Key Questions for New Product and Service Development

25 Jan Key Questions for New Product and Service Development

Starting up a new business or introducing a new product or service comes with its own risk. If you look at multiple companies and product launches you can begin to see a theme emerge. According to Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup he states that there is a theme to questions that all startups struggle to answer.

• Which customer opinions should we listen to, if any?
• How should we prioritize across the many features we could build?
• Which features are essential to the product’s success and which are ancillary?
• What can be changed safely, and what might anger customers?
• What might please today’s customers at the expense of tomorrow’s?
• What should we work on next?

Mr. Ries suggests that instead of rolling out a product or service nationwide, you should roll it out in a smaller market segment. That way you can test out those new services, features and get valuable feedback from customers that you might not have had otherwise.

This list of questions make me reflect back to 1985 when Coca-Cola, the market leader in soft drinks, had been losing market share to its up and coming rival Pepsi.   The marketing teams devised a plan to re-launch the beverage by tweaking the 99 year old recipe to meet the taste preferences for the younger generation.  They branded this new formula “New Coke”. In spite of taste testing the new beverage with 200,000 people, they were caught off guard by how emotionally attached people were to the Coke brand and original formula. In just two days after the “New Coke” announcement their customer hot line received 31,600 calls of complaint. By July of 1985 the original Coke formula was returned to the store shelved. Although the new Coke had its own share of shelf space beside the original Coke and its own advertising campaign, it did not take long before the new Coke was a product relegated to history. Had Coca-Cola rolled out the “New Coke” in one market, say Cleveland, OH, they might have caught onto their passion of their customer base without having to clean up a nationwide product launch. Now, some have argued over the years that Coke did this as a publicity stunt to gain lots of media coverage. As a teen in the 1980’s, I was one to always believe that Coke was trying to one-up Pepsi and just felt short of their goal.

As an entrepreneur or someone developing a new product or service within an existing company, I think it is important to reflect on Eric Ries’ 6 key questions. It’s equally important that we look to find the right questions to ask as well as seeking their answers.

Inspirational Business Quotes:

“When you serve the customer better, there’s always a return on your investment.”- Kara Parlin

. “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” – Henry Ford

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.” -Chinese Proverb

Other blog articles you may enjoy:

How to lessen business risk

The Secret to a Successful Business

Burning Bridges

Alicia Sisk-Morris, CPA  is a native of the Asheville area.  A Certified Public Accountant since 1999, she has a diverse background in tax, financial and business consulting.  She is dedicated to helping small and medium-sized companies grow profitably while helping them establish practical and sound tax and financial processes.  She is committed to meeting each client’s unique business objectives.  Alicia has expertise in providing comprehensive accounting services, including individual, corporate, partnership, and nonprofit income tax returns, financial statements, bookkeeping and payroll tax reports. Alicia earned a Bachelor’s in Business degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Accounting degree from University of North Carolina at Asheville.  She is currently working on her master’s degree from Western Carolina University.