The business must solve a compelling customer problem

by Dan Swanson

It is quite easy to come up with what seem like good ideas for new products or services. But when you are starting out you should focus on products and services that solve a compelling customer problem. If you do, they will be more willing to pay more, tolerate early product bugs, work with you in expanding follow on products or services; and provide a terrific word of mouth marketing set of referrals for you.

One of my clients was Beckett Publications. They were the Wall Street Journal for publishing the current prices of sports cards like baseball cards. As the Internet got going and especially when people started selling cards over eBay there was a huge problem that developed, the people selling the cards, overstated the quality of the card and the buyers were almost always disappointed when it arrived. The leaders at Beckett realized that this could be solved by creating an independent grading service where the card could be analyzed, given a quality grade and encased in a hard plastic container to prevent any damage to the card. If this service was developed with quality and had consistency no matter how many times the card was sent through the system, they could solve this problem. They set up this division of their company, created a certification program for training the graders and begin to let people know their service was available. It began to grow like crazy going from no card grading to tens of thousands of cards a month in just a short period of time.

Solve a big problem and get a big reward.

Dan Swanson, entrepreneur and business coach. Dan has started 12 of his own companies and helped another 25 startups. He has helped raise over $200 million in debt and equity capital and helped create over 275 products and services. He has had over 18 different coaches in his life and has coached over 200 business men and women. He can be contacted by phone at 972-675-1413 or by email at mailto:dan@iq2.com.