How to know if your product is good or bad and increase your success rapidly?

How to know if your product is good or bad and increase your success rapidly?

Author: Mayur Bardolia

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You save your time, money and frustration when you create the product that is exactly what people love to buy, even if it’s not a perfect product.

By the end of this podcast, you will find out if your business idea will be successful or not.
And your customers will tell you how you can make it great. Find out how.

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Photoshop is the software used to edit the photographs.

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe company for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in graphics editing but in digital art as a whole. Since they started in 1988, they have released 20 versions so far. It started as version 1,2, 3 and since their version 8, it’s called CS, CS2, CS3 and so on.

But why do they need to release updates after updates?

Does it mean that they could not create a perfect version in their first release? What makes them create new updates frequently? Photoshop gradually adds more and more features as time goes on. Also, Photoshop asks their customers what improvement they are looking for. Customers tell Adobe photoshop when they find any bugs.

Did they ask their customers if they wanted the software called ‘Photoshop’ or not? The answer is NO. They did not ask before they published their first version. They just published without asking their customers whether they want it or not.

In a few of my previous episodes, we have talked about how can you know what people want.

We discussed what problems our prospects are facing and what should we do so that the customers buy the solution that we provide. But most people don’t ask their customers what they really want. The reason is that we don’t know how to know what they want. We don’t ask for feedback effectively. When you ask random things, you get random feedback. And you can’t come up with the right solution.

In this podcast episode, we will know how to know what they want by asking for the right feedback in the right way.

Most businesses fail to launch great products because they don’t know what customers want. You should not do the same mistake. By the end of this podcast, you will know exactly what you should ask your customers to market and sell great products.

If you follow what you are going to learn in this podcast, you will be able to create and deliver the products that bring you success.

We will discuss 3 things.

1. When should you not ask?
2. When you should ask?
3. What you should ask? 

Last month, I was invited to speak at a webinar organized by a start-up forum in Singapore.

It was an online class for 45 minutes and then I invited questions. There was a participant called Martin. He has been struggling to start the business. He has been working on his business ideas. He came up with few ideas and just like most coaches and trainers say, “Get the feedback from the market. Do the survey. Do the market research”. And he started a few things but he barely made anything. He asked many people as a part of market research and survey but he got more confused as he asked more people. So, he could not launch his business successfully.

Your customers don’t know what they want.

They have no clue about what exact problem they have. They know and they tell you what is the problem that they have but they don’t. If you ask them what solution you are looking for, they will talk random. If you follow the system I shared in the book “offer craft”, you will know exactly what problem they have and what solution they are looking for. If you haven’t read, you should read the book “offer craft” and implement the system. I highly recommend it.

When you do market research, the customers will tell you what they want to tell you.

Many times, they will share a rough idea because they don’t even know. It’s your job to find out the real pain they want to get rid of. When you ask open-ended questions like “What product do you think you will buy? What business ideas I should work on? What challenges do people want to deal with nowadays?” They will talk about what’s trending nowadays. They will say what’s going on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.

They will say what they wish to do.

They will say what so and so online guru is saying. They will give examples of people who are doing great business in today’s time. When you don’t carefully design your survey, you will not come up with the business idea that will work for you. So, the question is When to ask?

 Let’s find out in the second part, shall we?

At the beginning of this podcast, we talked about how Photoshop released their first version without asking people if they are looking for software to edit their pictures.

The developers at photoshop did not ask their customers what features they want in the first version of photoshop. They knew that people don’t have any clue how to express their challenge of editing photos. Deep down people were looking for something that enhances their pictures but didn’t know that something can be done about it. But photoshop knew it and they released their first version of their one of their greatest product, their commercial version “Barneyscan XP”), version 1.0 (February 1990).

Now, they went out and ask for feedback from their customers.

They asked their existing customers to use their product and let the company know the bugs they have found and what is missing and what to do to improve the result. They collected feedback and worked upon it. Then they released the second version. Again, they asked for feedback. Then they launched all the way to version 7.0.1. Adobe published 7 major and many minor versions before October 2003 when they introduced version 8.0 which brought with it the Creative Suite branding, which is called as Photoshop CS. The first Photoshop CS was commercially released in October 2003 as the eighth major version of Photoshop with increased user control with a lot more features.

This is exactly what you should do.

If you collect the feedback from the customers before you create a product, they will talk differently. You should create the product first and ask people to use it.  They will get an idea once you present your first version. The Apple company did not ask anyone if they wanted an iPhone or iPad. They created first, released it and welcomed the feedback. This is how you need to improve the product. Nobody comes up with the perfect product in the first trial. You need to improve time after time. You release your first version as soon as possible. Let people use it.

Now, the question is what to ask. Let’s find out.

One of my clients is running a family-owned bakery shop in Mumbai, India.
They are famous for bakery items. It’s more than 30 years old. Their bakery shop is not lavish, instead, it’s too old style. They have been running it successfully for over 3 decades simply by creating products. Some of them are great and are sold very well. They don’t focus on creating a great product. They just create and give samples to their customers and ask how they found it. They have created products after products and their customers tell them what will work and what needs to be done to make it work.

And it becomes effortless for them to increase their sales.

Now, you have created the product. You can say, it’s version 1.0 or beta version. Then give it to your customers. Either sell them or ask them to try for free. Ask them how they found it, how it’s going to improve their life or business, what is not helping them to perform, what is bugging them.  They will narrow down their focus and give you the feedback that will really help you to improve your product.

The effective parameter to know if your product is good or bad is to ask your prospects to use it and ask them.
You don’t necessarily have to create the product.  You can create the product first but you must be sure about what exactly your customers want. Even after doing it, you still need to ask your existing customers.

If you go to our website www.mayurbardolia.com and go at the bottom of every single page, we did the same thing.

It says, “If you find any mistake or bugs on this site, please let me know. No matter how big or small. I would love to know your feedback. ‘The Bug of the Month’ will get one of my books. Then you need to click on a link to report. You will be taken to a page mayurbardolia.com/whats-the-bug. And yes, you will see a form where you can leave your detail and whatever is bugging you. There is a reward too for the person who finds the biggest bug on my website. Go to mayurbardolia.com and find out any bug that We should improve.

When We published the book “Offer Craft”, it was created to help business people to find and fix errors in their marketing message.

We gave it to people to read and ask if they found any mistake. People helped me and now we are coming up with the new version of the same book “Offer Craft”. We are going to call it Version 2. So, the lesson you learned today is; you create a product and ask people to try. They will tell you what is missing in your product.

Most people ignore the voice of their customers. Eventually, their customers start ignoring them. 

Make sure, it doesn’t happen with you.

 

Next: Crafting a good sales pitch is not easy, but it’s one of the most important parts of the business. What if you have to give a sales pitch in the shortest notice even if you don’t know how to create a sales pitch?

Find out, How can you create a good pitch in just 3 steps and in the shortest amount of time?