Why Today’s Business Reality Dictates a New Approach to Design Partners

90% of startups fail. It’s a fact.

The leading reason is a lack of product-market fit.

So, it’s not surprising that today’s smart startups invest so much time and effort building the right product. Unfortunately, that’s not enough. Because ‘product’ is only half of the ‘product-market’ equation. You can build the best product and even identify a sizable addressable target market and still fail egregiously. How so?

The reason is that attaining success out of the gate requires getting many things right, including the following:

• Developing a product that addresses a significant pain that impacts many people (or companies)
• Delivering a product that fits into the customer’s existing technology, security, regulatory, accessibility, and governance environments
• Creating a product package that customers are eager to buy in a way that produces a profit for the startup (eventually)
• Crafting and delivering impactful messaging that resonates with each stakeholder in the buying cycle
• Implementing a marketing and sales methodology with adequate resources to engage and successfully navigate the customer’s buying cycle

If you are like most entrepreneurs, you are laser focused on the first bullet; developing the ‘right’ product. So even if you are working with customers throughout the development cycle as part of a Design Partner program, the product is your focus. The fallout is that when the product is ‘ready,’ the market part of the equation is not. You still have lots of work ahead of you.

Sadly, this is when many startups run out of gas and go belly up. Because the product doesn’t live in a vacuum, it lives and breathes in a dynamic market environment. That’s why you need to take a fresh look at the Design Partner program concept and understand the innovative REAP? methodology.

MarketReady? — A Modern Design Partner Program

The new MarketReady? Design Partner program engages with real customers from day one to do it right the first time, by delivering all the necessary deliverables in the shortest amount of time possible, so you can start selling before launch day. Those deliverables include the following:

• A minimally viable product (MVP) that is stable and robust
• A clear definition of the addressable market based on real customer input and feedback
• An understanding of the customer’s buying cycle and how to engage with the customer for each stakeholder in the mix
• Powerful (tested) marketing messages and content for each buyer stakeholder persona involved in the buying cycle
• Product packaging that appeals to the target market
• …and since you can’t do it all the first time around, a clear roadmap and timeline of what comes next, following launch day.

How Does It Work? The REAP? Methodology

The MarketReady? Design Partner program is predicated on the REAP? methodology, which stands for?Recruit,?Engage,?Analyze/Adapt, and?Promote. The stages are explained below.

• Recruit?— focus on partnering with those customers who will pay money for your offering when it is first ready
• Engage?— Define the program and attain a commitment to participation as a partner
• Analyze/Adapt?— provide the partner with input and get their feedback and act quickly on feedback
• Promote?— use the feedback from the program to promote your offering early

Recruit

The first stage involves recruiting partners who will buy your product out of the gate. These may be the personal and professional contacts you are currently working with, but most likely they are not. Design partners are innovator/early adopter types that make up less than 15% of the general population, so odds are they are not your current partners. You will need to target these folks and qualify them carefully to make sure you are working with the right people. Why? Because the vast majority of customers don’t think in terms of innovation, they search for what is already available on the market. That’s their yardstick. Asking these people what they want will not produce the innovative insights you need to build a novel product.

Engage

Once you identify the correct partners, you need to get the partners’ commitment to spend an hour or two with you every four to six weeks for the duration of the product development cycle. This is a considerable amount of valuable time, so you will need to demonstrate significant value to the partner along the way. This is usually the most difficult part of the Design Partner program, but done properly, you and the partner will both find the program fulfilling and worthwhile. Many startups skip this step and find that partners get ‘busy’ as time goes on and meetings get postponed or cancelled. That’s when the program falls apart and feedback becomes sporadic or non-existent. Cancelled meetings is a red flag for the startup that the pain or the product might not be that significant to this customer after all. It’s better to discover this as early as possible so you can adapt.

Analyze/Adapt

Have a schedule of what you will be presenting during each of the monthly meetings, so the partner knows what to expect and who to invite to the specific meeting.

Never ask a partner what they want. Always present an idea and get feedback. As Henry Ford (probably never) said, “If I asked what people wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Most people are good editors, but are poor authors, so present an idea, concept, drawing, user experience… whatever, and always ask for specific feedback.

It is critical to acknowledge customer input and circle back detailing what you did (or didn’t do) with their responses. Because not everything a partner says is gold, you might want put aside their input or delay acting on it to a later date. Still, partners need to feel that their input is impactful, or they will likely abandon the process along the way. Providing your own feedback is critical to keeping a partner engaged.

Promote

Much of the input you will get from partners will be actionable. Particularly when it comes to product features or marketing messages, you will almost always want to act as soon as you receive the input. You need to be prepared, because when done properly, you will be getting too much input to handle. But with so much valuable direction, by the time you launch your product you should already have your marketing messages, initial sales process, and product packaging nailed down.

Do It Right the First Time

Remember, your startup’s number one goal is to get to market as quickly as possible with a winning product, by doing it right the first time. The key is working with the right design partners from day one until product delivery. The REAP methodology is the roadmap you need to get all the input you need to cover the product, marketing, sales, and packaging requirements by the time you launch the product for the first time. A future article will explore the REAP Methodology in more detail, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, click here if you would like a REAP template of your own or would like schedule a free 20-minute consultation about how to do it right the first time, click?here.