Here’s a concept which I think is implicitly used by a lot of teams but (to my knowledge) isn’t named and doesn’t really get talked about: conditional commitments.

These are commitments you make to prospective customers, but you don’t execute on unless the customer signs. You are taking the bet that if the customer signs, the commitment will be worth following-through and worth the disruption to your other commitments.

In my experience this is an essential approach that you have to take in B2B product management particularly to get your first few customers on a given product. (I don’t think it really applies in B2C as you typically don’t provide such commitments to your community – they are “roadmap takers” rather than “roadmap setters”).

The upside is that you are helping win new business, and you minimise the risk that what you have built will not be used by anyone.

The downsides to look out for are:

1. Starting to execute at the right time. Your timeline may be too slow if you wait for the signed deal to start executing. But if you start too early you may have wasted engineering cycles if the deal doesn’t come through.
2. Not hitting other commitments. You diverted part of the team to hit this new commitment, and this affected prior commitments. You should be conscious of what the impact will be and if you think it can be managed by resetting expectations with your other customers, pushing your team to overperform, or a combination of both.

Getting a B2B product off the ground requires the careful balancing act of making conditional commitments. Good luck out there!