Forget About Your Product… It’s All About The Offer
As a former product manager, It feels a bit wrong for me to tell you to forget about the product, but this is really the mindset you need to have. Most product managers and budding entrepreneurs out there are obsessed with their product. They are proud of this thing they have come up with. Their sales message speaks about the product. They describe their company in terms of the product. But what is missing from all of this? The needs of the customer. The customer does not care about the product, the customer cares about their problem and how you intend to solve it.
As a product manager, I was not trying to get people to use my products (though it may have seemed that way at times). What I was really trying to do was to figure out my customer’s most pressing needs and craft a product that most efficiently solved that need. The product was just the end result of the problem solving process. It can feel great when you have nailed this and are getting people to consistently buy your products, but beware of getting too attached to it. The world changes, market conditions change, people’s whims change. You product may be satisfying a customer need now, but it might not in the future. As a product manager, one must always be willing to toss out things that no longer satisfy the customers’ needs.
If the customer’s needs are no longer being satisfied, it’s back to the drawing board. But sometimes it is not the main need that is no longer being satisfied, but a secondary one. Let me explain what I mean by this.
One thing few people starting out in business fail to realize is that every solution to a problem creates new problems. Think about the problem of having to get from point A to point B, 20 miles apart. Walking this distance would take 6–8 hours. No thanks! Along comes the car to solve that problem. Now you can go that distance in around 20 minutes. Problem solved! But having this car creates new problems. Things will break down and need to be repaired… You need to register the vehicle… You need to fill it with gas… Your friends are always asking you for rides… etc. Every solution to a problem brings a new set of secondary problems.
This is where it helps to differentiate a product from an offer. A product solves a particular problem. An offer solves a set of problems. Put together an offer that solves most of the secondary problems of the customer and you stand out from the competition, and give your products a longer runway of successfully solving customer pain points. Successful businesses have made millions off of this one concept.
Through a great offer, you can often create a blue ocean where before there was only blood in the water. The perfect offer combines solutions in a way that cannot be easily replicated by someone else. As an example, think about an offer that includes a product that solves a customer pain point. In addition to that, you offer your personal experience and expertise as part of a training program, walking them through how to use your products and achieve the most success with it. Not only does this create an offer that can’t be easily reproduced by others, but it creates a longer lived customer, since you are ensuring their success while using the product.
As you are figuring out how to best solve the customer’s needs, stop thinking in terms of products, and start thinking about the unique offers you can deliver. This will increase sales, separate you from the competition, and drive customer loyalty.
