Daniel Priestley's four-product framework guides customers through stages: free reputation-builder, low-risk entry product, core transformative offering, and high-value service for existing clients. Don't launch the final product as SaaS too early, or you'll skip the trust-building that makes it work.
What are your 4 products? There's a wonderful book called 24 Assets by Daniel Priestley, which he lays out a framework for the assets that given companies should have, thinking from asset point of view. Everyone should read it. But in it, he talks about 4 products. Those are 4 of the assets that every business should have. And I think it's a really good framework for thinking about the lifecycle of a customer and how we should be thinking about our offerings. The first is the free product. What are you giving to the market in return for basically no commitment that will allow you to enhance your reputation? The second is the product for prospects that requires them to make a small investment, certainly small risk basis that allows them to get started with having an economic relationship with you. The third is your core offering. This is the thing that usually is enabling a state change transition for the client from the world before they really got to make use of you to the world after. And then finally is the product for clients, which is the lead behind. Skipping ahead to the last one, which could be something that looks more like a SaaS, is often an error because it doesn't allow you to build trust before having the relationship.
