How to create a successful product

When it comes to "success" and "failure", I think every business manager and product participant has a dual mindset of "avoiding" and "anticipating". Be dubbed "Success" Fortunately, can be up and down, both inside and outside the pride. Once dubbed "failure", they pushed and dodged, and the feeling is so. In fact, the definition of the so-called "success or failure" is very easy, sales, Word-of-mouth, profit margin, market share, customer satisfaction, industry identity, third party evaluation, can be crowned the title of "Success", or dubbed "failure" notoriety. But this simple, macroscopic or shallow level of comparison I think is not objective, not necessarily absolute, but also to the enterprises and products of specific participants to create multiple negative impact on the development of enterprises and products are not much benefit. So I personally think that whether the enterprise, the product of the participants or other third parties, need to rationally deal with this topic. It is really worthy of all of us to think, appraise and draw lessons from the factors that cobwebs the image, excavate and analyze its core.

Factors that affect the success of a product

The "Success" and "failure" involved in the product are the product. Products in the eyes of everyone is not the same thing, for example, in the enterprise's eyes is to disseminate the enterprise vision and realize value exchange carrier, in the eyes of the product manager is to transform the enterprise vision into a market value exchange process, in the eyes of the developer is the realization of technical ideas, in the eyes of users or customers is to meet the needs of the tool. If you look at the product's "success or failure" from their own perspective, at least there will be many different combinations of results. In this way, we cannot analyze and evaluate from a single angle or a particular factor. And there are many hidden possibilities, such as corporate strategy, product strategy, product positioning, market strategy, talent, channels, pricing, appearance, technology, etc., may affect the individual to determine the success of the product factors. Each individual has its own success or failure, but I do not think it is easy to look at this problem, or lose the comprehensive and objective analysis and reference is basically worthless.

I have contacted a lot of enterprises is because there is no comprehensive, objective consideration of the product success or failure factors, so the products abound: the products can be exchanged for profits into their own consumer goods, and because of the limitations of thinking mode and management mode, the product once there is a problem, it is difficult to objectively and accurately find At this time can only use the traditional way to backtrack, simply use the "who is wrong who is responsible for" the way to enhance the quality of work in the product process. However, these can not fundamentally avoid product errors or failure of the emergence, but also often because of the department and personal interests and other reasons, leading to the reciprocal responsibility of the situation occurs frequently. This is the most unfavorable to the enterprise, not only fundamentally does not solve the specific products listed the probability of success, but also the development of product follow-up will have far-reaching adverse effects.

We always sigh why the success rate of foreign excellent enterprises will be very high, can reach 64%, and domestic enterprises, the average success rate of the product is only 5%. I'm not sure whether every company will count its own success rate or whether it is satisfied with the success rate of its products. But when this data is in front of us, I think the business managers and the specific participants in the product should reflect seriously. Because between 5% and 64% there is too much room for improvement and profit margins, there are too many thinking space.

There are many reasons for the product "success or failure", such as the problem caused by the definition deviation of the product. It enterprise most common one kind of phenomenon, is to "the product" itself definition appears the understanding dislocation. For example, some companies define a functional module or application as a product, or even the background of a system as a product. This leads to the lack of compatibility and relevance of all subsequent product-related, systematic work and information due to the narrow or biased definition of the product itself. Imagine such a so-called "product" how to complete the market value exchange, how can we guarantee the success of the product after the listing? 5% of the product success rate gives us a positive answer.

Product Manager: Make the product more successful

So as a company or a specific product of the participants how to think about these issues, how to improve the success rate of products, how to make their products to be successful? I will take the "Product Manager" perspective to do a simple exposition.

Since the product manager's perspective, it is necessary to mention the product manager's fundamental work-product management. What is product management? Many enterprises and specific managers have a different understanding, which is due to the company's knowledge of product management and the professional level of managers caused by limited. Of course, also with the domestic product management in the field of primary stage has a great relationship. Here I recommend UCPM (Chinese Product Manager Alliance) an article "Let Product management naked", so that we can more clearly understand the essence of product management. Only by understanding and understanding the essence of product management, can we look at the product from the most scientific, objective and accurate angle, then we can know how to make the product succeed.

