A city crew recently repaved a street near us. Driving along it the other day I realized that they re-striped the street and created a left-hand turn lane that actually went no where. There is the perfectly-created lane, all the lines are pure white and straight, but there is nothing to turn into or toward. In effect the crew created something nobody needed.

The question that ran through my mind is, “How many times do we do the same thing?” We create something, even something that’s beautiful and perfect compared to the original spec, yet it leads nowhere (in other words not many customers were willing to plunk down their hard-earned money for it).

This is an area where I am going to challenge myself and my team a lot more. We’re going to do some testing – and there’s lots of ways to do this that don’t consume all the available marketing budget. We are going to try and make sure our products meet a need before we push ahead and create turn lanes that no one uses.

Some ways we can use:

Small focus groups. We have access to lots of people, let’s ask them.

GoogleAds. We can test concepts rather cheaply here and measure some kind of customer response.

Internet polling. It’s a big world out there. Let’s listen.

There’s no doubt that we must develop products that fill genuine customer needs. We can’t afford to experiment without talking first to our most valued constituents – our customers.

Technorati Tags: Decision Making, Leadership, Product Development

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