Creating Products Customers Value

Of the more than 30,000 products introduced each year, 95% of them fail.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of confusion about how to bring new ideas to life and how to create something customers value.

So when you find someone who does it very well, and seemingly very naturally, it stands out.

I first met Ehsan Soltan in 2017 through a community of international business professionals. He had recently started a company (Soiltech) that was working to create a soil moisture sensor. This sensor would help farmers collect better data on their crops at all stages of the growing process – from seed through storage.

The way he spoke about what he was creating was one of the reasons I was happy to work with him at the beginning of 2020, when I launched my own practice. By that time, Ehsan was manufacturing the soil sensor (the Beacon) at some level of scale and navigating his next phase of growth. ?

Through the years, I’ve had the privilege of tracking Soiltech’s idea from concept to reality, even talking with several of his customers and members of the broader food and agricultural community about the results he’s achieved.

And now I get to share with you what it was that I saw Soiltech do – the specific practices that allowed them to take an idea from an initial spark all the way through to something with tangible results.

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Designed around customer challenges

Ehsan started with a strong base in both manufacturing and technology. He could have listed all the technologies he could think of to manufacture at scale, and then gone around telling customers about his ideas.

But he didn’t.

Driven by a desire to relocate to rural Idaho, and to reinvent his line of work to better suit what might be needed in his own backyard, he went out and talked to people about what they did and how they did it. Most were farmers.

In a sense, he simply observed. His own background in manufacturing, technology, law, and general business led him to naturally ask questions that would help him learn more about potential customer needs – but he didn’t lead with that.

Having casual conversations where he listened more than he talked allowed him to learn that the data farmers used was often pulled (inefficiently) from multiple sources.

Further, the tools farmers used to collect data typically served one purpose – one for temperature, one for moisture, etc. – so they needed a separate tool for every measurement. Most of these tools were cumbersome to install and didn’t consider the on-farm realities (like the fact that they would be located outside, subject to weather, or in contact with machinery or rodents).

When they were able to get the tools installed right, get them working, and log into all the platforms to pull data, the data wasn’t easy to read – nor was it real time. They often had to go through layers of interpretation to figure out what the data meant in terms of a next logical action step. By the time they did that, whatever readings they may have collected weren’t relevant to the current situation anymore.

This simply wasn’t something farmers could afford – from a time or dollars perspective.

In a world where reporting requirements for food have been increasing, supply chain requirements growing more complex, and the price of inputs constantly rising, farmers didn’t need one more thing to troubleshoot or manage.

Most of their days were full of a variety of challenges that come from working in a more natural or rural environment. A broken pipe, a jammed machine, a short workforce, and numerous other problems to fix. They didn’t need to add to that the installation of a dozen sensors and dashboards that may or may not work as intended.

Hearing about these challenges gave Ehsan the idea to lean on his capabilities in manufacturing and technology and create a sensor with a data platform to streamline these efforts – then invest in building an engineering capability to fully bring the idea to life.

Many people present an idea first, before they understand the need. Or they present a broad picture of opportunity – often with overconfidence.

This may attract some level of initial interest or investment, but often does so without leaning on a basic foundation of capabilities or competency that allows them to deliver.

When Ehsan understood the need first, and combined it with both existing and needed capabilities, he set himself up to create something customers actually wanted – and to create something he could actually deliver well.

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Developed a prototype

From there, Ehsan developed a prototype. The earliest versions were held together with duct tape – that’s the version I saw when he rolled it across the table to me in the earlier years.

This version got him pulled into the special screening room at airport security, because it really did look like a mismatch of plugs, wires, and other material all stuffed tightly together – one that may explode at any moment. It wasn’t pretty.

But it was enough. It allowed him to go back to those he had early conversations with and get their reaction. It showed them he had listened and provided the opportunity for him to ask whether it would solve the challenges they had initially outlined.

From there, he was able to build another prototype, and another. He started working with an engineer on simplifying the data platform, so that he could start getting reactions from farmers around how clear the data output was – and just as importantly, whether that data gave them the information that they needed to take immediate action.

He did not create a product and launch it on any large scale. He created a prototype and discussed it, repeatedly, to make sure he had understood the challenges correctly.

By most standards, this idea would have been considered niche – something large companies often aim to avoid. The general sensor category was growing rapidly, but there weren’t other products like it.

Any form of market measurement based on what existed at the time would have made the total opportunity look small and potentially unattractive by large company measures (not by investors who were paying attention to this space though).

The way he attracted support was by solving real problems for real customers in a way that fit a growing category.

This was a category in which most farmers viewed solutions not as solutions at all, but simply something else to manage. Ehsan did it so well that initial funding came from farmers themselves – before any formal investment rounds.

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Followed up with customers

This one seems so simple, but it’s so rare that it’s worth pointing out.

Sometimes people don’t follow up with customers because their idea is bigger than their total capability or capacity.

That’s valid – if you’re three years out from being able to deliver, it’s hard to keep people engaged that long.

(Although if you start by designing around some foundation of capability, deeply understand your capabilities, and very clearly define what you are or aren’t willing to build, that time to market can decrease substantially.) ?

Other times people don’t follow up with customers because they think the customer “doesn’t get it.”

That last one is always baffling.

These communication challenges exist in all sorts of human relationships – between spouses, friends, bosses and employees. It’s somewhat normal for the sender of a message to forget they have a responsibility to clarify their own message and put all the weight on the receiver to interpret.

