When you create a product, it’s not about you—not really. It’s not about your expertise, your education or even your strategies and systems. It’s about them—the people who you want to help. It’s about what you can provide this group of people to help them become wildly successful at what they do.
So many people came to us during our recent launch of Make Market Launch IT Academy and said, “I don’t have a product idea. How can you help me?”
It’s possible to answer this question in many ways, but instead of starting with you and what you know, try starting with them. Ask yourself: Who can I help? What can I help them do? How can I offer them the tools and strategies they need to lead a better life or run a better business?
When you start with your customers instead of with yourself, you’ll create a much more direct path to your success. Here’s why:
- You’ll create a product that your market needs, instead of the one that you simply want to create. This leads to a finished product that’s much more likely to sell.
- Plus, when you create a product that solves your customers’ most pressing needs, you’re not just creating a product they want to buy. You’re actually creating a “must have,” a product that your target market can’t live without. This is where best-selling products get their start—in the solutions to big problems.
- And, finally, when you create a product that starts with your customer, you’re putting yourself in the position of a problem solver, not a sales person. Instead of getting that icky feeling of peddling your wares or pushing your product on people, you’re simply matching up your solution to your customers’ challenges, creating “must have” products that practically sell themselves.
So as you’re starting your next product, your next website or even your next piece of content, start with your customers. Get inspired by them as people and how you can help them make their lives even better. What do they want? What do they need in their lives? What keeps them awake at night? And how can you be the solution they absolutely must have?
By shifting toward this customer-centric mindset, you’ll put yourself on an automatic path to better products, stronger sales and the unique opportunity to impact your customers’ most pressing challenges in a meaningful way.