The Friction Commitment Test
Deliberately make the next step hard to filter for buyers who truly want it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
A counterintuitive qualification tactic: instead of smoothing the path for a prospect, add a demanding hurdle and see if they clear it. Use it early in a sales or POV process to confirm commitment before you invest in an unfinished product together.
Origin
When a Fortune 10 company wanted to start a POV, Wiz had only a beginning of a product. Herzberg sent a long list of technical questions, partly to learn what to build and partly to buy time. She was terrified it would scare the prospect off. It came back fully filled out a day later, and she reframed the friction as a commitment test.
Core principles
- 01Friction reveals commitment: effort spent is proof of want.
- 02Never push a buyer into a process they're not committed to, especially with an immature product.
- 03You need to feel the want coming back from the other side, not manufacture it.
How to run it
- 1
Insert a demanding but legitimate hurdle
Ask the prospect to complete something real and non-trivial (a detailed technical questionnaire, prerequisites for a POV) before you proceed.
Pro tip Dual-purpose the hurdle so it also gathers information you genuinely need to build or deploy.
- 2
Watch whether they clear it
A committed buyer completes it fast (Wiz's came back a day later, fully filled). Silence or delay is a signal they aren't truly pulling.
- 3
Only proceed on demonstrated want
Take the deal forward only with buyers who show they want it, because an early POV on an unpolished product is a shared journey that needs real buy-in.
Watch out Don't use hurdles to push someone in; use them to confirm the pull is already there.
In the wild
Herzberg sent a long list of technical questions to a huge prospect, expecting to scare them away. 'It came back filled a day later,' proving the prospect's commitment to an unbuilt product.
→ Reframed friction from a risk into a qualification signal; became a durable early-sales lesson.
Common mistakes
Removing all friction to avoid losing the deal
Making everything effortless hides whether the buyer actually wants it, and you end up in a POV with someone who won't push through the rough edges of an early product.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders selling an early, unpolished product who need to qualify design-partner commitment.
Not ideal for
High-volume transactional sales where added friction just kills conversion.
From the transcript
“it's counterintuitive but actually it came back filled um a day later and I remember my lesson being you know what this is actually good…”
“don't be too afraid to um get the pull from the customer like it's okay like you need that pull from the other end as…”
From the episode
Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history
Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)