by Bill Aulet
Drives a common understanding, on the team and beyond, of what product the company is thinking of producing. It is more common than not where team members have different ideas of what product they are aspiring to develop. This process forces explicit alignment and often surprises the team to see the level of misalignment they had before the exercise.
Creates a focus on benefits rather than features and functions. Teams, especially technical teams, often start to get into feature wars with competitors and lose focus on the customer, who only sees the benefits (or lack thereof) that a feature provides. This exercise will keep the emphasis on benefits.
Begins the process of prioritizing which benefits are more important than others. You’ll focus not just your messaging but also the product design/development and business model/pricing.
Gives you something concrete to discuss and iterate on with the Persona (and later, other customers) while staying in “inquiry mode.” It is very easy to change a brochure as opposed to a prototype, because brochures don’t take much time to develop, so you’re much less invested and attached to it than a prototype. Don’t let the “IKEA effect” blind you to what the customer really wants.2
Start by completing the Visual Representation of Product worksheet, keeping in mind the following attributes of an effective High-Level Product Specification:
Visual: If it is hardware, this is easy and surprisingly clarifying. For software, use a series of simulated screenshots to form a storyboard that shows how someone would use the product.
Focus on benefits: Focus on the benefits and not the technology or functionality. In particular, focus on the benefits that are related to the Persona’s top three priorities, with special focus on the top priority. Benefits are what matter to a savvy customer. Be clear on the value proposition this product has for the end user.
High level: Don’t include too much detail! Just enough to show high-level functionality that will drive the benefits.
Hits the spot: Make sure the product specification resonates deeply with the Persona and other customers in the target End User Profile group. Conversely, don’t be influenced by people outside your Beachhead Market, because they won’t help you achieve a dominant market share in your beachhead.
Flexible: Make sure your product specification builds in the ability to iterate with the Persona about key features, functions, and benefits. Some people make multiple versions and show them side by side to the Persona. Listen to what the Persona says, and always be willing to change what you have done. A wise man once said, “Listening is the willingness to change.” Don’t ignore your Persona’s feedback just because you think the brochure is great.
Next, complete the Product Alignment with Persona worksheet. Does your high-level specification line up with your Persona’s key priorities? Is it ready for review with your Persona? And once it is, what feedback does your Persona provide, and how will you revise the specification in response?
Remember that the Persona’s job is not to design the product for you, but to provide feedback on whether the benefits are useful. And as I cover in Step 23, Show That “The Dogs Will Eat the Dog Food,” the ultimate test will come later, when it comes time for your customers to pay for your product.
As part of this step, you should also strongly consider creating a product brochure. (I require it in my classes.) Because a brochure can add distractions and unnecessary complications, I have saved discussion of a brochure for the Advanced Topics section at the end of this chapter.
GENERAL EXERCISES TO UNDERSTAND CONCEPT
See the back of the book for answers to some of these questions.
Examples: Pick three products you use a lot and find a high-level product description/brochure (not the technical specifications) for each one. You may find it on the product section of the website of the company that makes the product. If you find the technical specifications, compare that document with the high-level product description to observe the differences. For each product’s high-level description, consider the following questions:
Product 1=
___________
Product 2=
___________
Product 3=
___________
What customer segment are they targeting?
What is the primary benefit to that group?
Is the primary benefit in alignment with the features and function?
What is unique about the product? Is it clear from the high-level description?
What did you like about it?
What didn’t you like about it?
Feature–function–benefit: A new mobile phone is launched that has an advanced fingerprint reader security system. Identify which of the following is the feature, the function, and the benefit: Better security for the phone allows important data and information to be stored with peace of mind, which improves your productivity. This is a ________________________.
Patented active capacitance sensing technology. This is a _______________________.
Fingerprint recognition is integrated into the phone. This is a ______________________.
