Winning the war of the minds. Where the Heads of Products make mistakes in gaining mindshare and how to avoid them!

The success of a product ultimately depends on the position it occupies in the minds of the customers.?If a product needs to capture the majority of the market share in its segment, it has to first capture the mindshare.?If one moves the needle of the mindshare of their product towards “Full”, the law of attraction propels the customers towards considering it.?

Most people know this as a matter of fact. Yet, so many Heads of Products make mistakes in capturing the mindshare, many times irreversible, that lead to the demise of the product that could have otherwise dominated the market.?In this brief article, I highlight 3 such mistakes and illustrate how one can navigate around them.

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1. The right time to start capturing the mindshare

Every product goes through a journey.?A good illustration of product journey is Steve Blank’s “Four steps to Epiphany''.?I have shown a modified version of that and extended it for capturing mindshare.??

Mistake: When introducing a new product, many Heads of Products don’t want to lose time in capturing the mindshare.?The basic premise is that the first one to do so has a bigger advantage than a late entrant.?One common mistake is to capture the mindshare before achieving Product-Market-Fit. ?If one does that, it is quite possible that the product is positioned with the wrong message and value proposition.?It may be very difficult to undo the harm and reposition it later.?The target market will not only be confused, it might even doubt the value proposition of the product.???

Successful Heads of Products resist the urge to capture the mindshare until the product is validated.?They understand that their customers in the validation phase (usually early adopters) are more forgiving.?There is a possibility that they might “Pivot” and tweak the value proposition.?There is also a possibility that they might park the project as the time might not be appropriate from a Go To Market perspective.??

Tip#1: Wait till the product is validated, has achieved Product-Market-Fit, and is entering the “Customer Creation phase” before ramping up the efforts to capture mindshare.

2. Finding the Economic Value to the Customer.

The perception of a product will be affected by the Economic Value to the Customer (EVC). The EVC is a measure of the benefit the customer can derive from the product (or service) and maximum price they are willing to pay for the same.?The Customers are smart and will quickly assess the value proposition of your product and what it means to them.????

Mistake:?Many Heads of Products make the mistake of not using the “Customer validation” phase of the product journey to assess the Economic Value to the Customer.?Instead, it is deferred to the “Customer Creation” phase when they are trying to rapidly capture the mindshare.??

The problem is, if the product’s EVC is not higher than the alternatives (or its perceived sense of value in the case of a new category), the customers will ignore it and not register it in their minds.?Many argue that they are using a well thought of “Price Discovery Strategy” or that “Price vis-a-vis the Value Proposition is a moving target”.?Though that might be true, the EVC can definitely be found out while the product is being validated. Good Product leaders will embed that into the validation phase so that they know what they are competing with while focusing on capturing the mindshare.

Tip#2: Find the Economic Value to the Customer (EVC) during the “Customer Validation phase”, not during the “Customer Creation phase”.

3. Involvement of Stakeholders.??

Capturing the mindshare is not just one battle… It is a continuous war to capture and retain the mindshare.?Many battles need to be fought with the help of different stakeholders.?Sometimes the product needs the help of the Engineering or Design team, sometimes the marketing and sales, sometimes the management, finance or the legal team.??

Mistake: In many organizations, all stakeholders are not updated periodically about the challenges, the efforts and the courses of actions for capturing the mindshare. ?The basic premise is that they need to be involved only on a need to know basis.?If there are many products in different stages of their journeys, it may even seem that the stakeholders may not have time to be abreast with all of them.??

This is a costly mistake.?The war to capture and retain the mindshare is never won in silos.?One can never really predict how the competitive landscape will change and which stakeholders may have the right suggestions for a win.??

If a Product leader hears something like: “If you had brought this to my team’s attention 3 months ago, we would not have seen this issue today.”, it is clear that there was some communication gap.?Unfortunately, this happens frequently in companies where a system and process for open and periodic communications are not in place.?It doesn’t need extensive & frequent meetings to fix this.?The company just needs to adopt any of the well known collaboration tools (there are many by the way), and ensure that the stakeholders are involved periodically.

Tip#3: Install a system and process for periodic and open communications with all stakeholders, about every product’s journey, in capturing and retaining the mindshare.?

In Conclusion:?

Capturing and retaining the mindshare is never an easy task.?There are a lot of things that need to happen, correctly & consistently over a long period of time, to be successful.?It is not the best product that wins the war of the minds to capture the mindshare.?It is the whole company that is executing a well thought out plan in unison, who also happen to have great products.?Never overestimate your product’s ability to capture the mindshare on its own and never underestimate the power of the customer to ignore it.?Most products don’t get a second chance to capture the mindshare of the customer.?Remember, you need to win the first few battles to stay in the game to win the war!

References:

Steve Blank's "Four Steps to Epiphany"?https://web.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf

Economic Value to the Customer: https://hbr.org/2015/05/a-refresher-on-economic-value-to-the-customer