Want a great product? Try giving your competition the silent treatment.

As a startup founder, a product owner and ultimately a sales person, I am oh too familiar with being in direct competition. I would love to say that I am one of those people that say things like ‘competition is great for the industry’, but the reality is that I would much prefer to have the industry to ourselves. I know, I know. It’s not what I am supposed to say, but let’s be honest! So, given that it’s very rare to be in a market all by yourself, dealing with competition is part of the gig. 

If you are in a commodity-driven market, the price is probably going to be a driving factor in people’s decision process. However, if you sell a product, you are far more likely to be looking to have the best product and a fair price. As such, you may even have someone in your business whose job it is to ensure that your product is meeting the needs of the industry. This could be the founder or even a dedicated person like a product manager. 

A good product manager will have their finger on the pulse when it comes to what's going on in their industry. However, getting reliable information on a competitors product can be hard, especially in the enterprise software market. More than often, information is gathered using less than honourable circumstances! Sorry to lift the lid on this, but usually this comes in the form of a ‘demo request’ by someone posing to be a potential customer, or by second-hand information from disgruntled employees and customers. It’s shady at best, and it’s for this reason that I am an advocate for ignoring the competition. 

Sure, you need to know what’s going on. But you should NEVER lead your product development based on what other companies are doing. If you want to stand out and create an actual unique selling point (USP) for your company, copying others will not achieve this. Not only will you always be one step behind, but you will also often end up creating a complicated product without really knowing ‘why’ certain features exist. 

No doubt that you will now be thinking that by ignoring the competition, you will create a risk that you could potentially get blindsided by a new feature that your competitor brings to market. My argument for this is that in the same way that people will tell you what's wrong, they will also tell you what's missing. Providing that the client can give a solid reason for the importance of this feature, you should take it seriously. But I certainly do not agree with making new features 'just because'.

When we launched DSMN8 in 2016, the product was pretty simple. It offered a practical solution to a simple problem and did it well. However, we quickly realised that we didn’t have a complete product. We knew things were missing, but instead of copying others, we looked to our existing and prospective clients help shape our future. 

At first, clients won’t want to tell you everything they hate about your product, but if you make a safe space for them to point out what you get wrong, and thank them profusely for every bit of negative feedback, then soon enough you will be showered with instantly valuable and more importantly actionable insights. 

In what we (DSMN8) do, there are several fundamental challenges that clients face, that are far more complicated than a client would first realise. For those of you who don’t know (don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch), we help companies empower employees to become more active in social media. This typically starts by sharing content created (or curated) by the company the user works for. So, most customers think that the desired outcome is to get as many people sharing as much content as possible, as soon as possible. While initially, this sounds great, what this does is create a whole new problem, and this problem is too many people sharing the same content at the same time’. Naturally, we have focused our product design on solving this issue!

However, coming to the industry as the new guys in 2016, there was maybe a ‘self-inflicted’ pressure to focus on ‘feature parity’ with our legacy competitors. However, had we have done this we would have missed out on solving the actual core problem and would have missed out on creating our companies actual USP.

The challenge that comes with this, however, is that if you take a new approach, you will have to re-educate your prospective clients on how they should evaluate your offering. If you are being benchmarked as another version of your competitor, you will probably lose, and you will always be seen as a copy. 

Here are three things to keep in mind!

1. Don’t rush to present - I once heard this referred to as ‘turning up and throwing up’. It basically means starting a sales process with an insanely boring product demo. Of course, a product demo is essential, but it’s only interesting when you have some actual client context to base it on. 
2. Listen with no ‘end game’ - Everyone has met that salesperson who is looking to ‘flip’ everything you say into a reason to buy. By listening without an end-game, you will not only learn new things that your product may not currently do, but you will also improve your general market understanding. This will help you find a potential ‘edge’ for your product. 
3. Prove the hypothesis - ‘talk is cheap’, so if you have a USP, be ready to prove it is as important as you say it is. Remember that everyone can have their own opinion, but they can’t have their own facts. 

The term ‘slow and steady wins the race’ isn’t used that often in software development. However, I think there is a lot to be said for taking your time in not only developing a product but also selling it. Not only will you build a stronger client base with less ‘churn’, but you will also develop a kick-ass product that is tuned to deliver real results for your clients.

I would love to hear more about your experiences. Specifically, in regards to what role the competition plays in your product design!