You’re ready for your next product launch. There’s just one problem. You don’t know which product you want to launch first. You have a lot of ideas regarding what the product should be, but you’re wondering which one will be the slam dunk for your company. You’ve done a certain level of research and you’ve narrowed it down to 3 or 4 product ideas. You’re meeting with your team and the objective is to make a decision.
There are certainly a lot of things you want to consider when launching a product. You have to consider your industry, who you’re marketing to, the current needs of the market and how easy or difficult it would be to produce or manufacture your idea. That said, I want to share a really simple scoring rubric that will help you and your team evaluate your idea. We’ll start with 5 defining questions to help evaluate your product launch:
- How well does this product solve a problem? Consider who this product will help most. State the solution it solves in a sentence or two.
- Is there a REAL need that people will readily pay for? The key to this statement is the latter part of the question. There are a lot of things that are needed, but how willing is your audience to pay for your solution? Is this something they will readily invest in?
- How simple or complex will it be to execute or implement on your idea? A product takes a certain amount of resources and capacity is always an issue for small companies. When you consider what it will take to execute on your idea, be mindful of the amount of financial and various other resources it will take.
- Does this product have an intriguing or interesting (e.g. Wow factor) appeal that will cater to a mass audience? You want more than two or three people that are excited about your idea and concept.
- Does it give you a competitive advantage? Have you checked to see if your competitors offer a similar product? What makes your product unique enough that your customer would buy from you as opposed to buying it from someone else.
There are many more questions you can ask, but for the small business owner, these are some KEY questions to start with.
Now, let’s talk about that scoring rubric. Use a scale of 1 to 5 to rate each product idea based on how well it responds to the question. For example, Product 1 solves a problem very well. You know this because you constantly hear clients talk about how they are challenged in this area. If that is the case, you would probably rate the product a 4 or 5. But let’s say Product #2 solves a problem, but not to a great extent, you might give it a 3 (neutral or mid-range). If it barely solves a problem 1 or 2 would be the score. Do this for each of your product ideas and see how they rank. Use your staff, team or advisory board to rank each product. This can be done by anonymous vote or during a team meeting, whichever works best.
You can grab a copy of the Rubric here. Give it a try and see how it works for your next product launch.
Biz Practitioner
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