What Do You 'Produce'?

Hello again,

One myth that holds back many a business person is the idea that he or she (or his or her company) produces one product, which we’ll call ‘Product X’.

Well, of course, many companies do just that. They go on, year after year, producing this or that product or service, perhaps adding ‘Product Y’ to their range in due course.

But sometimes the demand for products X and Y dries up. Rather like life on Earth, there are a million times as many extinct products, or species as there are extant, surviving ones.

Companies with foresight might see the end coming, and evolve and adapt to create new products and services for the new environment. Many companies are more like dinosaurs, though, and carry on in the old way, with obsolete products, because they served them well in the past. Those products were once brilliant ideas, but not now…

Meanwhile, you may have a passion, a dream and boundless ambition, and you might have a new product that you know the world truly needs. You may, but you’ll be hard-pushed to sell that product if it’s also something no one actually wants. Instead of being a dinosaur, your company might be an evolutionary dead end…

You can spend months or years and unbelievable amounts of money ‘educating the market’ to want what you feel they need. Just as you can pour endless amounts of money down the drain trying to promote something that people used to want but no longer do. Either way, you’re in danger of extinction.

Listen to the market, ask your customers their opinion and watch for signs of what people actually want, not what they need or what you feel they should have.

Then you will have a better chance of owning a brilliant business, not just a brilliant idea.

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS. One product that we created to suit customer demand is The Complete Marketing Manual. It wasn't in our plans for now, but we saw a demand and created the product to suit. We can help you do the same.

PPS. To find out what your customers really want and think, why not ask them? Ask us about setting up a survey, made to measure, so you can supply people with exactly what they want. That’s the easiest ‘sell’ of all. Go to our Cinnamon Edge website to see how we can help you set up a survey to ask your customers what they want from you.