📖 Business
Commitment and Advancement
Talk is cheap. The only reliable signal that a potential customer genuinely cares about your product is **commitment** — giving up something of value. Fitzpatrick identifies three currencies of commitment: time, money, and reputation. A meeting that ends with "this is great, keep me posted" is a failure — the customer gave you nothing of value and you learned nothing about their intent. A meeting that ends with "can I introduce you to our VP?" or "I would prepay $50/month for early access" is real signal. Commitment separates people who are being polite from people who would actually become customers.
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How It Works
- Time commitment: agreeing to a follow-up meeting with a specific date, participating in a longer trial or pilot, dedicating staff to an integration, clearing their calendar for a demo
- Money commitment: pre-ordering, paying for a prototype or beta, signing a letter of intent, putting down a deposit, paying for a pilot
- Reputation commitment: introducing you to their boss or peers, agreeing to be a case study, endorsing you publicly, co-presenting at a conference
- The advancement ladder: soft compliment → hard commitment → active usage → payment → referral. Each step represents increasing commitment. If the conversation does not advance to the next rung, you learned that this person is not (yet) a real customer
- "Keep me posted" is the most dangerous phrase in customer development. It sounds positive but commits nothing. The correct response: "Great — when would be a good time for a follow-up? I would love to show you a prototype next Tuesday"
- Commitment requests should feel natural, not salesy. You are not closing a deal — you are testing whether the problem is real enough that the person will invest something to solve it
- No commitment after a good conversation means one of two things: (1) the problem is not painful enough, or (2) you are talking to the wrong person. Both are valuable learnings