Apply to examples: Now, for the three products you chose in question 1, identify what their features, functions, and benefits are: Product 1=
___________ Product 2=
___________ Product 3=
___________
Features:
Functions:
Benefits:
WORKSHEETS
Visual Representation of Product
In the space below (use more sheets if need be, but keep it to no more than three sheets), build a visual representation of your product and how it works. Annotate your drawings, but do not burden them with too much detail.
Product Alignment with Persona
How will you deliver a new level of value with respect to this priority? What features address this priority? What functions address this priority? What benefits address this priority?
Persona’s #1 Priority: _______________
Persona’s #2 Priority: _______________
Persona’s #3 Priority: _______________
Ready for Action?
Is the High-Level Product Specification ready to review with your Persona? (Circle “Yes” or “No” below.) Yes
No
Have you done so? What feedback did the Persona provide?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Have you iterated at least once based on the Persona’s feedback? What changes did you make in response to the Persona’s feedback? (Hopefully, you will iterate with the Persona more than once.)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Has the Persona concluded that the High-Level Product Specification is interesting and satisfies the Persona’s priorities? (Circle “Yes” or “No” below.) Yes
No
ADVANCED TOPIC: HIGH-LEVEL PRODUCT BROCHURE
Once you have iterated on your High-Level Product Specification, you may want to build a trifold brochure that more clearly outlines the benefits your product provides. Some people will wait to make a brochure until they have iterated the specification with other customers in Step 9, Identify Your Next 10 Customers, but others find a brochure useful at this stage.
A good brochure should have the following items:
First draft of company name and tagline.
Name of product and tagline.
Image or picture of product so it is clear what it is.
Clearly identified benefits aligned with the Persona’s #1 priority (don’t be subtle—it should come out in the taglines and even maybe even the name of your product).
Two additional benefits (if appropriate), aligned with the second and third priorities of th
e Persona, that don’t dilute the impact of the first benefit.
Provide a sense of the magnitude of the benefit to be expected by the end user. Use your work from Step 6, Full Life Cycle Use Case.
Some other information might be relevant, but always be diligent about not diluting your main message—if you say too much, you say nothing in particular.
Have a clear call to action.
Everything should be fully aligned with the customer’s priorities and will resonate with the customer in all elements (e.g., names, taglines, pictures, benefits emphasized, fonts, colors, word choice, language, references, call to action).
There are great individuals and agencies you can hire to design brochures, and you’re not expected to become an expert in design. But you want to think through the content and make sure it is compelling and addresses the Persona’s priorities. That way, if you choose to delegate or outsource the design, you can give them good direction and not settle for an inferior brochure.
Ultimately, the brochure is the most commonly and widely given elevator pitch about your product because it can be done when you are not in the room and even when you are sleeping. It makes consistent messaging possible and scalable, so don’t just downplay it as “marketing hype.” It really matters.
You also have to back it up with a great product, but that is coming. First, you have to make sure you are building the right product for your customer, and this process really helps to communicate that to all sides.
Notes
1 I talked in more depth about this in the TechCrunch article of March 1, 2014, titled “Our Dangerous Obsession with the MVP;” see https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/01/our-dangerous-obsession-with-the-mvp/.
2 “IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love,” Harvard Business Review working paper, http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf.
STEP 8
Quantify the Value Proposition
WHAT IS STEP 8, QUANTIFY THE VALUE PROPOSITION?
In as concrete and concise a way as possible, summarize the value your product will create for the targeted end user.
WHY DO WE DO THIS STEP, AND WHY DO WE DO IT NOW?
Customers will be much more likely to buy your product if the value it provides lines up with their highest priorities. Now that you have defined the Persona’s priorities, and you have a Full Life Cycle Use Case and High-Level Product Specification, quantifying your product’s value proposition is the missing step to validate that you are headed in the right direction and that your product is in line with the customer’s needs.
By the Book: See pages 103–106 of Disciplined Entrepreneurship for basic knowledge on this step.
See pages 106–110 of Disciplined Entrepreneurship for examples of how different companies and teams have addressed this step.