Component elements of a product

There is a need to define a concept. What is the product? In the final analysis, the product is carrying the enterprise vision, the realization value Exchange contains "the brand, the service, the medium" the carrier, refers to has the same identification medium, the service, the brand enterprise Resource collection.

Here's a real, standard "product Manager" perspective to explain how to make a successful product.

First of all to realize that the final embodiment in the market products, in the enterprise is actually "vision → strategy → planning → plan → exchange" such a logic and the final carrier of the process. Based on this idea, standing in the product manager's perspective needs to consider three levels of work: strategic level (product management strategy, non-enterprise strategy), planning level, tactical level. These three levels ultimately boil down to knowing what our goal is, knowing how we are going to do it, and knowing how we can do it. As a product manager as long as the product, it can not be separated from these three levels, and must follow this logic and order, otherwise it becomes arbitrary or empirical. If the order is disorderly, there is the possibility of putting the cart before the horse and disorderly. For enterprises, if you understand or straighten out the relationship and role, you can greatly avoid the emergence of "failure" products.

On the premise of this understanding, we will find a product from scratch to excellent this process will certainly involve three aspects of the product specific work, and each level is the impact of the next phase of the success or failure of the key activities and prerequisites.

Work at the strategic level

The strategic level of work is particularly important for product managers, and the results of this phase determine the goal and direction of a product. Imagine a product without goals and directions. Some people will say: "Our products in the initial stage also considered the direction and goal, how still do not do well?" I would like to explain the strategic aspects of the work, you can control whether there has been done or whether to do bit.

The strategic dimension actually boils down to three aspects of the work.

The first is the prediction problem. What's the problem? We must understand the market, the user and all the requirements of the product before we make the product, of course, the demand here is the demand of product management, not the research and development requirement. Only when we understand all this can we know whether the market is in demand, whether the scale is enough, whether there is a clear user base, where the user is, where the competitor is, whether there is a corresponding resource to open up the market. That is why we have to put the prediction problem first-it can provide a strong market basis for the follow-up work.

The second is to nurture opportunities. When we face a market, what kind of products should we launch to be competitive and sustainable development to produce high yield? This is to do a series of work in the process of cultivating opportunities, including evaluating their own technical strength, analyzing the competitive pattern, clarifying their unique abilities, analyzing the management needs, etc. It is only when these jobs are done that we can objectively and accurately know if there is a real opportunity in our imagined market, and if there is a chance, can we really grasp the opportunity.

The next step is product innovation. Product innovation here is not a technical innovation, but an innovation based on the product (reference to the definition of the product) and the collection of related resources. What do you mean? The innovation we focus on is not only to innovate in the product "medium", but also to innovate on every link and element in the process of product exchange, including channel, packaging, price, concept, etc. Only such innovative ideas to ensure that their products can be more accurate and fast to reach users, users quickly accept, this is the purpose of innovation. Of course, technological innovation is important, but we have to do is a commercial "product", rather than based on sophisticated technology of art, so as a business organization, as a product manager for each product to recognize this point.

Of course, one might say that the iphone is an example of the success of technological innovation. I personally feel that there is no comparable, from the business environment, corporate accumulation, historical development has its unique factors. And many of us only focus on its technical level of information, ignoring the channels, concepts, prices, packaging, profit models and other achievements of the iphone success of many factors. If we focus on technology, it is possible to embark on a path that deviates from the business rules. Of course, I am not abandoning the technology of pure market-like, I have always thought that technology as a human skeleton, other business elements as if the flesh and blood of human, skeleton stout to flesh and blood, can be healthy, indispensable.

Work at the planning level

The planning level of work is based on the strategic level of work, but also the product strategic level of work more specific, visualization of a key step. It determines the original image of the product and the user community, determines how we can achieve the strategic level of the development of the direction and objectives.

