Designing Go-To-Market Puzzle Pieces
What are go-to-market puzzle pieces and how do we find product-market fit fastest and with the highest probability of success?
The puzzle piece is the perfect metaphor for product-market fit. One puzzle piece fits perfectly with another puzzle piece. There are plenty of puzzle pieces in the box.
Your product is one puzzle piece and your customer is another puzzle piece.
Too often, products get bloated and try to be a universal puzzle piece that fits with every other puzzle piece. That's rare and fraught with danger.
Your job is to pick one. Pick one puzzle piece for your product, and pick one customer puzzle piece to buy your product. You're looking for the perfect fit.
Then, you calculate how many customer puzzle pieces are out there in the box that you can fit in with perfectly. These customer puzzle pieces are also out there looking for a solution puzzle piece that fits perfectly with theirs.
The goal, then, is to first understand the shape of the customer's puzzle piece, and then work backwards to design your product puzzle piece's shape to perfectly fit the inverse of your customer's puzzle piece shape.
You need to go figure out both shapes, and then determine what happens after you put those two puzzle pieces together. Likely, something awesome.
Then you can just go out to these customers and tell them about this perfect solution fit for their problem. They will understand it intuitively without the need for selling. The fit is there from the beginning. The outcome and ROI achieved after those two pieces come together is obvious.
And so you agree to work together and fit those pieces together.
Then you do it again, and again and again.
Just don't forget that this whole ball game is about fitting puzzle pieces together and sometimes, quite often in fact, the shape of these puzzle pieces are constantly changing. At some times, changes are subtle, in others, the changes are large. Like with what's happening in AI.