One of the hardest things when building new products and services is to deliver real value to your customers.
I know, it sounds stupid. But it’s true. And there are two reasons for it:
First of all, you’re not the judge of what brings value to your customers.
They are.
That’s a frightening prospect, because in essence customers may choose to vote that what you’re doing – your whole idea – isn’t valuable at all to them.
If that happens, you have no value. Period.
Second, it is super hard to deliver value to customers and NOT necessarily pursue your original idea.
Why?
Because every time you put your idea out there with users and potential customers, their feedback is going to be somewhat different to what you had hoped and/or expected. And while it’s super important – and immensely valuable in itself – to get that feedback before you build, it is still SUPER hard do divert or abstract from your idea to wherever customers may seem suggest there is real value to be found.
The challenge is no less for founders who are most often driven by an original idea and feel very passionate about following through on it.
Having them – or being able to yourself, if you’re the founder – understand that your idea matters far less than the value your customers are looking to get, may be the single biggest factor deciding whether you will be successful or not.
(Photo: Pexels.com)