But as an entrepreneur, if the customer “doesn’t get it,” the onus is on the entrepreneur to figure out how to better meet the customer where they are at. If they don’t, there is no business.

Ehsan did this.

When I asked his customers why they kept working with him, they said a lot of great things.

But the one thing they said with absolute incredulity was “he just kept coming back. No one else had ever done that.”

He didn’t just keep coming back. Each time he came back with a new version of the product, one that had incorporated what he learned from the last time he listened to them.

This made them even more excited to use the product, and even more willing to share their experience – which allowed Ehsan to make even more improvements to the product.

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Stayed true to purpose

By the time we were working together, Ehsan had enough volume to be seeing significant results. He was delivering on his original goals of improving soil moisture and other key data points from planting through storage. Then he learned that he was saving farmers both water and fuel.

This attracted the attention of AT&T and their Carbon Impact project. At the time, AT&T’s was the only wireless technology that would connect to the Beacon through the soil.

Because of how integrated I was with Soiltech’s leadership team that year, I had the opportunity to work together with Ehsan and AT&T while they crafted their impact reports.?

Climate was a very shiny topic in 2020 (and still is). Everyone seemed to be pivoting to take advantage of what was an influx of investment in that space.

Ehsan could have pivoted and started talking about climate and all the ways in which they were climate friendly, which was a top priority for many companies and groups. It would have been very easy to do this, particularly given the interest of a Fortune 20 company.

But Soiltech’s central promise wasn’t about climate.

They weren’t against it and they didn’t avoid it – they just weren’t about it.

His central promise was about creating more actionable solutions for the farmers’ biggest challenges – the ones that they told him they had.

Ehsan noticed early on that farmers often watered more when they couldn’t accurately predict soil moisture levels. They also spent a good portion of their day driving from field to field to check moisture levels.

But they didn’t cite these as challenges. They talked more about wanting to increase yield and have a better view of how the crop was doing at all stages of growth.?

From their perspective, the fact that it happened to save a ton of water and fuel was a huge bonus.

Once Ehsan saw where the Beacon created more sustainable solutions for the planet, he looked for opportunities to make that even more relevant and actionable for farmers.

You can see it reflected on Soiltech’s website, where they speak about the opportunity from the farmer’s point of view:

“Reporting on sustainable practices requires a lot of data that is burdensome and costly to collect and validate. Our team has built the tools necessary to simplify data collection, analysis, and verification.”

Again, Soiltech wasn’t against it, and they didn’t avoid it – they just weren’t about it.

This is a subtle distinction.

Many people today make huge verbal and behavioral shifts in order to be about, against, or avoidant of hot topics or technologies. The results are often relatively disconnected from their business, and get them accused of everything from “purpose washing” to “green washing” and more.

What Soiltech did was to take a topic of importance collectively and consider what it meant for them, within the context of their business.

It didn’t change their entire focus, but as they learned more about it and found ways to incorporate it, it did extend their capabilities, solutions, and relevance.

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Operated by a set of values

It was clear to me from the beginning that Ehsan was going to do things a certain way. It wasn’t necessarily his way – but it was an approach to how he believed business should be done. And he acted consistently according to these values and principles.

I was so impressed that he seemed to be doing this instinctively and consistently that I started to make them more explicit throughout the work we did with his strategy, marketing, and operations.

At the time, he smiled at me and said “you can do that if you want to, but we don’t need it.”

He was right that they didn’t need to be the main focus of our final work products. It’s often not critical for a young company to make these explicit in any external documents, but it is important to have them so that internal decisions can be made with a certain degree of consistency.

Where values and principles become of even greater importance is as the team grows. The team needs to understand the specific practices that make the company successful, as well as what will make them successful as part of the team. When they better understand what is core, they can emulate those ways of working when it matters.

Values are also important when tough times hit. It is in those times that values are easiest to abandon, particularly if they haven’t been made explicit. And it’s then that it becomes easier to justify actions and decisions that aren’t consistent with who you are as a company or as a leader.

Ehsan clearly had them and he was clearly living them – they were woven into all the work. Some of the principles that became clear to me throughout our work were that the company would:

• Be driven by customer experience, and solve challenges of greatest priority to the customer
• Find ways to solve multiple challenges at once
• Do so by reducing complexity rather than adding to it
• Create solutions that made it immediately clear what someone needed to do, with no extra steps
• Take on a few specific challenges at a time, and get good at those first before adding more

All of these have led to Soiltech’s continued success now, several years later as they continue working across the country and exploring international markets.

Soiltech takes a deliberate approach to development, and a deliberate approach to growth. Their intentional approach set the foundation for them to double their growth in each of the last two years.

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Conclusion

Many believe good ideas alone are the impetus for good innovation. In reality, the idea sits somewhere in the middle of a more nuanced web of support.?

As former President of Pixar Ed Catmull said, “Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, often made by dozens of people."

The challenges of companies at different ages and stages may differ, but the act of creating an idea and advancing it into something customers value is the same.

Ideas can go from a spark to a valuable reality much quicker when you:

• Have clarity on what you will or won’t do as a company, and how you’ll behave
• Intimately understand the need from the customer’s perspective
• Lean on solid existing capabilities
• Are capable of wrestling with a range of potential solutions and multiple rounds of feedback
• Are willing to build new capabilities
• Design the process, team, or organization to be able to make quick decisions and iterations

Do each of these well, and you’ll find you’ve created something that is valued by customers, investors, and employees alike.