Back in the mid '80s, I participated in the inaugural NSW Entrepreneur's Workshop. The whole process, which lasted about 9 months involved forming a team, finding a product and taking it to market. Teams competed for prizes and there was a chance to compete on the world stage.
Back in those days, I worked in IT in a technical capacity and had no idea about marketing.
Our team was dominated by engineers (and I'm one), so in our search for a product, we spoke with lots of inventors, looking for the next big thing.
The product we finally went with was a hydraulic device that crimped sheet metal together (rather than welding).
Now even then, with no knowledge of marketing, I wondered (and argued about) the uptake of such a device in industry. But I was overruled by the other engineers in the team.
To cut a long story short, we spent the rest of the time putting together a business plan, arranging manufacturing, trying to get finance etc.
Come the final presentations, we had a "wonderful" presentation. We talked about all the great things this product could do - all the sales we "could" make.
The team that won - you guessed it, had a product that had already made $50,000 in sales before they'd even finished the competition!
If I learnt one thing from this whole experience, it's find a market for your product BEFORE you create it.
There's very little point in spending a whole lot of time and money creating something only to have it sit, collecting dust, in your warehouse!
So how do you find out if a product is viable?
One of the best ways is to do some market research.
There are many ways to do this including focus groups, interviewing people, looking at what else is around and piggybacking on it etc.
While those are all fine, these are some different suggestions.
Create a low cost advertisement for your proposed product. Extol the benefits, get your prospect excited about what your product could do for him. Place it in a media (magazine, newspaper, internet etc.) where the prospect is likely to see it.
Now wait and see what the response is. If you get a lot of people phoning up to order - you can decide to create the product. If you get very little, you have some thinking to do.
Now it's not to say that just because no one responds, there isn't a demand. You may not have got the ad, or the message that you're conveying or the media right. So testing is vital.
Here's another suggestion:
A mentor of ours speaks at seminars around the country. His favourite trick is to sell a product from the stage and if people rush to the back of the room to order, he then creates the actual material!
We're doing the same thing right now with our Lead Generation Toolbox product.
We know anecdotally that you would like more leads in your business. But what we don't know is what's important for you in the product, how much you'll pay etc.
So we've gone down the survey route. We've created a survey to ask you what you'd like in such a product.
Some of you have already answered the survey, so thank you, I really do appreciate your taking the trouble to help us out.
The results so far are quite interesting. 95.65% of you want more business. 73.91% of you have issues with getting qualified leads. 82.61% of you would like help in getting more leads. And 56.52% of you would pay for a Lead Generation Toolbox.
One thing I would like to clear up. There appears to be some confusion as to what a "qualified" lead means.
What I mean by "qualified" is a person in your target market, looking for your solution, who is able to do business with you now or in the near future.
Rashid Kotwal is an international speaker and author who specializes in on-line and off-line strategies for direct response marketing and sales optimization. He works with sales organizations want to get more business, faster and with less wasted effort. You can find more information at
Sales & Marketing Consulting and
Get Clients Online Fast.
Copyright Rashid Kotwal.
