Charter Customer Programs

Cagan argues that strong products are the foundation of a sustainable business, and that weak products force sales and marketing into costly workarounds and frustrate customers. The remedy he proposes is a Charter Customer Program, which runs product discovery in parallel with producing a set of happy, paying, public reference customers. He recommends about six reference customers from a single target market, recruited from those who desperately need the solution, and treated as development partners rather than custom-project clients. The program is most valuable as an early leading indicator of product success and a source of credible sales evidence. The technique adapts to business products, platform APIs, internal customer-enabling tools, and consumer products.

01Key takeaways

• Run discovery and reference-customer development in parallel so the product and its proof of success grow together.
• Target one specific market at a time and aim for about six reference customers before turning on sales and marketing.
• Recruit customers who urgently need the solution and screen out those drawn mainly by technology.
• Build one general product that works for all reference customers rather than custom features for each one.
• Treat early customers as development partners, release to them first, and keep product marketing involved to turn them into collateral.
• Use difficulty recruiting even a few customers as an early demand-validation signal that the problem may not be worth solving.

02Key sections

The power of reference customers

A reference customer is a real, paying, production user who willingly vouches for the product. Cagan calls them the best sales tool a product organization can offer, since without them sales lacks clarity about where product-market fit exists.

Single target market and the magic number six

Six reference customers from one target market instill confidence, and teams should ideally hold off on a broad launch until they have them. Expanding to new verticals or geographies happens one market at a time.

Recruiting the right customers

Recruit six to eight prospects who feel acute pain and have time to collaborate, while screening out technology-driven early adopters. If few will commit, the problem may not be important enough to pursue.

The relationship and its rules

Prospects get real influence and a solution that works; the team gets deep access. The goal is one general product that works for all six, not a custom build, and features should not be added simply because every customer asks.

Variations for other product types

For APIs the references become reference applications built by developers, for internal tools they are respected employees, and for consumer products the group is larger, roughly 10 to 50 users, supplemented by broader testing.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.