THE PRODUCT SUCCESS SYSTEM
It’s no accident that 95% of all new products and programs fail in the marketplace. What happens all too often is that that product failure is blamed only on the “product side” of the two-sided product success equation. Esmart’s PRODUCT SUCCESS SYSTEM defines both halves of product success, the product side and the personal side. The product side represents the success of your product in the marketplace. The personal side includes the implications of developing a successful product for your time, freedom, relationships, family, stress, psychological well being and fulfillment in life. It also addresses the critical personality, behavioral and team requirements that are necessary for business success.
Product As Profit
Let’s take a look at the first one - product as profit.
This definition is simple. It’s all about the profit potential and what it will take before the money starts rolling in. Product as profit is essential, but incomplete. If this is the only motivation for developing a product, there will eventually be personal success tradeoffs that an individual will inevitably have to make. In the journey of product success, maintaining motivation and commitment depends upon a lot more than money. When a person is starting down the product success path, everything can be exciting in the short term, but unless other underlying psychological pieces of the puzzle are integrated (like autonomy, meaning, passion, positive relationships, love of learning, competency skills, maintaining some sense of balance) it’s just a matter of time until the singular product as profit approach will take its toll.
Product As Path
Life is a series of passages or developmental stages, all of which lead us to some level of wisdom and mastery. The level we reach depends upon our natural gifts and talents in combination with how we learn from our experiences. Product as path defines success with a different definition than product as profit. Product as path places emphasis on creating the motivation to learn the multiple dimensions of product development and developing the needed skills that we can derive from the product development experience.
For example, I spent a large part of my career resisting sales and marketing. I placed that part of product development into a special box and labeled myself with another set of skills that excluded the ones that I didn’t want to work on. As a result, my career path was narrowed and took longer than it should have by wasting time in avoiding the important pieces rather than using it wisely to overcome my learned limitations.
It’s very tempting to separate the dimensions of developing your product into neat categories that you like and dislike. For example, if you lean toward the creative side, you may only want to concentrate on the “juicy” acts of creativity and inventiveness, leaving the “nuts and bolts” of research, marketing, sales and distribution to others, or in many cases even overlook some of these “hard” critical elements, placing your entire product development in jeopardy.
Product as path is a success attitude and a positive point of view. The objective is to use the product development process as a personal development process. It’s a way to learn the “big picture” of product success and to sharpen a wide variety of personal development skills, all of which will be vital to your future in the world of business. It then becomes a positive mindset, opening up all the areas of product success as your unique pathway to personal development. The “big picture” for product success contains a broad range of challenges, some that may come easy and some that could demand a strong new commitment and significant hours of time before understanding and mastering the critical pieces of the product puzzle. Product as path raises the bar for product success by adding an important element to the product as profit model that concentrates on product development from the inside out.
Product As Purpose
I recently watched an episode of a new television show called Shark Tank (ABC 9:00 P.M Sundays). The basic idea is for a panel of five “successful” businessmen to interview a budding entrepreneur about their new product idea and then proceed to offer financial assistance or decline, depending on the profit potential of the concept. In this particular show, one contestant, Gina, presented a product line designed to evoke happiness in people through items (umbrellas, sandals, bracelets) that were cleverly imprinted with positive messages.
The product idea was inspired by a traumatic incident that happened to Gina late in the 1990’s. The product line that emerged from that event clearly has played a major role in her healing. Gina’s basic message was that people need happiness in their lives and she was going to be a “messenger” for the good and the positive.
The question the panel asked was “how much money has the product made thus far?” When Gina answered with a nominal amount, the “sharks” unanimously agreed that there was no potential for a viable business, despite the fact that everyone loved her idea. One of the members of the Shark Tank group commented that “money has no soul,” following that comment with, “I’m out!”
Why had her product failed in the marketplace thus far?
There are a multitude of potential reasons, none of which were explored by the panel in their rush to judgement. Certainly, their decisions were based purely on a Product as Profit paradigm of business.
Gina’s story is a striking example of Product As Purpose, where meaning, passion, purpose and a strong commitment to something beyond profitability is driving product development.
I hope that her product line succeeds and this courageous entrepreneur, so committed to making a difference in society, finds the keys to unlocking the power of herself and her product.
