Define your Product

“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”

– Seth Godin: Dot Com Business Exec

So, you have an idea about the product or service you want to begin selling, but can you define it with crystal clarity? A big problem that many entrepreneurs face is attention to detail. If someone were to ask you to define your product, you would need to be able to do so without missing a beat. If you’re stuttering and stammering your way through the explanation, you most likely don’t have a clearly defined product. 

Another major issue is the tendency to spiral. So, you’ll start off with this really great idea, but then you’ll start loading on additional attributes or features. In your mind, these will add more value to your product, but you have no idea of how to implement them all, or if they’re actually worth the extra work. 

There are going to be a ton of questions wafting about as you begin to move on to this phase of modeling your business. The most important questions that you need to answer while defining the product are:

• What goods and/or services do you want to offer?
• Are there similar products, or substitute products, available in the market?
• What are the various ways you can offer and deliver your product or service to different customers?

If you can answer the aforementioned questions with ease, it would be fairly safe to begin designing your product. You might be thinking, ‘Well, Josh, we’ve already defined the product. What do you mean by design?’ 

Here’s the thing, having a loose definition of the product or service is not sufficient to start determining your numbers. You need to know the ins and outs of what it’s going to take to bring this product to life. To increase your likelihood of building a successful product or service, it’s necessary to complete the following product design steps in the following order:

1. First, list the highest priority customer needs and/or wants that you have identified from your market research. Pair this with your experience in the market. I would strongly suggest that you get this all down on paper – whether it’s an actual paper or spreadsheet is totally up to you. Create a column labeled “Customer needs/wants”.
2. Second, list all of the reasons why your business should exist in the market. Make sure that the reasons are relative to the needs and wants that you just listed. Moreover, make sure they are relative to what your competitors are presently offering. Create a second column labeled “Reason for Being”. Ultimately, this should address what your business stands for or represents. 
3. Next, create a third column labeled “Product Benefits”. I want you to list all of the major benefits your product/service is going to offer that will satisfy customers’ needs and wants.
4. Finally, list all of the features that you will include in your product or service offering. Create a fourth column for this labeled “Product features”.

Can you Build it or Produce it?

With a good idea of how the design process might go, you can set your sights on how your company is going to build it. Whether you’re offering a physical product or a digital service, there is always going to be some level of building required to create your offering. Think about it from the perspective of a physical product. There might be elements such as the product itself, labels, packaging, and much more. From a digital services point of view, you could be looking at a website build, template creation, and so on. 

To help you get going with your very own product build, I’ve detailed a few questions that you would need to ask yourself before setting off on your project. Have a look at them below:

1. Can you build it?
2. What expertise do you need that you do not have?
3. If you need outside assistance, do you know where to get it?
4. How much will it cost, and how long will it take you to build?
5. Is it better to build it yourself or to buy it from someone else who can do it better?
6. If you’re going to buy it from someone else, who?
7. How much will they charge?
8. What kind of capacity do they have?

The success of your product will depend on three things: product, market, and execution, which together make up what I call the Product Success Triangle.

• Product: Your product has to be good.
• Market: You need a group of people willing to pay money for it.
• Execution: You have to market, sell, and support it.

In the paradigm above, your product is one-third of the equation. This is far from the hefty weight most developers place on the product. Speak with most new developer-entrepreneurs and you’ll get the impression that the product is 99% of the equation.

However, a brilliant product with no market or execution is dead in the water. On the other hand, even a mediocre product with brilliant marketing and execution can make you money. You should aim to master all three in the long term but at the start, place emphasis on the latter to determine if the idea will fly. Once you know you have a market and can execute, then you can improve your product.

Think of your Product as a Solution

In the same way that opportunities can’t exist independently of the entrepreneur, successful businesses – and the products they sell – can’t exist independently of the problems they solve for their customers. The two are inextricably intertwined and need to be treated as such. Remember that those customer problems don’t always have to be “pain points”.

Products that exist to solve problems, but don’t accentuate customer passion to the fullest, aren’t solving problems in the conventional sense of the term. If a new product comes along and thrills these customers by speaking to their passion, or reframing their previous experiences as less-than-ideal, that product essentially solves a problem for that customer.

In this context, a pain point may not represent a negative aspect, but simply a barrier to a much more fulfilling experience instead. Simply put, you might be able to find a “pain-point” that customers didn’t know existed, providing them with a solution that they didn’t know they needed. 

Consider the following example:

Golf enthusiasts are known for their willingness to spend lots of money to achieve even modest improvements in their game, and because the sport of golf is equipment-intensive, players keep a close eye on new product development. When using traditional clubs, players are locked into using the equipment they brought with them on the course, based on a guess at the conditions that may arise during play. Adjustable clubs changed the equation by allowing players to adjust the characteristics of their equipment to match the conditions they encountered on the course.

In the same way that an MP3 player enhanced music listeners’ experiences by providing them with benefits they didn’t realize they wanted, adjustable golf clubs provided golf enthusiasts with benefits that changed the way that they enjoy the sport they are passionate about. All it took was reframing regular playing conditions as a problem with adjustable clubs as the solution.

The products or services that your venture offers are a central part of your value proposition. The importance of your startup’s value proposition cannot be overstated. If your processes, your operations, and your financial model are the “how” of your business, your value proposition is the “why”.

Two key questions that you need to keep at the back of your mind are:

• Who is your target customer?
• How are you different from your competition?

A fundamental first step in understanding exactly who your target customers are is identifying the problem you will solve for them. A venture that doesn’t solve a problem for its target customers – or that doesn’t have target customers, to begin with – will waste significant resources struggling to find its way and will ultimately never get off the ground.

Proceed with caution. “Build it and they will come” is not a business strategy. A common pitfall of new entrepreneurs is to think that their product/service is so attractive that it will “sell itself.” Not only is this not a viable business strategy, it never works! It doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles, how tech-enabled, or how sexy your offering is, no one will purchase it unless it solves a problem for them. Furthermore, no one will purchase it unless they fully understand its features and benefits.

Think critically about the problem that you want to solve for people. Address whether or not the offering that you have in mind follows through on solving their problem. If not, you have a solution in search of a problem, which is a lot like putting the cart before the horse. Or the chicken before the egg.

With a clearly defined product, a good design, and a solution-oriented marketing strategy, you can take the plunge on determining your numbers.