This section is to help you learn how to capitalize on your constructive ideas… and to translate them into products and services without paying a fortune to a consultant. All you need is to open your mind to new window of opportunities.
If you possess the ability to come up with great ideas, and you’ve not been able to create as many products or services as you want, you are about to learn how to do so in simple and straight-forward steps. Do not keep a database of ideas in your head. Put them on paper and start to develop them. This is what makes you innovative and unique.
Have the following ready and next to you for your reference:
1. List of your interests and strengths.
2. List of the firsthand keywords or keyword phrases that describe your interests and strengths.
3. List of your targeted core customer base.
Take a few minutes to ponder over what kind of products or services you want to create. Have a notebook beside you, and write down anything new that comes to mind. Most of today’s hot products and services in the marketplace came from ideas that sounded absurd on Day One. In essence, write down those crazy ideas that might have a serious marketing potential. Give your notebook a title: Concept Notebook. Alternatively, you can use a physical folder for this purpose. If you are comfortable with a folder, write across the front cover: Concept Folder.
Next: In either the Concept Notebook or Concept Folder, write down all your good ideas, bad ideas, and the crazy ones too. The following rules hold:
Rule Number 1: No idea is a bad idea.
Rule Number 2: Always remember Rule Number 1
Next: Write an excerpt for each idea. Each excerpt should list the product or service benefits to the end user (the customer or client). Remember to always seek benefits to the customer or client rather than brag about features of your product. This translates into the “Customer Comes First” thing. The client or customer is prepared to spend money to get your product or use your service. He or she asks: “What do I get in return?”
Exploring problems to create a new product — quality indicators
Set aside a second folder or notebook. Label it Quality Indicators for Performance Excellence. In this folder you are going to make a list of the products or services you and or your family use a whole lot, but actually spend more time whining about their poor performances.
How many times have you been using a particular piece of equipment in your local gym, and said “Who on earth designed this stuff? It could have been done this way or that way”? The stuffs we identify and complain about everyday are actually good stuffs. This shape is not too cool, that part should have been designed this way and that way, that knob is under stress and should have been placed the other way round, and this and that blab blah blah… We call them quality indicators. We need to hear about product or service complaints in order to improve product design concepts or services.
Make a list of the products you and others complain about due to poor quality. Assess your capabilities, and ask yourself whether you have the required knowledge to improve the quality of those products. If you answered a BIG YES, then the next thing you’ll want to do is:
1. Make a list of the things you and others complain about those products you’ve listed.
2. On another page in your product development book, give each product a unique name.
3. Next, label the complaints for each product as quality indicators, and place them under the respective products with unique names. At this stage, you now have your own product names with quality indicators to help you create new products that will solve the problems the original ones have failed to solve.
4. Brainstorm for solutions you can factor into the new product to eradicate those product complaints. Remember to take into consideration your strengths and interests and the needs of your targeted core customer base.
Thank you for your time. See you next Saturday 13 February 2010 for:
ACHIEVING SUCCESS PART 7: PRODUCT AND SERVICE DEVELOPMENT 2
Have the following ready and next to you for your reference:
1. List of your interests and strengths.
2. List of the firsthand keywords or keyword phrases that describe your interests and strengths.
3. List of your targeted core customer base.
Take a few minutes to ponder over what kind of products or services you want to create. Have a notebook beside you, and write down anything new that comes to mind. Most of today’s hot products and services in the marketplace came from ideas that sounded absurd on Day One. In essence, write down those crazy ideas that might have a serious marketing potential. Give your notebook a title: Concept Notebook. Alternatively, you can use a physical folder for this purpose. If you are comfortable with a folder, write across the front cover: Concept Folder.
Next: In either the Concept Notebook or Concept Folder, write down all your good ideas, bad ideas, and the crazy ones too. The following rules hold:
Rule Number 1: No idea is a bad idea.
Rule Number 2: Always remember Rule Number 1
Next: Write an excerpt for each idea. Each excerpt should list the product or service benefits to the end user (the customer or client). Remember to always seek benefits to the customer or client rather than brag about features of your product. This translates into the “Customer Comes First” thing. The client or customer is prepared to spend money to get your product or use your service. He or she asks: “What do I get in return?”
Exploring problems to create a new product — quality indicators
Set aside a second folder or notebook. Label it Quality Indicators for Performance Excellence. In this folder you are going to make a list of the products or services you and or your family use a whole lot, but actually spend more time whining about their poor performances.
How many times have you been using a particular piece of equipment in your local gym, and said “Who on earth designed this stuff? It could have been done this way or that way”? The stuffs we identify and complain about everyday are actually good stuffs. This shape is not too cool, that part should have been designed this way and that way, that knob is under stress and should have been placed the other way round, and this and that blab blah blah… We call them quality indicators. We need to hear about product or service complaints in order to improve product design concepts or services.
Make a list of the products you and others complain about due to poor quality. Assess your capabilities, and ask yourself whether you have the required knowledge to improve the quality of those products. If you answered a BIG YES, then the next thing you’ll want to do is:
1. Make a list of the things you and others complain about those products you’ve listed.
2. On another page in your product development book, give each product a unique name.
3. Next, label the complaints for each product as quality indicators, and place them under the respective products with unique names. At this stage, you now have your own product names with quality indicators to help you create new products that will solve the problems the original ones have failed to solve.
4. Brainstorm for solutions you can factor into the new product to eradicate those product complaints. Remember to take into consideration your strengths and interests and the needs of your targeted core customer base.
Thank you for your time. See you next Saturday 13 February 2010 for:
ACHIEVING SUCCESS PART 7: PRODUCT AND SERVICE DEVELOPMENT 2
No comments:
Post a Comment