BEST ADVICE IF YOU’RE JUST STARTING OR GROWING A BUSINESS:
Focus on your CUSTOMER more than your PRODUCT. Get fixed on your customer experience, and your product will keep changing to serve them best. But FIX YOUR PRODUCT, and customers will find a path that fits them, with or without you.
We’ve moved from the industrial age where it was all about the product and productization to the technological age where it’s all about the customer and customization. Instead of focusing on product development and production lines, focus on CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES and CUSTOMIZATION LINES. Your business doesn’t start when you have a product. It starts when you have a customer. So who is your perfect customer? Start from there and ask yourself:
PROBLEM – What’s the problem they need to be solved?
PROMISE – What’s the benefit you deliver to them by solving it?
PRODUCT – How will you solve it better than others?
PROOF – Why should they trust you?
Keep upgrading your answers and your products regularly. Because what your customers need, their expectations and how they are being served will keep changing fast. And once you get into the flow, you’ll begin to know what they need before them, and they’ll begin pre-buying your next product.
Steve Jobs my great mentor would say “Get closer than ever to your customer. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
THE EASIEST WAY TO FUTURE-PROOF YOUR BUSINESS IS TO HAVE CUSTOMERS THAT LOVE YOU. The easiest way to fail is to love your idea or product more than you love your customers.