Do good products sell themselves?
3 Comments This is a good question to ‘crowdscource,’ as I’m sure there’s some disagreement about it.
Products (to which I include services, for now), exist on different spectrums, of course, some of which are:
And all of which will to some extent affect a product’s “stand-alone sales-potential.”
The question of ‘good‘ in ‘good products,’ also begs for interpretation. A product, let’s say an iPhone, is not just its physical parameters and software, but it is the whole ecosystem around it—carriers, apps, other partners, relevance to consumer-context (e.g. work or home)—as well as factors like price, quantity, the message that communicates the product’s value, the company’s goodwill, etc.
So by a “good” product I in fact mean: good execution on the technology- and market-side. In a business-plan also, you may have presented a great product, and that will go a long way, but it’s plenty of other factors that will convince an investor.
Even so, the best product can still meet with plenty of opposition from the mainstream-market, what Geoffrey Moore calls the “early majority” or “the pragmatists,” who:
“care about the company they are buying from, the quality of the product they are buying, the infrastructure of supporting products and system interfaces, and the reliability of the service they are going to get…“
Take a B2B-situation, where conventional solutions are favoured, because they have proven their worth, while new products still need to build up a reputation of not only being good, but being good continuously, something that can show its value in next year’s numbers. In a B2C-situation, decisions are made somewhat less long-term perhaps, though still much more conservatively than amongst early adopters.
Both of these can be seen catch-22 situations, where it can be argued that customers want good products, and the development of good products requires cashflow, i.e. customers. That kind of reasoning ignores that presence of early adopters and investors, however.
Entering the B2B/B2C “mainstream” is clearly also a matter of good execution, but one which is much more contextual to the consumer, and which can be affected by other non-qualitative factors also (such as politics, incentives, or competition).
So, the question stands: do good products sell themselves? Name some examples if you can.
Vincent
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