WHAT your customers want to buy vs. HOW they want to buy

When you think about your product strategy — do you make a distinction between WHAT your customers want to buy versus HOW they want to buy it? If not, you are overlooking significant opportunities to better serve your customers.

The most obvious example is Dell, who redefined HOW customers could buy an industry standard PC while competitors were still focused on the WHAT. They built an awesome company just on that concept.

Here’s a more recent, real life example. A colleague of mine recently sent an email that outlined a whiz-bang set of new features for his company’s next software release.

I wrote back and asked — how about being able to download the software directly from your website instead of having to install it from a CD-ROM? (The reason behind my question is that the inability to download is quite annoying. We live in an age of instant gratification — and yet he’s telling me that I have to continue to wait a week to get a CD-ROM shipped out. Who wants to wait a week for a CD-ROM to arrive when the technology to download and install is quite easy?)

His response — “I like your ideas, they are in fact in the spec document …. BUT”

BUT. In other words, we aren’t going to do it. (Well, hopefully by Q2).

I realize that he’s making a tradeoff and allocating resources in deciding what features to prioritize.

Yet he is focused on the WHAT — the features of the product that he thinks customers want, probably with very good reasons. I reviewed his list of features and they would indeed be quite useful.

However, I was focused on the HOW — the way that I buy the product vs. what it actually does. I bet that he could significantly increase sales through his website by offering this instant download capability. I, for one, would buy more product and recommend more product if I could have it instantly available. Yes, it is easy to bet with other people’s money, so of course it is his call.

A complete product strategy needs to consider both the WHAT and the HOW. How does your strategy stack up? If you are wondering, there is a simple way to find out. Talk to your customers.