From Concept to Viable Product

I. How to Validate Your Product Idea From the Outset 

Most professionals who decide to add a digital product to their staple services make the mistake of building a product first, then trying to sell it. However there’s a much better way.

👉 Sell it before you create it.

This ensures the demand for the product is affirmed from the outset and that you’re highly unlikely to invest valuable time into developing a solution only to find your target audience is not receptive to it. 

3 Ways to Validate Your Consulting Product Before You Build

1. Launch a pre-sale campaign targeting your network
Reach out to your existing clients, email list, or LinkedIn audience and pitch the concept of your product. Offer a beta or early-release version at a lower price to secure the early buyers.

2. Run a live pilot first
If you’re creating an AI-powered planning tool or a self-paced course, test it first by running a live version with a small group. This ensures that your process works before you automate it.

3. Use the time-honored social proof & waitlist strategy
Run Google Search or Facebook advertisements or use a link-in-bio on your social channels to drive traffic to a simple landing page describing your product and collect waitlist signups before launching. If there’s few signups, the market has spoken; your idea is in need of further refinement or it doesn’t solve a sufficiently urgent and important problem for your target audience.

The salient point here is...If you can’t pre-sell or validate interest before you build, it’s a sign you need to adjust your positioning before you commit yourself to further development.

II. The Minimum Viable Productised Offer (MVPO) 

So you’ve validated your product before making a significant commitment to it. Now it’s perfectly understandable that you would like to build a high quality product to make your idea a reality from the outset. However focusing on building a premium solution from the earliest stage may not always be necessary or desirable. Why?

Because the best digital solutions are often a product of iterative development.   

Beginning with an MVPO is a decent compromise that allows for incremental improvements to be made on the basis of feedback from your target market. The MVPO is a simple but valuable version of your envisaged product that solves a burning pain point your customer profile is experiencing with minimal delay.

The MVPO Formula Comprises:

1. A single, clear transformation (a high-impact outcome)
2. Minimal effort to deliver & consume (the essential details for the client)
3. A format that’s easy to create and iterate upon

Examples of an MVPO across a range of disciplines

1. A life coach decides to offer a dynamic tool that combines client input data (such as their goals, habits and achievements) with AI hyperpersonalization to create a personalized success roadmap. The tool could provide tailored advice, track progress and suggest micro-accomplishments based on periodic analysis of updated user input.

2. A consultants perceives that her client base will be receptive to a dynamic business strategy creation tool that offers real-time business strategy insights according to user input, relating to their industry, objectives and current challenges.

3. A real estate agent decides to offer a comprehensive playbook as part of a gated content strategy which features advice aimed at first home buyers, from financing to final closing. This could be complemented with other interactive tools within the same package such as mortgage affordability calculators.

Once your MVPO is validated, you can expand and refine it—but the goal is to launch quickly, get feedback, and then iterate in a similar fashion to the traditional AGILE software development process but without the associated cost and complexity.

III. Building an MVPO That Incorporates Dynamic Personalization

When you’re in the MVPO frame of mind a course or guide is often what you may consider the best way to productise your expertise. While this delivery format remains  effective, many clients now expect more from a product than information for their passive consumption, and the best way to meet this demand is to provide an interactive solution. With interactivity, clients are able to implement knowledge in a manner particular to their individual circumstances and this provides value even the best course or guide will struggle to replicate.

An example from Finance:  An accountant could offer an AI-powered Tax Strategy tool that calculates optimal tax-saving strategies for clients based on their income, expenses, and business structure.

The bottom line is that Productised, dynamic AI solutions:

(I) offer a high level of personalisation,

(ii) are harder to replicate,

(iii) increase value perception.

For these reasons and more, if your approach to business lends itself to the use of this format, it’s very much worthy of your consideration.

Action Steps

1. Decide on your MVPO format – What’s the simplest version of your product concept you can launch that articulates clearly and distinctly the unique value you provide and creates a point of difference relative to your immediate competition.

2. Pre-sell or make inquiries to validate demand – Use your network, a pilot program, or a waitlist before building to ensure strong demand exists

3. Determine if AI Products can enhance your offer – How can automation & interactivity improve your product’s value?