Most people are under the assumption that a product manager’s job is to manage a product. In reality, their primary responsibility is to hone in on the customer’s needs. Regardless of how wonderful your product is, or how well-run your production and distribution departments are, if customers aren’t buying your product you don’t have a…
There’s a large body of research pointing to the fact that between 85 and 95% of products fail. While these numbers are disheartening, you could avoid becoming a statistic in the failure category. There are many factors that go into building a successful product company, but these three basic aspects to get right. Don’t put…
So far, you’ve done everything right. You’ve identified an obvious unmet need in the market, and developed an awesome product that will satisfy that need. It has unique features, unlike any other product, so there’s virtually no competition. And you’re convinced that it’s priced to sell. Now you’re ready to take your product to market,…
FullStory is a powerful digital intelligence platform. Let’s break the product down using the framework of the Product Launch System from NxtStep. Problem Anyone who has built a digital product is well aware of how difficult it can be to capture valuable analytics as they regard to usage. Do your customers view your product as…
After many months – perhaps even longer – of creating a product that you believed would revolutionize your industry, you’ve launched it with underwhelming success. Naturally you are disappointed, but rather than wallow in self-pity, or throw in the towel altogether, what you really should be doing is a reevaluation with the purpose of discovering…
If you’ve been following along, our previous articles have outlined the exact process we use to successfully bring a product to market using helpful tools (such as the Lean Canvas) as an outline. In this article, we’re going to outline our entire process so you can see what you should be doing and when to…
The next step in the process of gathering feedback from customers is all about testing your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We’ve previously conducted our Problem Interviews to identify a problem worth solving and our Solution Interviews to validate that our solution resonates with our target market. Our objective at this point is to confirm with…
During the first round of interviews, otherwise known as the problem interviews, you no doubt gathered a wealth of information that should help you better understand the customer’s worldview and problems that need solving. Those interviews should have resulted in identifying your potential customer base, the problems they face, and what alternative methods they are…
In our last article, we discussed how to conduct preliminary interviews to get a feel for real-world, important problems customers may have. With a sufficient number of these initial interviews, you will eventually be able to form the product idea that will appeal to the largest group of potential customers. Now it’s time to drill…
Imagine you are an auto mechanic and a new customer comes into your shop with a car that needs to be repaired. Are you going to start fixing the car without asking questions? Not likely! You will no doubt start by asking a few simple questions such as, how long has the car had this…