Trygve’s Law of the Bad Product

I have, over the course of my career, taken part in more than 1,000 sales meetings on several continents. With different companies, products, services, customers, industries and cultures. Yet there is one thing that keeps striking me: how great the distance often is between the company's perception of its own product and the reality experienced by the customer.

Internally, the enthusiasm is rarely in doubt. The product is fantastic. The functionality is well thought out. We have invested significant resources in development. We have a clear narrative about why our solution is better than the competitors'. The feature and functionality list is impressive. We are convinced that the market must be able to see the same thing we see.

And then comes the customer meeting. The customer asks for something we don't have. Something we think is absolutely central means nothing to the customer. A feature we spent months developing is barely noticed. The customer has a problem our product only partially solves. And what we internally regard as a minor limitation turns out to be decisive for the customer's decision.

In the middle of this clash between the company's self-perception and the customer's reality stands the salesperson. Often completely alone.

Trygve's Law of the Bad Product

The greater the distance between the company's conception of its product and the customer's experienced reality, the more the sale depends on the salesperson's ability to build a bridge.

This is my own experience-based observation. Not a scientifically documented law. And let me immediately stress something important: the bad product is not necessarily technically bad. It can be well designed, reliable in operation, and developed by skilled people. But if it does not fit the customer's actual needs, priorities, workflows or financial reality, it is not necessarily a good product for that particular customer.

This is the difference between internal product quality and perceived customer value. That difference often only becomes truly visible once the salesperson meets the market.

We fall in love with our own products

I have great respect for product developers, specialists, entrepreneurs and the management teams who dare to invest in something they believe in. Internal enthusiasm is necessary. Without belief in their own ideas, many companies would never have been established, and many new products would never have seen the light of day. An entrepreneurial mindset requires conviction, persistence and courage.

But the enthusiasm also has a downside. We can become so preoccupied with what we have built that we forget to examine how the customer actually experiences it. We talk about features while the customer talks about problems. We talk about technology while the customer talks about risk. We talk about our product roadmap while the customer is trying to figure out how employees are going to make their everyday work function. We talk about everything the product can do. The customer wants to know what it means for them.

Clayton Christensen and his co-authors described this problem in Harvard Business Review through the theory of Jobs to Be Done [1]. The fundamental point is that companies must understand the task the customer is trying to get done, rather than focusing solely on the product's features or the customer's demographic profile. The customer does not buy our internal enthusiasm. The customer buys an expectation that something will get better.

And then the salesperson is on the sharp end

Imagine the following situation. The product team has just presented the new version of the company's solution. There has been an internal launch, enthusiastic presentations and positive feedback from the organization. The sales department is told to go out and sell.

The salesperson meets the customer. After twenty minutes the questions begin: “Can the solution be integrated with our existing system?” Not quite. “Can we get the reporting our organization requires?” Not in the standard version. “How do you handle our particular workflows?” That requires a customization. “Why should we choose you, when the competitor already offers that feature?” Good question.

And here something fascinating happens. The skilled salesperson does not necessarily panic. She starts to work. She asks questions. She investigates how important the missing element actually is. She tries to understand what consequence the customer's problem has, and whether there are other ways to create the desired value. She brings experience from other customers into play. She involves relevant specialists. She explores possibilities and limitations.

And most importantly: she builds trust. Not necessarily because the product is perfect. But because the customer experiences that there is a human being on the other side of the table who understands the situation and takes responsibility for finding a realistic solution. That is a commercial competency we, in my opinion, underestimate.

The skilled salesperson does not only sell the product. She builds bridges.

McKinsey surveyed more than 1,200 B2B purchasing decision-makers in the US and Western Europe [2]. The study showed that even though customers highlighted product and price as important, the overall sales experience also had a major influence on their assessment of the supplier. Product knowledge, relevant communication and the ability to explain how the solution makes a difference for the customer's business were central elements.

That is exactly the role I have seen skilled salespeople fill again and again. They translate the product into the customer's reality. They find the relevant value among all the features the company itself is so enthusiastic about. They uncover the problems the product organization may not have anticipated. And they manage to create a relationship that makes it possible to hold a constructive conversation about both strengths and limitations.

They do not create value by hiding the truth. They create value by making the truth manageable. A skilled salesperson should never promise functionality that does not exist, or cover up matters the customer needs to know about. But she can help the customer distinguish between what is essential, what is desirable, and what might perhaps be solved in another way. That is not manipulation. That is professional selling.

Relationships have not become obsolete

We talk a lot about digitalization, self-service, AI and the modern B2B buyer. With good reason. Customers have access to far more information than before and increasingly want to be able to research their options themselves. But that does not mean the salesperson's role has disappeared. On the contrary, the human effort becomes especially valuable when the customer's situation is complex and there is no simple standard answer.

Gartner's 2025 survey showed that many B2B buyers prefer an overall buying experience without contact with a salesperson. But it also showed that the preference changes for tasks where the customer needs contextual assessment – for example when determining whether a solution fits the company's specific needs [3]. The customer does not necessarily need a salesperson who reads the product brochure aloud. The customer needs a salesperson who can help create meaning, reduce uncertainty and assess how the solution fits into a complex reality.

But there is something we need to talk about

Up to this point, this has been a tribute to the salesperson. But there is also a less comfortable management point. Because what happens if the company's ability to sell depends far too heavily on salespeople's ability to compensate for the product's shortcomings? What happens if the same objection arises in a hundred customer meetings without anyone changing the product? If salespeople must again and again develop individual solutions to problems the company should have solved centrally? Or if customers' actual needs are regarded as disruptive input rather than valuable market insight?

