HOW TO DEVELOP PRODUCTS AND SERVICES THAT SELLS VERY FAST?
As we approach the end of the year it’s important to note that there would be a lot of clearance sales on the shelves of business owners both offline and online.
So in preparation to partake in these sales, how do you actually design products and services that would be irresistible to your customers and non-customers?
In this article you would learn the step by step from product creation to effectively selling the products to your customers. First step to consider is
1)GENERATING IDEAS: A lot of business owners get it wrong at this point, because we are very passionate about our business, but passion most times is not enough to bring in money. When you are generating ideas for products and services that will sell, it needs to be done from your customer’s standpoint., their responses from the questions asked.
Step one: Do a questionnaire and send it out to your buyers and prospects in the last 3 months.
Step two: Ask them specific questions about your products and services like,
I)How your products met their needs?
ii)What gaps weren’t met, what can you include to make it better?
iii)What do they wish they could get and how soon do they want it?
These sort of specific questions would get your customers to generate the ideas of products and services that when you create would be in high demand.
2)SCREEN THE IDEAS: This step is a bit tricky because amongst a large number of ideas, generated by your customers, some will sell and others will not. Screening the ideas generated entails the following:
I)Take a total count of your customers.
ii)What is the total count of the ideas you have generated thus far.
iii)What is the urgency of the needs raised by your customers (make sure you add it to your list of specific questions in STEP 1).?
iv)What business idea has the highest percentage with the highest urgency?
If you get this step right you are on your way to creating your best product /service yet and of course with the greatest ROI.
3)TESTING THE CONCEPT: knowing where the marketing messages will work best is often the biggest part of testing the concept. Does the consumer understand, need, or want the product or service? A lot of both online and offline business owners do every day, they generate ideas, screen the ideas and then take it to the public to test it with their consumers.
Have you ever seen this on social media, I have designed a product that would help you take care of XYZ problem as you requested, if you are interested in this offer, do XYZ?
Whenever you see this sort of statements, it means the business owner is testing the market and most often or not, they get responses that would inform their decision to either create or create more of those products.
Remember you must have a market waiting before you produce so that you don’t set your business up for failure. Having said this write down the following about the new product/service you have narrowed down your choice to:
i)What are the features of this product/service?
ii)What problem would it solve for my customers?
iii)What result will they get if they use the product/service?
The next thing to do is put out a post/advert on your offline and online spaces detailing the answers to this questions and work with the feedback you get from your customers.
4) BUSINESS ANALYTICS: It is very important to understand this segment of creating new products and services because of the eventual pricing. Most small business owners are quick to put a price to a product/service without actually understanding the analytics of what went into producing it.
In this stage you want to understand how much time, energy resources, manpower goes into bringing this product/service to life.
If it is a physical product you need to note the following:
i)How many people are involved in the production process?
II)How much would direct and indirect labour cost you?
iii)How much would it cost to purchase the raw materials?
iv)Logistics, how much would it cost if you have to move them from site to store/deliver to your clients?
v)How much would you sell it after production?
vi)What would be the profit margin?
If you are able to pen this down on a paper, you can almost determine if creating this product/service is a profitable one.
If it is an online product/service, you need to note the following:
Your time is your most valuable asset as an online entrepreneur and as such I cannot tell you categorically how to place value your time. What I can tell you is that it is really time and energy consuming to come up with creative products that would solve urgent needs for a hungry audience.
I)How much data went into creating this product/service?
ii)Did you have to fuel your generator/burn the night candle to put this together?
iii)How much did you spend on phone calls to do a thorough customer based research?
Iv)How much did you spend actually visiting some major clients in other to get feedbacks/ideas from them? If we truly put this together you can put together a good pricing for your product/service in order to make it profitable.
5)COMMERCIALISATION PLANS: So I see a lot of small business owners producing goods and services without laid down plan for commercialisation. Your business would only reach and continually stay on the mind of your consumers if this step is activated and carried out to the latter.
What plans are you making to advertise these product? Adverts can be as low as 2$(700) daily on major social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram reaching a very sizeable number of people at the same time. Plan to add this when you are creating a new product/service because YOU don’t want to sell once but you need repeat customers.
6)GET FEEDBACKS FROM CUSTOMERS: This is somewhat a commercialisation plan as well, this can help you nudge a customer to buy from you if used strategically in both your online and offline space. As a small business owner, you should ask for reviews and testimonials from your customers.
Use the reviews to show your audience what others have benefited from doing business with you and liken it to what they are going through. Afterwards you put a call to action. Don’t be salesy but be classy….
The entire new product development process is an ever evolving testing platform where errors will be made, designs will get trashed, and loss could be recorded. Having your entire team working in tight synchronicity will ensure the successful launch of goods or services, even if reinventing your own wheel. Productivity during product development can be achieved if, and only if, goals are clearly defined along the way and each process has contingencies clearly outlined on paper.