{Don Debelak’s new book, Turning Your Invention into Cash is now available on Amazon for $3.49. Go to Amazon.com and enter inventions Don Debelak to purchase. From the author of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Bringing Your Product to Market.}

Customer Defined Products

Inventors frequently create a product that satisfies their needs without taking into account what target customers want.  Products do best when their features are defined by what customers actually want. Even if you have one feature that customer wants, you need to be sure you aren’t missing one or more features that customers also feel are essential.

Verify Your Premise

Most inventors have a reason for their invention, which is typically correcting a problem.  Slipping gears on bikes, slicing tomatoes into small squares, removing stains from shirts are examples. Inventor’s premise is the reason they think a new invention is needed. The first question inventors should ask is do customers agree with that premise.  The easiest way of learning this is for inventors to prepare a questionnaire, which lists four of five potential problems with the type of product you are trying to improve, and then ask people to rate what problem is most important to them. First give the questionnaires to just four or five or five people and include an area on the questionnaire where people can write in their own problems with the product category, just in case you have missed one. Finalize your problem lists and then give the questionnaire to 15 to 20 people to see which problem area they feel is most important. You don’t need every person to agree with your premise, but you do want 35% or more of the people to agree with it.

On all questionnaires, try to discover why people buy a particular brand of your product category. Ask these two open end questions at the end of the questionnaire. Usually it is best to list the five to eight leading competitors right before the questions.

1. What improvements or changes would you like to see in this product category?
2.  Of the above competitors, which one have you bought, and what was your reason for buying it.

What Current Features are Important?

You want to list all the important features of products people use to address the same issue your product addresses. Do this even if your solution is dramatically different than the others.  Then ask the people to rank all the features which ones are the most important to them. Then leave a space so people can explain why these features are important.  Your goal in completing this survey is three-fold.

1. You want to understand what features are important to people and which are not. This helps you understand how people use the product.
2. A feature analysis helps you know if you have forgotten an important feature in your development.
3. You may find that you are able to delete benefits and cut costs if people think some features are unimportant.

More Than Just Product Development

You also want a customer driven product because it helps you develop a clever subject line that connects with users. For example, if you have an earmuff, you could learn users want those earmuffs to keep their ears very warm. You might then emphasize that your earmuffs are made of wool or fur, or you might concentrate on having a rechargeable earmuff warmer. All these approaches fit.

But you would have a totally different approach if you learn people don’t like earmuffs because they don’t like the way an earmuff gets tangled in their hair. So look at this as more than how to develop your product, it is also how to promote your product.

Inventors- Accept the Risk

Many don’t like doing market research. Some are convinced their idea is so strong it cannot fail. But others are afraid of negative feedback. Inventors all need feedback. I’ve worked for several companies that constantly introduced new products. I’ve never been on a new project where everything went right. We always had lots of fine tuning and made many adjustments based on customer feedback. Look at feedback not as a negative, but rather as information that will help you improve your product.