Then we no longer only have a product problem. Then we have a commercial management problem. We have created an organization where salespeople are expected to bridge a distance that the rest of the company does not take sufficient responsibility for reducing. And that is not a sustainable way to create growth.

The salesperson is the company's most important reality check

There are people in the company who have a quite special perspective on the product. They do not only experience how the product is conceived. They experience how the market reacts to it. They hear what problems customers are trying to solve. They see which arguments work. They discover which features are not in demand. They hear why competitors get chosen. And they often know which promises are difficult to fulfil in practice. These people are your salespeople.

Yet their experience is not always treated as strategically valuable information. Maybe it gets logged as individual comments in the CRM. Maybe it gets discussed briefly at a sales meeting. Maybe it gets dismissed with the comment that the salesperson simply needs to get better at arguing. But imagine if the company began to listen systematically.

Not by uncritically building every feature a potential customer asks for. That would be just as problematic. But by identifying patterns: Which problems recur? Which shortcomings actually cost us orders? Which features create documented customer value? Which customer segments does our solution fit well – and which do not? Where is the biggest gap between our value proposition and the customer's experience?

Bain & Company has, in its article on closing the customer feedback loop, described how companies can strengthen their customer relationships by collecting feedback and enabling frontline employees to act on it [5]. The salesperson should not only be a recipient of the product strategy. The salesperson should also be a significant source for its further development.

The best product is not necessarily the one with the most features

I have seen companies spend enormous resources developing features that were internally regarded as crucial. But when the product met the market, customers' priorities were something else entirely. That is an uncomfortable realization. Especially when the company has invested money, time and personal pride in the development. But a product's value is not determined by how much work we have put into it. It is determined by how well it solves relevant problems for the customers we want to serve.

Jeffrey Bussgang described in Harvard Business Review how the early phase toward product-market fit is often characterized by close collaboration with customers willing to try out a still-imperfect product [4]. The product does not need to be perfect to create value. But the company must understand why customers choose it, what compromises they accept, and what needs to be improved. That requires sales and product development not to operate in separate realities.

From heroic salespeople to a stronger commercial organization

There is something fascinating about the salesperson who again and again manages to win an order, even though the starting point is not ideal. She has prepared. She asks the right questions. She understands the customer's situation. She knows when to argue, when to listen, and when to involve others. She creates relationships that last longer than the individual customer meeting. She makes a difference.

But if the company's commercial performance depends entirely on such individual performances, we have a problem. Because then growth becomes dependent on individual people's ability to constantly compensate for organizational shortcomings. The strong salesperson should not be replaced by a process. But her experience should be used to make the whole organization stronger.

Strategy: Have we chosen the right customers and understood which problems our solution actually needs to solve?

People: Do we have salespeople with the necessary skills to uncover needs, build trust, argue and develop lasting customer relationships?

Execution: Have we established a real connection between customer feedback, product development, sales argumentation, delivery and commercial follow-up?

If not, the gap between the company's self-perception and the customer's reality will continue to land on the salesperson's shoulders.

Bridge Framework: Making the Gap Between Product and Customer Smaller

Clarify – What value do we believe we create? Define the customers, problems and outcomes the company wants to address. Distinguish between the product's features and the customer's expected value.

Diagnose – What do customers actually experience? Examine customer meetings, lost orders, objections, customer interviews and experience from the delivery organization. Identify the gap between the company's assumptions and the market's reality.

Design – What needs to change? Prioritize the necessary changes to the product, value proposition, target audience, argumentation, sales process or customer promise.

Activate – Make the improvements actionable. Translate the insights into better solutions, more precise positioning, relevant sales materials and targeted training.

Evolve – Let the market keep correcting us. Create a fixed rhythm in which sales, product development, marketing and delivery share experiences and improve the company's overall commercial offering.

The goal is not to develop the perfect product. The goal is to develop an organization that becomes ever better at understanding and creating real customer value.

Long live the salesperson

I have great respect for the people who, every day, represent their company out with customers. They bear the responsibility when the company's handsome presentation meets reality. They must be able to explain the complex, handle the unexpected, and preserve the customer's trust when not everything fits together perfectly. They are measured on their results, but rarely have full control over the product, the price, the delivery or the organizational framework within which they must work.

Yet many of them succeed. Not because the product is always the world's best. But because they are skilled at understanding people, building relationships and finding solutions. That deserves recognition. And it deserves a leadership that listens.

Because the salesperson should not be the company's permanent compensation for insufficient product-market fit. She should be a central part of the mechanism that makes the company better.

Trygve's Law of the Bad Product reminds us that it is the customer – not our own enthusiasm – who determines the product's relevance. And until we have learned to understand the difference, it is often the salesperson who makes things hold together. Long live the salesperson.

Five questions for management

• How big is the gap between our internal product narrative and customers' actual experience?
• Which product shortcomings and objections do our salespeople spend the most time handling?
• How often do we translate salespeople's market insight into concrete improvements?
• Do we have a clear picture of which customer segments our solution actually fits best?
• How dependent are our sales results on individual salespeople's ability to compensate for the product's limitations?

Commercial Scaling Diagnostic

If your company's growth depends on individual salespeople's ability to bridge the gap between the product's promises and customers' reality, it is worth examining whether the challenge lies in strategy, people or execution. The Commercial Scaling Diagnostic provides a structured starting point for that examination.

The references underpin key parts of the argumentation. Trygve's law is an experience-based observation and not a scientifically validated law.

About the Author

Trygve Nordly works as a commercial advisor and sparring partner for founders, CEOs, boards and commercial leaders, with a focus on strategy, growth, leadership and organizational performance. His Bridge Framework connects ambition with sustainable growth through Clarify, Diagnose, Design, Activate and Evolve – with Strategy × People × Execution as a recurring perspective.

Contact: trygvenordly.com