Doing your Market and Product Research is essential to the effectiveness of your business, but are you getting it done? You know your product, what it does, the problem it solves, how well it does it and why it does it in a particular way and the many considerations evaluated in order to bring the final version to market, but does your customer?
I want to share something that just happened this week to show how knowing your product + being prepared allow you to take advantage of opportunity when it comes knocking.
Product Research – know your product!
I’ve been embarking on a new endeavourer which was outside my comfort zone. While I’ve devoted a good amount of time learning about this new business area, since it is all new to me, there is still much to learn. I had a meeting planned where I knew that if we delved into certain areas I would be at a disadvantage as the subject matter was both complex and detailed. Being solutions oriented, short of bringing my experts with me I did the next best thing, I had them develop a Q&A sheet that I could carry with me. A simple handout , think an FAQ on the web, containing the most commonly asked questions along with the detailed answers to those questions that any expert in the field could read, understand, and most importantly recognize that indeed we indeed “knew our product”.
when preparedness meets opportunity
The beauty of this was that I wasn’t sure if or when these topics would come up, but I knew that I had to be prepared, just in case.As fate would have it, during the meeting that I “thought” it would come up it didn’t, but I kept it handy in my portfolio “just in case”. Well “just in case” happened just a few days later. During a business meeting with potential strategic partners, while speaking with a marketing director, and the very expert I had the Q&A written for, the subject came up. I shared my thoughts on marketing and when the expert asked some very technical questions – I handed him my Q&A. Needless to say he was quite impressed, he read and appreciated that I was able to answer his questions right on the spot. Based on his experience in this area he said he understood exactly what was written up and he could clearly see us working together on future projects. Instant credibility! Normally it takes many meetings to establish such rapport, yet through preparedness we were able to go a long way to establishing that in our first meeting! Are you?
Let us help you with your Market and Product Research, so you can be prepared when opportunity comes knocking!
