Part 1 Stands to reason, you've got to have a product or a service to sell to have a successful business. Selecting the right product or service is crucial to your company's survival. Here are the first five of ten steps to help you choose and develop a successful product: 1. Select prospects first Most people select a product first and then go searching for someone to buy it. That approach is backwards, incredibly expensive and very often ends in failure. It is much easier to succeed by first identifying a group of targeted prospects, finding out exactly what they want, and then giving it to them. Start by identifying target groups of consumers for practice. It might help to complete the following phrases. Think of as many as you can. "People who love . . ." or "People who would love to . . ." "People who hate . . ." or "People who would hate to . . ." For example: People who love chocolate. People who love their dogs (or cats). People who love to travel. People who would love to lose weight. People who would love to start a business. People who would love to learn a new language. People who hate having headaches. People who hate having a disorganized home. People who hate working at their jobs. People who would hate to retire poor. People who would hate to be late for appointments. People who would hate to lose their possessions to burglars. With a little practice you will begin to see that every product or service that people buy is because they want to acquire more of what they love, or they want to eliminate what they hate. Every product or service falls into one of these two categories. Yours will too. 2. Identify a problem Once you have selected a target group of prospects, it's time to identify their problem. Every product is the solution to a problem, not necessarily a major problem, but a problem nevertheless. If there wasn't a problem to begin with, the product would not have been developed. Think about the light bulb. The primary problem was darkness. The secondary problem was messy, smelly and dangerous gas or oil lamps. The electric light bulb was an excellent solution to all of those problems.
Until you identify a specific problem that your particular prospects have and want to solve, you can't develop a solution. That's why you must start with your prospects' problems first before you jump into developing products. Once you have pinpointed your prospects' problem, it's a lot easier to think of what kinds of products or services would help to solve that problem. If their problem is disorganization, then you may be able to develop an organizing service or an organizing product as a solution to help them overcome this particular problem. If their problem is that they love to travel, but have a difficult time finding reasonably priced travel packages, perhaps your solution could be to find those types of packages for them as a travel consultant. Your solution doesn't have to be earth shattering, nor does it have to be totally unique. There is usually room for more than one solution provider in most any market. In our city there are over 1,000 dentists providing the solution of dental care. There are also hundreds of restaurants, insurance agents and hair salons. In fact, if your product or service is so unique that people are unfamiliar with it, you may have a very difficult time educating your marketplace about your product or service. This will make your marketing efforts very expensive and risky. It's often much wiser and more profitable to offer a product or service that is already being sold successfully to a large target market, rather than trying to be a pioneer. The early pioneers had a high mortality rate. When people try to create totally unique products or services, the failure rate is very high -- from 80 - 90%. If you stick with already established products and services -- like the ones you see people buying like crazy in your target market -- you'll have a much easier road to success. 4. Find out if they want it Now that you've selected a target group of prospects who have an identifiable problem and you've started developing a solution to that problem, it's time to test the demand for your proposed solution. If it turns out that your target prospects aren't really interested in your solution, or that there just aren't enough of them to make it profitable, then it's better to find that out now, rather than later. Here are a few ways you can test the demand for your new product or service idea.
Be wary of biased opinions from family and friends-- quite often they will tell you what you want to hear, not the truth. You need unbiased action, like requests for information or a free sample, or better yet, a purchase, etc. Until you have established a clear, proven demand for your product or service, you won't know whether you have a chance for success. This is a vital part of your research phase. Don't skip it. 5. Establish your marketing strategy and systems Once you have tested your demand and have proven that there are sufficient numbers of people who want your solution, it's time to begin developing your marketing systems. Which strategy will you use?
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