Small Business Solutions: Selling Before You Sell

Are you a small-business owner or aspiring entrepreneur ready to invest heavily in the development of a “can’t-miss” new product or service offering?

Perhaps you’ve been told by friends, family and peers with whom you shared your concept that it’s a surefire million-dollar idea.

And maybe it is.

But regardless of whether your product is market-ready, how confident can you really be of its success? How much advance effort did you devote to “selling” your concept to a sample set of your target customers? If the answer is something along the lines of, “My mom, dad, brother and best friend think it’s an awesome idea,” then you didn’t invest enough up-front energy toward really learning whether your vision will capture broad—and unbiased—appeal.

“Starting late,” i.e., fully developing a product before soliciting opinions from potential customers, is one of five missteps most frequently cited by 120 business founders in a recently published Harvard Business Review article.

In its story regarding the Harvard Business Review piece, Fast Company shares an example of a promising startup with its own alleged moneymaker, which ended up going nowhere.

Even though the product met two critical marketing criteria—that it addressed an obvious need and could be sold anywhere—the entrepreneur responsible for its development failed to proactively gather the necessary target-market feedback before investing heavily in its production.

The result? A colossal failure.

While you and those closest to you might be convinced you’ve developed a “better mousetrap,” don’t let such conviction obscure reality. It’s important to take heed from the fact that new products rarely sell themselves.

From the Fast Company piece: “According to Booz & Company, 66% of new products fail within two years, and, according to the Doblin Group, an astonishing 96% of all innovations fail to deliver any return on a company’s investment.”

“Get people really interested in buying it before you invest too much time and effort,” is the advice of one entrepreneur who took part in the Harvard Business Review study.

Words of wisdom you can take to the bank.