won’t want to. In the words of Marcellus Wallace: that’s pride f*$kin’ with you.

Do the right thing and build what you convinced people was the wrong solution. Your existing customers might scoff for a second but they’ll forget about it and eventually will appreciate the improved product. New customers won’t care and likely won’t know that you initially made the wrong call.