When she does, she’ll reap the profit that comes when product, passion and purpose all align.
The Product Success I.Q.
Your product success depends upon your Product Success I.Q. I don’t mean the kind of I.Q. we typically think about, measured in school as a predictor of your future potential. Instead, I’m talking about a unique set of Integral Qualities that translate into flexibility, productivity, resilience, and fulfillment in our “Flat Earth” culture of rapidly changing economic value fueled by technological innovation and where “what’s hot” and “what’s not” changes every day.
Your Product Success I.Q. combines three critical success dimensions that are especially relevant now, in our ever changing contemporary culture. These 3 Cs of product success are Character, Competence and Communication.
In the following, I’ll explain each of these briefly and show you how they provide a working framework for product success:
- Character is the distinctive set of qualities or characteristics that make up, distinguish and define an individual and his business. From an Esmart perspective it includes two sub-components: The first is a Sense of SELF that’s not only the ego-driven separate sense of self, but is much more expansive to invite and embrace creativity, individual differences, integrity, passion, purpose, productivity and consciousness. The second component of Character is a person’s accompanying set of values that directly align with this larger Sense of SELF
- Competence refers to the individual and business qualities, abilities and skills, and their levels of knowledge. The three sub-components of Competence are Mastery, Meaning and Self Management.
- Communication is the process of exchanging information. For the Product Success System, Communication occurs in three separate domains:
- ME Communication - communication with oneself
- WE Communication - communication with individuals or groups
- IT Communication - communication with inanimate non-human objects, such as computers, environment or technology
Today, in our frenetic technological environment, it is absolutely critical to understand the 3 Cs as a fundamental set of building blocks for product success.
Product and Personal Success Profiles
The Product Success Profile is the first part of Esmart’s PRODUCT SUCCESS SYSTEM. It is designed to answer these critical questions below about your product, program or service:
- From a problem-solution perspective, WHAT are you selling?
Be aware: Most of the time this is not the obvious attribute such as food, software, clothing, etc. but it also includes the emotional attributes, such as hope, prestige, relationship, competence, power, etc. This is where the real power of your product resides - WHO is buying what you are offering and how do you know that?
What does focused research indicate about your competition? Is the competitive environment being driven by a specific set of consumer needs and wants? If so, what are they? - WHY is your product or program idea a good one? What is the unique value proposition that you’re offering the consumer? Why does your value proposition match your consumer’s needs and wants? Why is here a specific niche for your product or program and how have you measured the potential of the niche?
- HOW are you going to market your product or program? What is your current marketing message in the competitive environment and how are you going to implement your strategies to increase both the reach and frequency of your messaging? What is your current approach to increasing Internet visibility for your brand? Are you using of the wide range of social media effectively to integrate and “cross pollinate” your marketing message?
- WHERE are people buying the products in your product category? Is it online, retail, or a combination of distribution channels? How are you measuring the success of different distribution channels for your particular product category?
The Personal Success Profile
The Personal Success Profile is the second part of the PRODUCT SUCCESS SYSTEM. It’s designed to help you understand and incorporate the critical “personality” elements needed for product success.
This profile determines how you are “aligned” with the business qualities that create long term product and program success. Today, anyone with creative ideas has the opportunity and the potential resources available to incorporate their personal vision, passion and purpose into developing successful and highly profitable products, but with less than a 5% success rate, an integral person and product success approach, is absolutely critical.
The Personal Success Profile includes some of the following elements:
- How are you defining your product or program? Do you see product success as product for profit, product as path, product as purpose or a combination of all of these?>
- What is your personal vision for your target audience niche and how would you define your mission
- What are your short term and long term objectives for product and program success and what metrics are in place to measure the accomplishment of each of these objectives?
- What specific strategies and actions are you using to accomplish each of your short term and long term objectives?
- What is your Product Success I.Q.?
- What are your specific strengths and weaknesses that you need to address in order to complete your product success objectives? Who on your “team” can provide their expertise in the areas where you need assistance?
- What type of Time Training strategies do you need in order to manage and maximize the necessary time commitment to your project?
- What type of change strategies do you have available to you in order to quickly overcome your learned limitations and blind spots as you uncover them?
