The only way to define a product
The background for this post is something that really upsets me today. A large company, I don't want to mention (as this will not bring any added value to my point here), has proposed to sell an upgrade for their lines of products. If you carefully read the brochure of those products, you will quickly understand that the only "improvement" is the fact those products are based on the latest version of Oracle, Oracle 10g... Really, who is stupid enough to purchase the upgrade package of such a product that doesn't bring any additional true added value to the product... You name it, EVERYONE...
Why? my guess would be those companies said to themselves "Everyone else is doing so, so I guess we should too"...
Now listen to this revolutionary, simple and obvious idea that everybody knows and rarely applies when decisions need to be made:
THE ONLY WAY TO TRULY DEFINE A PRODUCT IS BY ANSWERING THIS BASIC QUESTION: "WHAT CAN THE PRODUCT DO FOR THE POTENTIAL CUSTOMER?"
Did you ever ask an engineer about his last creation in front of one of your customers that came to visit your R&D facilities and look for new products he may be interested to add in his catalogue? (if you didn't, you are one of the both: unexperimented or very clever)
From my short experience, it would sound like: "It's web applet written in java that can be automatically plugged and played into a web browser and can generate HTML page based on templates located in the remote server"... gggrrrrr!!!!
Probably his product would have been able to generate millions in sales... but not... not that way... Java, HTML, template, remote server... who the hell cares? That's not what the client wants to hear... if only your message would have been: "this product can increase your sells on the web by 40% by simplifying the purchasing process"...
Bottom line, no matter if you are a supplier or a demander, an entrepreneur or an engineer, the only way to truly evaluate/define a product is to understand what it can bring to the end-user.
1 Comments:
This is great info to know.
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