How often are you asked to describe your product? How much time do you spend re-thinking the product story each time? A big time-saver is to be prepared ahead of time – create it once, and re-use it as and where needed.
I spent almost 20 years teaching product professionals the ins and outs of planning, building, launching, pricing, and marketing their products. Tens of thousands of students, representing thousands of companies. As I engaged with students, I would often ask a simple question, “so tell me about your product”. That seems pretty straightforward to me. Oh no… not that simple.
The most common response I got was something like “we do compliance”, or “we streamline and automate processes”, or some similar description. What exactly does that tell me?
Maybe a market or segment you serve, or a category of product. I was asking about YOUR product. So I would ask, “ tell me more”… and now the student’s eyes would light up, heart beat faster, and a sly smile appeared as we entered the recitation of features! They were so happy… now we can talk about features and they were happy, happy, happy.
Now here’s the issue. Features are the how you do things, not the what you do. Features only count when I perceive value delivery from those features…otherwise, who cares?
You see, when engaging with outsiders, the answers to these questions open the door to the million-dollar request. What’s that? “That sounds interesting, tell me more!” Isn’t that what the goal is? To engage, initiate a deeper discussion, solicit interest, and perhaps spur the questioner to action — action to investigate, or even better, explore the possibility of buying your product or service!
In my role as a trainer, I would point out that people don’t care what your product does! What they care about is what your product will do for THEM! Why would I need it? What’s in it for me? Once you understand this, you will listen and respond differently. I would teach product positioning, launch activities, target buyers, aligning the buyer journey to how we sell…. Lots of great stuff. But how do you deliver all of that, effectively?
The answer is actually rather simple. You need to tell the story of your product. Where did it come from? Why was it created? Who was it created for? What happened when people used it? What happened when they didn’t? Creating your product story is critical to the ability to articulate value to your marketplace. Value drives their willingness to pay and desire to acquire the product.
In many smaller, perhaps newer, enterprises, the Product story is closely aligned, perhaps even the same, as a founder story. That thing that sparked innovation and created the business initially to drive early success. When businesses grow, expand product lines, merge or acquire other businesses and products, the founder story is still a tool, but it doesn’t always meet the need for the product story.
I recently watched the film, The Founder — the story of Ray Kroc and the founding of McDonalds. It’s quite a story and certainly provides deep context and understanding of that business — what differentiated them, the competitive landscape, the value delivered, the priorities and core values of the enterprise. Got it! Think of all the stories you’ve heard — Bill Gates stories, Elon Musk stories, Steve Jobs stories (i think we have a winner). These founder stories are the backdrop to all the product stories that derived from that core. They are memorable and compelling, and they pique your curiosity and interest. Upon hearing these stories, don’t we all think, “that’s interesting — tell me more”? Goal accomplished! Learn to develop and deliver those stories… success will follow, and then you’ve earned the right to get to the “fun” part… your features…
