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As Director of Eggcelerate, I’ve met companies at different stages of product development. These businesses have ranged from early-stage start-ups to SMEs, mid-sized companies to corporate enterprises. They’ve been in different vertical markets: telecommunications, IT, fin-tech, energy and manufacturing. Yet, they’ve had one thing in common – technology has been at the heart of their new product or service.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against technology. Quite the opposite. I have a technical background and I love technology. Every time some new gadget or innovative service is launched, I’m fascinated.
But this is a warning about the dangers of falling in love with your product – not one that belongs to someone else.
If you’re bringing a technology-based product to market, then you could be at risk from this malady. It’s something I’ve witnessed again and again.
So what are the signs and the dangers? Self-analysis is always difficult when you’re so close to something to get perspective. But here are three areas where you can test yourself to see if something is going wrong.
Symptom #1: You’re looking for perfection. You keep adding new features and tweaking the product before it’s launched.
This is the problem of over-engineering. The consequences are serious: longer and longer time-to-market and overspending on a product that hasn’t started bringing in any revenues. In the meantime, the window of opportunity is closing. You’re also locking up valuable resources (people, time and money).
Symptom #2: You’re dazzled by the features of your product and can’t stop talking about them.
This is where an understandable passion for your creation mutates into excessive product focus. Damage occurs when you start reaching out to potential customers: You talk about yourself and your product, not the benefits you bring to customers. Excessive product focus can also weaken your marketing proposition. You become too distracted – caught up in feature-by-feature comparisons with other products and pricing discussions.
Symptom #3: When it comes to budgets, you’re only willing to spend if it makes the product better.
At first, this sounds like good business sense. But it’s really a misallocation of resources. Suppose you spend 95% of your budget on the product, but you refuse to spend 5% on Marketing and BizDev because you believe that money may be enough ‘to improve the product’ that tiny bit more? Without spending on these other things, you’ll have no first-day clients. In fact, it could take weeks and months to create demand. Really, you should be investing in developing the commercial proposition much earlier – while the product improvement phase is happening.
What’s the antidote to product love?
I’m tempted to say the answer ‘product loathing’ but that’s the worst outcome of all – if everything goes wrong.
Rather, the best approach is to always focus on your clients – and how you can help them to tackle their business challenges in a simple, effective and profitable way.
Build a prototype/MVP as soon as you can. And if you don’t have capabilities, time or the right focus, rely on experts (not consultants! See my previous blog) to help you.
Technology is a means to an end. We should always reflect this in the way we define strategies and approach clients. Their challenges need to be at the top of the agenda. Technology follows.
This article was also published on Realbusiness.co.uk, sign up to our newsletter here if you like this post.
