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July 12, 2006

Insider Tip of the Week - 07/12/06

The inside secret to developing
highly profitable products

by Bob Serling

Regardless of whether you want to develop highly
profitable widgets, information products, new services,
or software, I'm here to tell you something that will
save you a lot of time, money, and heart ache...

The majority of "experts" have it all wrong!

Just thumb through any course or attend any seminar
for your market and you're likely to hear the same piece
of advice - it sounds good, but it's actually deadly. I'm
sure you've heard some version of:

To develop the most effective products, ask your
customers what they want, then create it.

If you buy into this conventional wisdom, you're likely
to be stuck with a major flop once you launch your
shiny new product. You see, it's rare that customers
really know what they want. If they did know, they'd
have already bought it!

Advanced product development made simple

So how do you go about creating an uneven playing
field when developing new products - a playing field
that tilts a huge segment of the market to you and away
from your competitors?

It's easy. Instead of listening to what people tell you they
want... listen to what they're complaining about! That's
where you'll really find out what people are dieing to get
their hands on.

How do you do this? There are two easy ways.

#1: Treat customer complaints like gold

Are you annoyed when you receive an email or letter
complaining about your product or service? Don't be.
There's a powerful vein of gold ripe for the taking
embedded in those complaints.

Keep track of all customer complaints and organize
them in categories. Once you see specific themes
popping up again and again, you have a golden
opportunity for creating a new product (or service)
or improving an existing product and bringing out
an updated model.

#2: Customer reconnaissance

Another way to find out what your customers are
complaining about is to visit discussion lists for your
market area. Yahoo groups has discussion lists for
any area under the sun.

Join these groups and find out what rubs people wrong
about your category of products. You'll find that people
are more than happy to post their laundry lists of
complaints in any given market. Here again, track
these complaints by category - then seize on
opportunities to create new products or improve your
existing products.

Just by following these two simple suggestions, you can
run circles around your competition when it comes to
developing highly profitable new products.

====================================
How did one of my students sell 9,500 copies of his
information product with almost no prior experience?
http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/9500copies.html

Posted by Bob Serling at July 12, 2006 10:26 PM

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