The Quantified Value Proposition makes crystal clear what benefits you bring to the customer.
PROCESS GUIDE
Start by taking your Persona’s #1 priority from the Persona Profile worksheet. Talk with the Persona about how to measure that priority quantitatively, and what units to measure it in. For instance, if your Persona’s top priority is saving money, then your value proposition will likely be expressed as dollars, or dollars per time period (such as dollars saved over the course of a year). If it is reliability, your measurement might be percentage rate of failure, errors per thousand products, downtime per month, or a similar measurement.
Next, take that quantitative measurement and map out how the Persona currently operates in the “as-is state.” Interview the Persona to get this information, and use the Persona’s own words when describing the as-is state. Use the space later on in this chapter to take notes about how the Persona describes the as-is state. Then, use the top half of the Quantified Value Proposition worksheet to visually break it down into concrete steps or stages.
For instance, if your product reduces time to market for the Persona’s products, such as in the SensAble example in Disciplined Entrepreneurship (pages 106–108), map out each stage of the process by which a product is produced. In the SensAble example for developing a new toy, there were four discrete processes: ideation, tech package design, a “looks like/works like” testing period, and a commercialization process. Since they are measuring their priority as time to market, the as-is state would show how long, in days, each of the four processes takes.
Once you have mapped out the as-is state, review it with the Persona to make sure you clearly understand how things currently stand, and the Persona agrees with the terminology and the data. If the Persona does not understand the as-is state, you will have trouble demonstrating how your product can benefit the Persona.
Next, define the possible state in the same terms as you just did for the as-is state with your proposed new product. Explicitly show how your proposed product will better satisfy the Persona’s #1 priority in detail. Express the possible state by using the same units with which you measured the Persona’s top priority.
Calculating the possible state will be a challenge because you have only just begun to settle on what the product will be. But this exercise will help you better understand what product your customer wants you to build.
A few tips:
Don’t overpromise the benefit your product will provide in the possible state. You want to “underpromise” and “overdeliver” because as a new startup, you have little to no credibility, so all you have are your promises. You do not want your customer to lose trust in what you say or for competitors to seize on your every misstep and point out your flaws. And in a startup, rarely do things go as planned, so you want some buffer for slippages and surprises. If your Persona is not excited by your conservative value proposition and is only excited by a more aggressive set of promises, that should signal danger to you.
Sometimes, the Persona has multiple top priorities that are intertwined. See in Disciplined Entrepreneurship the example for InTouch, where the Persona, a pregnant mother-to-be, wanted reassurance that her fetus was healthy and wanted to establish intimacy with her unborn child. The InTouch product was meant to address both priorities, as the priorities were similar enough in theme that one product could easily satisfy both priorities without losing clarity on the product’s mission.
GENERAL EXERCISES TO UNDERSTAND CONCEPT
Examples: For successful products with savvy product marketers, their alignment with the customer’s #1 priority is evident in their taglines and advertisements, and is repeated over and over again until their target customer can hear it in their sleep. If I say “Volvo” to an audience and ask them what word comes to mind, they immediately say “safety.” That association completely resonates with Volvo’s target market of upper-middle-class mothers. If I say “Verizon,” the word that comes up, not by accident but by a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, is “reliability,” which is exactly what business professionals, Verizon’s target customer, want to hear. In both cases, the companies use a combination of anecdotes and data to back up their claims. Pick a product you are passionate about and explore its marketing materials. Is it clear what its value proposition is to you? Does the company present the value proposition quantitatively? Using what units? How effectively does the company get its value proposition across? How effective is it for you based on your priorities? What would you find more compelling?
WORKSHEETS
Axis to Measure Value Proposition
What is the Persona’s #1 priority?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
What units should it be measured in?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Persona’s General Verbal Description of the “As Is” State and the Opportunities for Improvement
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Persona’s General Verbal Description of the “Possible” State and the Opportunities for Improvement
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
