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Archive for May, 2020

My New Products / Features aren’t Selling. Why?

26.05.2020 No comments

When you know your market, but it is not responding like you think it should

Cause 1: The product / feature does not work good enough. Very often version 1 of a new product misses it’s mark. Customer interviews and/or user analytics are the tools. Existing customers are the pool of people to investigate since they already trust you.

Cause 2: The problem to be solved is too small. Just because a problem can be solved, does not mean it is worth solving. Learning, setup, maintaining, and paying money are all ‘costs’ of a feature/product. Likewise, if new prospects are not showing interest (f2f meetings and web analytics), then focus on existing customers. Why are they not trying to use the product? Interviews and analytics are your friends.

Cause 3: Users/buyers don’t understand the problem or the solution. Educating existing customers is expensive– there are a limited number of messages you can send them before they ignore everything. New Prospects are even more difficult to get attention. This, however, is the one area that messaging/marketing/sales energy can improve. Before you deploy the forces, make absolutely certain that #1 and #2 above area all ok and check to see if there are ways to change the product to lower the education barrier. Eg. Cut back the functionality to the core value.

Your business was built on solving a valuable problem. Your follow-up work, were likely equally strong. However, there are a limited number of attractive problems that your company can efficiently solve. Your job is not to pick the best one, but to only pick the good ones.

Product / Business Phases

Products and Business areas live and die with defined phases of a life cycle. Each phase has its own optimizations and traps.

Long ago, I worked with an engineering manager (Gregor) with a fantastic intuitive sense for business. One of his product area manager was presenting the budget for the next year and was planning reduced margin and modest growth. Gregor forced the product manager to choose one of three modes and behave accordingly. (and I have used this ever sense)

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Why Subscriptions are So Attractive?

… and how so many businesses can use subscription thinking

The three phases and the key Metrics

A subscription business runs on MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), however, getting customers to renew their subscription or even upsell them is much, much easier than getting them to sign up in the first place. This is why most subscription companies split the “selling” process into three teams: Hunting (signing up new logos), Onboarding (getting new logos activated), and Nurturing (churn prevention and up selling).

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