Part 2
How the Market Will Value Your New Product
As marketers or entrepreneurs, we get so caught up in our products/services that it’s hard to evaluate them from the potential buyer’s perspective. We’re either in love with them, or we convince ourselves we are so that we can better market them.
I can’t tell you how often in management meetings at ABC and then at CBS I listened to executives discount competitor’s products/services as inferior to ours. Fortunately for me, I was able to see through the blindness because I was first at ABC where their executives were certain their High Fidelity and Modern Photography magazines were clearly superior, followed by a management position at CBS where their executives were equally convinced that their magazines—Audio and American Photographer—were superior. Both sets of executives clearly could not be right.
The same applies to individual perceptions. If you ask businesspeople to rank their abilities compared to their peers, more than 85 percent will rank themselves in the top 50 percent. And they are sincere in their beliefs! But the math just doesn’t work.
In some ways it’s similar to parents who can’t see all the faults of their children, or who see them as minor problems when they’re really major problems. We love our babies, our projects, our businesses.
This blindness is why there are five chapters in this section. They’re designed to remove the blinders we all develop, and look clearly and unemotionally through the eyes of your potential buyers.
- How do they see your product/service?
- How do they see the offerings of your competitors?
- What do they value in your type of product/service?
- How will they feel if they pay a lower price? A higher price?
- Do they perceive a prestige factor in this type of product/service? If not, would they like to?
- Are they sensitized to prices right now due to economic conditions?
- What do they think is a fair price for your product/service? What do they perceive as being unfair?
These five chapters will show you:
- How to investigate your competitors—through the eyes of your buyers.
- Environmental factors that will affect the price you can command.
- The science of price positioning—how to know what your price is saying about your products and how to change it if needed. Also included here are materials designed to prevent price positioning mistakes and keep you out of price wars.
- How to analyze your product/service versus your competitors—again through the buyers’ eyes.
- Where to start when picking a price range.
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