Part I
Understand What Customers Keep Paying For
Is there one customer, problem, and result worth building around?
Before building more software or hiring more salespeople, understand what is already working.
Look at who buys, what problem they pay to solve, what result they expect, what it costs to deliver, and which patterns appear across the best customers.
Main question
Is there one customer, problem, and result worth building around?
Do not move on until
The company can support the choice with real sales, delivery, and financial information rather than a theory.
Tasks in this section
Open a task to see its original wording, current status, summary, and place in the complete sequence.
See the Business as It Is
Document the current mix of service, product, and recurring revenue before deciding what should change.
Open taskFind the Segments That Produce Value
Use past work to identify combinations of buyer, problem, price, margin, effort, and outcome that are worth repeating.
Open taskIdentify the Pain Customers Already Pay to Remove
Find the recurring problem supported by actual customer and project evidence.
Open taskMap How Sales Actually Happens
Make the founder-led and referral-driven sales process visible from source through handoff.
Open taskMake Revenue Attribution Visible
Create enough attribution discipline to know which sources and channels produce opportunities.
Open taskFind the Buyer, the Trigger, and the Urgency
Use interviews and deal history to understand who acts, what changes, and why the problem becomes urgent.
Open taskUnderstand What Delivery Really Costs
Measure the time, bottlenecks, margins, and specialist help required for each type of work.
Open taskChoose the First Customer and Use Case
Select a narrow initial customer profile and repeated use case rather than trying to productize everything.
Open taskInventory the Assets You Already Built
Identify the templates, workflows, scripts, data, intellectual property, and reusable components hidden inside delivery.
Open taskTurn Past Outcomes into Proof
Build a proof library from real results, evidence, and before-and-after narratives.
Open taskDecide Which Sales Channels to Test
Choose plausible ways to reach customers and define what would support or reject each one.
Open taskDecide What Progress Should Look Like
Set clear targets for revenue mix, sales volume, delivery effort, and founder dependence.
Open taskSecure the Rights Needed to Productize
Review intellectual property, data rights, contracts, and operational constraints before reusing service-created assets.
Open taskDecide What to Stop, Continue, and Convert
Rationalize the existing offer portfolio so the company can concentrate on the selected transition.
Open taskDecision One: What Is Worth Building Around?
Review the evidence and decide whether one customer problem and use case are clear enough to build around.
Open task