You’ve segmented your market. You’ve created a business plan for each product idea and decided what to build. Now how do you actually build an effective product?

 

Turn your attention to creating something the market will be compelled to buy. Keep your product design and development teams focused on two things:

 

  1. Creating realistic use scenarios
  2. Building a product that brings those scenarios to life

 

Build an effective product by keeping the product team focused on use scenarios and product/packaging design. Then at the end of this post, leverage the “How to Make Your Number in 2018” Workbook to further determine if the new product launch will succeed

 

Create Valuable Use Scenarios:

How will someone use the product to solve their problem? Define this and you will know how to build an effective product.

 

An effective product doesn’t come from requirements. Those are often created in isolation and easy to misinterpret. How will the product be used by each buyer persona? What does a user really value in the design?

 

Don’t let the internal development team make this up. Use market research. Talk to people who will actually be using this product. Get real data for your use scenarios (a.k.a. use cases).

 

With a use scenario, you stay focused on creating a product that the market values.

 

Design a Captivating Product and Irresistible Packaging:

You know what your market needs, thanks to your use scenario. Can your organization actually deliver it?

 

The product has to work for both your market and your organization. The market won’t purchase products that are over- or under-engineered. The products might sound good and show well – but they won’t be purchased.

 

Keep your product design team focused on creating products that satisfy the use scenarios. Don’t let them pitch the use scenarios over to development too soon.

 

The product design should:

 

  • Make the use scenario come to life
  • Solve intended market problems
  • Be engineered just right (not over- or under-engineered)

 

But keep an eye on how design decisions are impacting product profitability, also. Go to market with a minimally viable product.

 

Even great products won’t sell if they’re packaged poorly. Poor packaging adds friction to the buying process, and can confuse buyers. Packaging must solve a user problem, too.

 

Eliminate the risk of packaging cannibalizing your sales revenue. Keep the designers focused on packaging products into offers buyers can’t say no to.

 

Truly effective packaging actually results in an ecosystem of purchases that increase revenue. Can you market-test your package options before you go to market? Can you incorporate good, better, best options?

 

Before your product hits the market, the product strategy team should focus on one thing. That is, creating a product that solves a problem – from use to design to packaging.

 

Hit Your Number With a Great Product:

SBI researches how top performers hit their numbers. Creating outstanding products is an important part of the revenue growth chain we discovered. If you need help determining if your next new product launch is going to succeed, download our “How to Make Your Number in 2018”  Workbook (or interactive tool). Turn to the Product Strategy section and answer the question in the workbook to assess your chances of success.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Staples

Leads teams of highly qualified experts, all relentless in their pursuit of helping you make your number.
BIO
ALL PEOPLE

John is the global leader of SBI’s account management business unit. As such, he and his team help clients across 19 verticals drive top line growth and operational efficiency in sales and marketing.

 

John’s marketing, sales and product expertise span a multichannel strategic approach. He has an unyielding focus on strategic and key account development, which enables strategic alignment between all functional team members in order to reduce acquisition cost and increase lifetime value.

 

His broad experience in sales, marketing, product and engineering allows him to bring a unique problem solving approach to his team and clients. As he has discovered through decades of experience, clients are often distracted by the symptoms of a larger problem and overlook the root cause of it.

 

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