The first is to develop a product line. There are many factors to be considered in the process of product route, including price strategy, product income and all the resources needed for the corresponding product.

The second is product strategy. In product strategy work, we should consider the factors such as product positioning, business process and phased strategy. One might ask: "Do some of these jobs have been done, some have not, but what are they doing?" For example, work on business processes. A product from the factory to the user hand will go through a lot of links, the user must first know the product, and then want to know where to buy, know where to sell and consider whether to choose this product. You can imagine a product to reach the user in the hands of how many links, in these links and how many factors will affect the user's understanding of the product and purchase.

If we don't build a business process with the lowest cost, the highest efficiency, the most realistic and reasonable, then our products are good, and the user is very difficult or expensive to accept. So it's important to build the business process. Of course, other work is the case, will have an impact on the follow-up development of products. Therefore, we must recognize and attach importance to, only do a good job every step to ensure product success.

Finally, the product plan. Product planning, including marketing planning, control management, product line and other work, the importance of equally important, here is not detailed.

Tactical level of work

The tactical level of work is now common among many business and product managers. Many product managers devote most of their work to the tactical level of work, but do not know what to do in the process, and to what extent. They and research and development, ue/ui tangled together, all day tossing technology, user experience, interface aesthetics, such as these belong to other people's professional work, make themselves very busy, other departments complain also quite a lot. Chores, fire fighting, writing documents, also became the normal work. Let me explain how the product manager works and works at the tactical level.

The first is the realization of the concept. The job is to define our products with standard metrics, simply to define what our products should look like.

The second is the drawing realization. This work is to complete the product of the corresponding specification definition, this stage is most likely to be entangled with the technical, ued department. Here it is emphasized that the Product manager's specification definition is not specific to what technology is to be implemented and what color is used to represent these specific tasks. Many product managers confuse product management with specification definitions and technical specifications in the technology sector, leading to conflicting work.

Next comes the technology implementation. This stage is based on the previous specifications defined, through the other departments of the product "medium" manufacturing process.

Finally, the work of commodity and market realization. We need to complete all the tools and work required by the market before the product is listed. Such as sales kits, training programs, product launches, promotional strategies and so on.

The above is a product manager in the production of a product needs to consider several aspects of the work content of the elaboration, highlighting the strategic level and planning level of work. The tactical level of business and product managers often contact, but even if many companies do not do it in place. The reason is that we did not fully consider the first two levels of many factors before the introduction of a product, but also did not carry out the corresponding work, resulting in late work chaos and inefficient. This is why our product success rate is very low, but also in the analysis and consideration of product "success or failure" to consider the factors.

Some companies may say that we have not considered so many and very successful. Yes, I do not deny it, but many people have different understandings of "success". Some enterprises put a product on the line or listed on the announcement as a success, I can understand. By investing a lot of resources (technology, money, etc.) to make products appear in the market and the user's immediate moment is indeed worth celebrating, when shouting "success" may have spread factors in it. But how do we think about continuous "success" after shouting "success" at the end of our voice?

Enterprise or Product Manager to launch a product for the purpose, in the final analysis is to complete the exchange of value, so that the product profit maximization, but also to maximize profits, and ultimately realize the corporate vision. However, as far as I know, many people do not seem to understand this, still imitate, plagiarism, disorderly horse products. Take my favorite game, how many game products are hurriedly horse and hastily end? This is actually a huge waste of resources for the enterprise. Of course, a lot of big crocodiles, monopoly enterprises may not care about this trivial waste, but I still believe that enterprises should be in the scale of development at the same time improve their own management level and understanding ability. Only in this way can we ensure that the products carrying the soul of the enterprise are successful in the market performance, but also in the user's psychology, which is the real success.

Author Mabo, UCPM, one of the initiators of the China Product Manager Alliance. is mainly engaged in product management research and practice. Once involved in heavy industry, advertising, exhibition, the Internet, education and many other fields. Personal mailbox: mabo@chinapm.com.cn