Hello, this is Matsubara, CRM Evangelist.

"We interviewed 100 companies."

When I reported this to investors, the first question I received was this:

"So, what did you learn?"

I couldn't answer. I had listened to many stories, but I couldn't articulate "what I learned." The feeling I had after each business meeting—whether it "somehow resonated" or "somehow didn't resonate"—was only in my head.

*This article is a fictional story based on industry realities and implementation patterns of multiple companies.

The pitfall startups fall into before achieving Product-Market Fit: "Customer Development Without Data"

I founded a company that provides SaaS (a platform for managing orders and deliveries) for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies.
We launched this project with the vision of "eliminating the inefficiencies of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies that are currently using Excel and telephones for order placement and processing."

Six months after founding the company, with only three employees, we were making appointments with potential clients, giving demonstrations, and sending out proposals almost every day. We had zero successful deals.
To be precise, there were several trials, but none of them resulted in a full contract.

Back then, the only way to manage business negotiation records was to write notes in Notion. "Company A - Interested, but no budget," "Company B - The person in charge seems good, but my boss is hesitant," "Company C - Comparing with competitors"—these kinds of fragmented notes piled up haphazardly in folders.

There is data showing that 38% of companies that fail cite "no market need" as the reason. I began to feel that I might be in that 38% around the seventh month of starting my business.

My encounter with EMOROCO CRM Lite—the idea of ​​"turning lost deal logs into data"

The turning point came from a single comment from my mentor.

"Where is your log of lost deals located now?"

When I opened a Notion folder and showed it to my mentor, he shook his head. "This isn't a record, it's a memo. The difference between a record and a memo is whether or not you can compare them."

That night, I researched and found EMOROCO CRM Lite. It costs 1,500 yen per user per month, with no initial setup fee. It's a price that even a startup's financial situation can afford to try.

To be honest, at first I thought CRM was something only big companies used. But after using it, I realized that CRM is especially necessary for startups before they achieve Product-Market Fit (PMF).

The reason is simple: pre-PMF negotiations are not "sales activities" but "hypothesis testing activities." The goal of pre-PMF negotiations is not to maximize sales, but to "discover whose problems our product solves and what problems they solve." To record, compare, and analyze these discoveries, structured data is necessary. Notion notes cannot be used for comparison.

Design – 7 fields specializing in PMF (Product-Market Fit)

The fields you set up in EMOROCO CRM Lite are different from those in typical sales CRMs. They are designed not for "managing sales," but for "testing hypotheses."

Fields added to the opportunity record:

The final "Hypothesis Verification Results" field was the most important. The habit of writing one or two sentences about "what you learned from this negotiation" after each meeting leads to future discoveries.

[Design Points] The "Severity of the Problem" field is crucial. There is a fundamental difference in product value between "something you can't do without" and "something that would be nice to have." As long as it remains "something that would be nice to have," PMF (Product-Market Fit) cannot be achieved.

One month after implementation—the first discovery was "the collapse of the hypothesis."

After using EMOROCO CRM Lite for a month, I went back and entered past sales opportunity data. When I structured a total of 67 sales opportunities, the first thing I noticed was the "collapse of my hypotheses."

The problem we identified as the "issue to be solved" was the "inefficiency of the order and receipt data entry process." Our hypothesis was that "people must feel that doing this with Excel and phone calls is inefficient."

However, when we analyze the "severity of the problem"—

Only 12% of companies answered that they would be in trouble without it. 88% answered either "it would be nice to have" or "neither."

My hypothesis was that "Excel is inconvenient and causing problems," but the data showed that "people find Excel inconvenient, but not to the point of being a major problem." When I analyzed the eight companies that felt they "couldn't do without it," some commonalities emerged.

The common characteristics of 8 companies that are indispensable:

• There are five or more suppliers.
• There are two or more people in charge of order placement and processing (there is a risk of reliance on individual expertise).
• Over 50 orders per month

Only companies with a high volume of orders and deliveries, multiple employees, and a high risk of errors felt that they "couldn't do without it." Our target definition was wrong from the start.

Month 2 - What the "words that resonated" taught me

Next, we analyzed the "words that resonated" field. This refers to the types of words the other person used at the moment you leaned forward in your interest.

Most frequently occurring keywords:

1. "Reducing errors" (23 responses)
2. "Risks when the person in charge quits" (18 responses)
3. "It makes reporting to business partners easier." (15 responses)
4. "Efficiency Improvement" (9 results)
5. "Cost reduction" (7 items)

I noticed something. There was little reaction to "efficiency improvements" and "cost reduction." But there was a strong reaction to "mistakes" and "handover risks."

We were selling it as an "efficiency tool," but what our customers really feared was "the risk of mistakes and handover issues."

Conversely, when we looked at the words that didn't resonate with them, there was almost no reaction to terms like "digitalization," "DX," and "cloud." For managers of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, "DX" is a distant concept; their real concern was "I want to eliminate ordering errors this month."

Month 3 – "The Decision to Pivot" Based on Lost Deals Log

Once we had accumulated three months' worth of data, we established a weekly "Lost Sales Analysis Meeting" (30 minutes).

