The more I work with clients, the more I realize something important: you should never build a full-fledged system before getting paid.
There are two big reasons for this:
- You don’t actually know what they need yet.
- What clients say they want and what they actually want often aren’t the same.
That’s why I’ve changed my approach.
Now, I sell the idea first. I have polished, full-featured "default package" ready to show so clients understand the end vision. But when they ask for a Proof of Concept, I build the smallest functional version possible and share that first.
If they give the thumbs-up, then I move forward with the full system.
This approach has saved me a massive amount of time and let me gather real, validated business use cases without building things that never get used.