5 Steps to Strengthen Your Product, Market & Channel Fit
As I work with manufacturers through the years, I’m impressed with their dedication to perfecting a product prior to launching it. It’s noble and it’s honorable to put in the best effort possible. But here’s the problem: Many manufacturers are not dedicated to understanding the market and their target customer to the same level of excellence that they develop products.
Here’s the unfortunate result: Prioritizing the product first and the market last can lead to developing the very perfect product–that no one wants.
So What Comes First: Market or Product?
Actually, at the end of the day, believe it or not, the market is more important than the product. With a great market, the product and the channel doesn’t have to be great at first. The market needs to be fulfilled. Customers will be knocking down your doors for the product. The customers will demand a higher quality product, which is easy for a manufacturer to respond to. You can continue tweaking the product, releasing improved versions to the market. In the same way, the channel can be upgraded over time to align best with how your customers want to buy your product.
You can feel when product market fit is happening. Customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it, cash flow is strong and you are hiring sales and support staff as fast as possible.
This is why the product market fit is so important to scaling a manufacturer’s business. A strong product market fit will maximize the growth potential for a manufacturer to scale the business.
Steps to Strengthening Your Market Fit
If you don’t know how to do it, it can be difficult to know how to evaluate and strengthen your market fit. That’s okay. It’s well worth the effort and I can help. In this article, I’m going to show you how to prioritize product and market activities. We’re also going to mix in the channel so you can see what leads to success.
Here are five steps to take to bolster your product, market and channel fit.
- Identify target customers
Learn what specific target segments your business may meet a compelling need. Move away from selling everything to anyone to a disciplined focus on a specific customer type that has a problem that you can solve. - Understand the pains customers experience
Once you understand the target segment, identify the pains users feel when they are performing their job. What frustrates them? Where do they lose time? What safety concerns exist? What do they hate spending money on? - Evaluate the competitive landscape
Once you understand the challenges customers experience, learn what products already exist. Do these products meet the customer's needs? Where are the shortcomings of these products? - Learn how customers want to buy your products
The selling process needs to be based upon how customers buy. How do customers become aware of new products? Who is involved in the process? When does corporate sourcing get involved? What are potential obstacles that may come up at each step? How long does the process take to buy? This will help you identify which channel to use and ability to enable the sales team to be successful. - Perform usability testing with prototypes
This should be a lean process to quickly share early prototypes with potential customers to validate the product market fit. Gaining customer feedback will build confidence that the team is moving in the right direction.
Net: focus obsessively on getting to a strong product market and channel fit. Do whatever is required to understand the market which leads to developing the right product and getting the best channel up and running.
An effective product manager will help you accomplish this by guiding your organization toward satisfying the market. The product manager is responsible for learning the market and understanding customers needs and behaviors. Their job is to translate these insights into your organization to influence the products, go-to-market strategy, and enable the sales channel because a great market with various potential customers is exactly what your company needs to get bigger and stronger.
Ready to think about how product management can help empower your product, market and channel fit? Here are some ways I can help.
Posted in Product Innovation | Tagged Product Market Fit, Strategy, Go-To-Market Strategy
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