Guide to How to Create Products That Sell

In this guide, you will get comprehensive insights on:
Identifying Target Customer:

• Identify with the product you're selling by talking to people and asking open-ended questions
• Look at everything from your customer's perspective and find a problem significant enough for them to prioritize solving

Defining the Problem:

• Clearly define the specific problem you will solve for your target customer
• Ensure the problem is unworkable, unavoidable, urgent, or underserved from the customer's perspective

Validating the Problem and Solution Fit:

• Continue validating your understanding by mapping your target customers' experiences in detail
• Test your value proposition through customer interviews, landing pages, pre-launch lists, MVP testing, and pricing tests

Building Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

• Build only essential features to demonstrate core functionality
• Optimize for learning over polished design/user experience and prioritize what helps validate solution/problem fit

Building Minimum Lovable Product (MLP):

• Focus on the user experience and emotional connection with customers
• Start with a wow factor, polish the user interface, tell your brand story, add delightful details, and gather feedback early and often

Launching and Marketing Your Product:

• Promote through existing networks, run targeted social ads, partner with influencers, and track key metrics
• Test various channels for demand generation and focus on delivering outstanding customer experience for retention/loyalty

Launching Your Marketing Strategy:

• Focus on demand generation tactics like paid ads, content marketing, referral programs, and partnerships
• For retention and loyalty, deliver outstanding customer experience at every touchpoint and test different channels regularly

Focusing on Company Growth:

• Consider team expansion, office space, funding, product expansion, partnerships, international expansion, and M&A opportunities
• Make strategic investments that continue fueling your growth trajectory in a sustainable way

Scaling Your Company Culture:

• Clearly define your values and integrate them into processes to maintain cultural health.
• Over communicate expectations and train new managers to uphold your values.

Scaling Your Team Culture:

• Formalize processes and define roles/responsibilities from 1-10 employees.
• Implement an operating system and scale management training for 100+ employees.

Preparing for Major Growth Phases:

• Implement good governance practices including board of directors and financial controls.
• Prioritize governance as scaling begins to introduce more complexity.

Preparing for Exits or Going Public:

• Implement rigorous accounting practices and controls for financial reporting at later stages.
• Recruit experienced leadership for scaled operations and deal execution early on.