When a company has active sales to fund research and development, as well as to allow for its founders to extract dividends — we say that the company has product/solution fit. The company has a product that solves a problem well.
This is the first success a company tastes.
This success comes at a price — it can block reaching product/market fit.
We call product/market fit when users are actively seeking your solution. To the point where the energetic demand of the market becomes a factor in the day to day of the entrepreneurs behind the company.
If the first success validates a vision, the second success will turn the vision into a responsibility towards your clients.
The most defined line between this two phases can be characterized by how many sales channels there are. For the first one there is one single and successful: “word of mouth”.
Single, because it is the only channel the company spends energy on. Successful, because the close rate is high. Your Net Promoter Score will be high indeed!
But the way you got to market to sell your product becomes an indivisible part of it. If you only sell on referral you ended up turning your venture into treadmill for you to keep perfecting your solution while the market remains unaware of your existence.
In other words: it can block reaching Product/Market fit.
Then, charting new sales channel is an exercise as well as a task. By intentionally creating new sales channels you will force yourself to discover ALL the reasons your company exists in the first place.
The market will make sure of that.
Glossary
NPS most commonly means Net Promoter Score, a customer loyalty metric asking, “How likely are you to recommend us?” (on a 0-10 scale), categorizing respondents as Detractors (0-6), Passives (7-8), or Promoters (9-10) to gauge satisfaction, with the final score derived from subtracting Detractor % from Promoter %.