Finding Clients

I Thought I Understood Product-Market Fit. I Didn't. Here's What Fractional Executives Need to Know About Why Clients Actually Buy

September 23, 2026 · Bradley Jacobs

Here's a fun fact nobody puts on the launch announcement: most people who go out on their own give themselves six months, maybe twelve if they're lucky, to make it work. Rent is due. Savings are shrinking. Your family would like to keep eating. This isn't a hobby, and you don't have unlimited runway to experiment.

So when your offer isn't landing, the stakes feel enormous. You start wondering whether you should dust off the resume.

I've lived in that place, the one founders lovingly call "the pain cave." And I've spent a lot of time digging into why people actually buy, why they stay, and what signals really matter along the way. Whether you sell software or a fractional service, the rules are the same: somebody has to want what you're selling badly enough to spend time, money, and energy on it.

Here's what I learned, and what I got completely wrong at first.

What I Used to Think Product-Market Fit Meant

I used to believe product-market fit meant my solution solved someone's problem. They liked it. It added value. They bought, maybe bought again, and said nice things about it.

That sounds right, but you can't scale it. Everyone says you'll know you've hit product-market fit because customers will pull the product out of your hands. Great. How do you reverse engineer your way there, and what keeps you going while people are politely not pulling anything?

Stop Solving Problems. Find the Unavoidable Task.

I don't even use the word "problem" anymore. Your clients have hundreds of problems, and they'll happily live with most of them. Good enough solutions exist, and nobody buys something they don't absolutely need.

What people buy is help with a task that sits on their to-do list at a specific time and place, a task they cannot avoid, where the existing options just aren't good enough.

For Mylance, "I want to create content on LinkedIn" turned out to tell me almost nothing. The real picture is far more nuanced. My best customers already have a business up and running. They believe it's not an option to skip showing up on LinkedIn. And they've tried the obvious alternative, general AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and found that the output reads like AI slop: forgotten voice, random dashes, emojis everywhere. That combination is what makes a solution feel necessary instead of nice to have.

Your fractional practice works the same way. "Companies need a fractional CFO" is a category, not a buying situation. What has to be true in that company, right now, that makes hiring you unavoidable?

Your Buyer's Beliefs Decide Whether They Stay

Here's where it got really interesting. Picture a spectrum of what someone believes about LinkedIn. One: it doesn't work at all. Two: I'm skeptical, but maybe. Three: it could work, I'm just not sure. Four: it's proven to work for me.

People in the first two groups still book sales calls with me. I've had plenty of them. But I'm not there to convince anyone that LinkedIn works, because even if they buy, they'll stay skeptical and they'll leave. They are not "hell yes" long-term customers.

Expectations matter just as much as beliefs. Some people want content to build credibility, so that when a prospect shows up through referrals or outbound, they already know and trust them. Others want their posts to directly generate inbound leads. The second group posts five times and asks where the leads are. The first group understands this is a long game and has the patience to win it.

Same product, completely different outcomes. And if you're still hunting for your first three clients, content probably isn't your silver bullet anyway. Go to your network, learn how to deliver and close, and then build repeatable sales and marketing on top of that.

Stop Asking Whether They Like It

I don't care how much you tell me you like my product. I want to know what it's getting done for you.

What is your actual workflow? Which features do you use, and which do you ignore? Is this a recurring habit, like every Monday at 5 p.m., or do you use it whenever the mood strikes? Every one of those answers shapes messaging, positioning, onboarding, pricing, and delivery.

I now ask every customer the same list of 12 specific questions to understand where they are, what their priorities are, and why those priorities are unavoidable. Random one-off chats don't cut it.

Try this with your own clients. Line up your 10 hell yes clients, the ones who rave about you, and your 10 "meh, I don't know" clients. Then list every criterion that separates them. It probably isn't four or five things. It might be 10, 12, or 15. That combination is your real ideal client profile, and it's far more useful than any persona slide.

Separate Your Identity From Your Offer

This is the part that changed everything for me.

To do any of this well, I had to completely separate who I am from what I'm selling. The product is a constantly evolving adaptation to my customers' needs. It is not me. So if you tell me it sucks, I can be completely unaffected and simply ask you exactly why. (For the record, nobody has said that. I'm just making a point.)

For fractional executives, this one stings, because your offer often feels like you. When a prospect passes, it feels personal. But the moment you treat your offer as an experiment instead of a verdict on your worth, every no becomes data. You become the observer, collecting information and making decisions that align your solution with the task your client needs done.

Believe You'll Crack the Code, Then Stay Curious

It's easy to focus on everything that isn't working, feel like an imposter, and decide you'll never figure it out.

But energy flows where your intention goes. Believe you're going to unlock the combination. At the same time, stay detached enough to admit you don't know the answer yet. Hold both at once, and you create room to keep iterating until the lock clicks.

The goal is to find the people for whom buying from you is so obvious that not buying would make no sense.

Ready to Build Credibility That Brings Clients to You?

If LinkedIn is part of how you win high-value clients, Mylance helps you create content that actually sounds like you, not like a robot, and gets 90% of the way there so editing takes five minutes instead of two hours. Head to mylance.co to book a LinkedIn positioning session or try the free version.

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Your LinkedIn should be working for you, attracting clients, building credibility, and compounding with every post. Mylance makes that happen. See how it works →