Trend Setting in Business

Businesspeople are in business to see the change they want to bring to the world. They know what you want to achieve and walked some steps to achieve that. Two things might happen. Their business might get attention and a lot of customers may love it and adopt it very fast. It is also possible that, despite all the efforts and endeavors, they are nowhere close to their goal. There is nothing pleasing than seeing your products or services being appreciated and gain traction. The products we got from Microsoft, Apple and Google, Facebook are examples of this. They succeeded in being the mainstream of hardware, software, search engine and social media. They set the trend of their business. Whereas companies like Netscape, Yahoo, Myspace failed to achieve what the former companies achieved. This is not just because of the quality of the products they offered us but their failure to be the trend setters. What is trend setting? It just means one thing. It is inventing the future. The products and services you create should be built experimentally and incrementally to achieve this. You have to make sure that what you offered is here to stay. What do companies need to be the trend setter then?

Understanding, Articulating Business Idea
What determines the success of a given business and its products and services depends on the level of business idea understanding and articulating. Ideas can be born from anywhere. These ideas that come to mind can’t be multimillion dollar ideas at first thought. You have to stay obsessed with them and think about them very well. Put everything that comes to your mind on paper. Think about ways of making it better and better every day. Adjust and shape it until you are satisfied with it.

Being clear about your products and services is the first step to win over your competition and win the market. It has the potential to make any business a success even before its launch. But a businessperson has to think about how to differentiate his/her products. Setting goals for products and services is the first task. Google achieved the number one spot in the search engines war because it offered internet users with better and relevant search results. That is because of the way the search engine is wrote and how it is programmed to work.

Understanding Customers
Naturally, businesspeople think of their products and services from their own perspectives. They do this to solve the problems they see. This may bring a solution to the problem. But it won’t be even close to that product customers are going to love. That’s why a businessperson has to put herself in her customers’ shoes. Understanding customers very well, knowing how they think and getting into their mind is very important in this regard. That will give the answers about what they want from a given product or service.

Customers are never going to say no to products and services if you give them what they want. They will be early adopters, fans and even evangelists of your business. Products that talk to customers’ needs and wants are always winners in the market. Don’t stop to address and answer their questions. Even try to give them assignments on how they would love your future products and services look like. That will prove you the market leader position.

Experiment, Adjust, Test and Repeat
After knowing what you want and what your customers want, you have come up with the product. And still something is not right. No one seems satisfied. What is wrong? One thing is missing. It revolves around with the way a businessperson solved his and customers’ needs. There are lots of ways of solving problems. Limit oneself with the first solution able to come up with is not advisable. Businesspeople have to experiment with their team by listing and trying out all the possibilities. Then, adjusting the product and coming up with demos and samples proceeds. Test them with selected customers of every target groups and repeating this process again and again, will help to come up with the perfect product and service.

Neat and elegant products and services are the result of such process. Customers always find it very simple to know the difference a given products have over the others. Help the people in your team to come up with new ways of doing things. Always think about how your product can be able to evolve. The products of apple are ideal example to this. How they evolved from the iPod to the iPad, from the apple mac to the mac book and the versions of iPhone is amazing.

Keep It Simple
The best solutions are always the easiest ones. You may think of a lot of features packed in to one product. That is not a problem. You may also think to solve lots of problems. That is not a problem either. What you should think about is to make your products simple and elegant. It is possible to achieve this by listing out all the things you want on your product. Try to experiment with them and put them in a structured way. You may add new ones, or you may get rid of some. Come up with simple ways of incorporating these in the product.

Don’t make the user find it hard to use the product. Make it easier for them to accomplish what they want from the product. Make it usable. Follow common practices and standards. But don’t forget to solve it in a different and simple way. Customers love world class products. Put all your smarts in them. You are going to be impressed with what you’ll be able to achieve.

Continue Innovating
With this capitalist market where competition is fierce and disruptive products are made available every day, innovation is the only way to stay ahead in the market. So, businesspeople should enable their talented employees to work on ways of improving their products and solving newer problems. Customers will never stop to love and look for newer products. Come up with newer and newer ways of bringing newer and newer solutions. Remember, making a given company a place of innovation and experiment where great ideas are born is important. Businesspeople have to always take their industry and business forward.

7th Year • Dec.16 – Jan.15 2019 • No. 69