Innovation By Listening To Customers

Are you meeting all of the needs of your existing customers? We refer to this as Product/Service Share Strategies. By listening to your existing customers, you may learn of unsatisfied needs, wants, desires or fears for products or services outside of your current product/service offering.

Product/Service Share Strategies require that you continually innovate and deliver new products/services to meet a wider and wider range of customer needs.

Most new products and services are not derived from market research but rather from listening to your existing customers. Listening, then, is the key to identifying new Product/Service opportunities. So how do go about doing this? The answer is simple.

Get very close to your customers. Identify who their customers are. Determine the problems and issues they face. The opportunities to better and more widely serve your customers will naturally flow out of this process. Other approaches include:

• Reading articles in your industry and their industry publications on new products/services being offered.
• Look at your peers or competitors. What products/services are they offering that you are not?
• Think outside the box a little. What products/services currently compliment your products/services, but are not currently being offered by your industry?
• Look at your internal skills and expertise. What skills, systems, experiences, expertise etc. does your company possess that may have other usages?

Most new products/services fail to successfully launch because the companies failed to be honest with themselves on the real potential of the opportunity. When researching and reviewing the plans for a new product or service, be your worst critic. Explore the downsides honestly. Only after such an honest look will you have identified the right opportunity.

The only thing stopping you now is the implementation. Don’t fail short on the implementation. Dedicate enough resources to the opportunity’s development. Protect those people involved financially and managerially. Relieve them of other responsibilities temporarily in order to free up some time to devote to the development of the new opportunity.

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Take you marketing efforts to the Next Level!
The opportunity for Product/Service Share Strategies exists in every company. Look carefully. If you would like to implement better Product/Service Share Strategies in your business email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or give us a call at (630) 665-4440.

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