The decision to pivot was made at this meeting.

Analyzing three months' worth of lost deals revealed a pattern that emerged from the eight companies that felt they "couldn't do without" the product, and this pattern matched the pattern revealed from the analysis of the "key words that resonated" with the customer.

A new hypothesis: "There is a pressing need to simultaneously eliminate order processing errors and the risk of reliance on individual employees."

We've shifted our focus from a traditional "efficiency tool" to "order management with zero errors and zero handover risk." We've rewritten everything—sales pitches, materials, and landing pages.

Changes in 30 days after changing the appeal: "I can't do without it" rate: 12% → 41% Sales negotiation → Trial conversion rate: 8% → 23%

Month 4 – "Learning Report" to Investors

During the seed round investor meetings, I was asked again, "What did you learn?"

This time I was able to answer.

"By analyzing 167 sales negotiation logs, we identified common characteristics of customers who feel their product is 'indispensable.' Companies meeting three conditions—having five or more suppliers, two or more contact persons, and more than 50 orders per month—had an average level of problem severity 3.2 times higher. By focusing on this customer profile, we improved our trial conversion rate from 8% to 23%."

Investors' reactions have changed. They now say, "We can see the quality of learning, not just the number of cases."

We projected the EMOROCO CRM Lite dashboard directly onto the screen for our explanation. The distribution of reasons for lost deals, changes in the severity of issues, and trends in keywords that resonated with customers—this was conveyed as "data-driven progress toward Product-Market Fit."

Month 6 – What became clear just before achieving Product-Market Fit

Six months after implementation, a total of 214 sales negotiation logs had been accumulated.

Number of changes:

The definition of achieving Product-Market Fit (PMF) is often said to be "a state where more than 40% of customers say, 'I would be extremely inconvenienced if this product were discontinued.'" We haven't reached that point yet, but our direction has become clearer.

The biggest change is that I'm no longer afraid of losing deals.

Previously, every time I lost a deal, I felt like, "It didn't work out again." Now, that feeling has changed to, "I learned something new." If you have a log of lost deals, then a lost deal is not a "cost" but an "investment in learning."

Failures—Three honest reflections

Reflection ①: I created too much of a field in the first week.

I initially created 15 fields. I was greedy and wanted to record everything. Entering data after each business meeting took 10 minutes, and I couldn't keep it up. I narrowed it down to 7 fields, and it became more manageable. Entering all the data in a small number of fields is 100 times more valuable than being able to enter only half the data in a large number of fields.

Reflection #2: I misused the concept of emotional temperature.

Initially, we used "emotional temperature" to represent the "satisfaction level of a business negotiation." Negotiations that were successful were marked "hot" (red), and those that weren't were marked "cold" (light blue). However, "satisfaction level" and "high severity of the problem" are two different things. After redefining emotional temperature not as "the level of interest the other party has" but as "the level of perceived problem with the product," the quality of the data improved.

Reflection ③: There was a period when I put off analysis instead of making it something I "had to do."

In the second month of implementation, while we were focused on increasing the number of business negotiations, we decided to "do the analysis later." Looking back, the data from that month was of significantly lower quality. Unless you make "data entry for analysis" a habit immediately after a business negotiation, the data will deteriorate.

Summary — "Lost Deals Log" is the cheapest research option.

For startups, product-market fit (PMF) is a condition for survival. And the shortest path to PMF is to "structure and learn from customer feedback."

Customer interviews, which would cost tens of thousands of yen per interview if you hired a research company, can be accumulated at zero cost through daily business negotiations. However, if that information remains scattered as "notes," it's a treasure trove.

By structuring our lost deal logs with EMOROCO CRM Lite, we were able to see numerically "what is preventing us from achieving Product-Market Fit." The fact that the percentage of people who "can't do without it" increased from 12% to 44% is a learning asset that cannot be bought with a monthly fee of 3 yen (for 5 users at the time).

Instead of saying, "I was rejected by 100 companies," say, "I learned from 100 companies"—this difference determines how quickly you reach Product-Market Fit (PMF).

[The first step you can take starting today] First, add just two fields to your opportunity records: "Issue severity (essential/would be nice/neither)" and "Hypothesis testing results (1-2 sentences)." By recording these two fields in every opportunity, you will be able to see in data three months "what was right and what was wrong with your hypothesis."

You can try it with a 30-day free trial.
Digitalization and AI Implementation Subsidy 2026 Compatible Tool Number: DL07-0022934
Product Info:https://www.emoroco.com/

Related article

• How to use EMOROCO CRM Lite to turn pre-PMF sales opportunity logs into learning assets for startups and new businesses
• Changes after CRM implementation: What happened to companies using EMOROCO CRM Lite after 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year.
• "From intuition-based and experience-based sales to data-driven sales: How SMEs are transforming the quality of their decision-making with EMOROCO CRM Lite"
• The decisive difference between companies that "failed" and "succeeded" in CRM implementation: Commonalities revealed from on-the-ground perspectives
• How to Properly Create Custom Fields in EMOROCO CRM Lite: A Design Philosophy and Industry-Specific Templates to Prevent "Unfilled" Fields