Finding Water In The Desert

Unleashing

Favorite Vacation Spot

Would you consider your organization a learning organization? Why or Why Not?

Organizations invest in products and services with the goal of
improving job performance in areas of critical strategy and goals

Your new products and services are valued to the extent to which they visibly and convincingly contribute to improved performance and reduce pain points.

When our learning opportunities consume resources (time & money) and fail to demonstrably improve performance, they are a wasteful and expendable.

Products and Services Are For Customers

The process for finding alternative revenue (new products or services) is messy!

The goal of an alternative revenue stream is creating something that's right for your customer.

It's about completely understanding what your customer feels, what they think, what they want.

Ultimately, it's about designing something
that sells!

Because that's why a product or service exists in the first place.

Creating a successful alternative revenue stream requires creativity, hard work and leadership.

Products and services
are made
BY people FOR people.

So where do you start when considering creating a new product or service?

Product/Service Creation Model

• Hunt & Synthesize

Product/Service Creation Model

• Hunt & Synthesize
• Build

Product/Service Creation Model

• Hunt & Synthesize
• Build
• Test & Tweak

Product/Service Creation Model

• Hunt & Synthesize
• Build
• Test & Tweak
• Launch, Monitor & Restart

Hunt & Synthesize

What do you think you're hunting for?

Hunting For

• Find audience (target market)

Are all your members your target market?

What happens when you try to create a product or service for everyone? ( Our service offers something for everyone)

We lose focus.

We water down the quality and usefulness of our product or service.

Not all your members are created equal!

Your customers are members and nonmebers!

Remember playing with a magnifying glass as a kid?

We could focus the sunlight & ignite a fire.

When we laser focus our resources on the right target market, we can have a huge impact and increase our revenue.

Hunting For

• Find audience (target market)
• Their pain

Hunting For

• Find audience (target market)
• Their pain
• The business case to reduce their pain

Hunting For

• Find audience (target market)
• Their pain
• The business case to reduce their pain
• The product

New products & services begin and end with the pain & joy of your customers.

How do you find the pain and joy of your target audience?

Doing the hard, laborious, unforgiving work of searching for pain and joy among your target audience guarantees you'll discover the need that is underfulfilled or overlooked by competitors. Scott Hurff

The act of uncovering people's pain, is the true source of new product & service success.

We have to avoid "Ego-First Development"

Creating a product or service based primarily on what you, your volunteer leader or boss want focuses the product in the wrong direction!

When this happens, the primary benefit is for someone to say we've created it! (Leaving a legacy?!?!)

You lose the ability to say what your product or service can do for others.

The key is to start observing what [your customers] actually
already do. Amy Hoy

You don't try to persuade a vegetarian to buy Omaha Steaks. You look at what they actually do in real life... Amy Hoy

What they read. What they discuss. The problems they identify. What they ask for help from each other. How they help each other. Amy Hoy

Where would you observe these potential customers?

At conferences, online, focus groups, phone conversations

Plot The Pain

Horizontal axis, track the pain, what they mention and how intense it is.

Vertical axis, represents the frequency of pain. How often did they mention it, etc.

Upper Right
Frequently occurring intense pain. If your product or service can alleviate this pain, you'll bring lots of joy.

Lower Right
Infrequent, yet intense pain. Nice to have products and services that act as a surprise.

Upper Left
Small pinpricks of pain that occur often. Products address small problems like administrative of those they label "it is what it is" creating little wins.

Lower Left
Little pain happening infrequently. May appear like an opportunity but actually is a low-opportunity product when you look at the big picture.

Four quadrants identify specific kinds of pain

Upper Right
Hate, fear, anxiety, overwhelmed, feeling stupid, stuck, wasting precious time.

Lower Right
Procrastination, self-doubt, guilt

Upper Left
Minor irritations, dislikes

Lower Left
Boredom

Creating a product or service for alternative revenue starts & ends with completely understanding your audience.

Requires painstaking firsthand research before you even start building the product!

In reality, you become an ethnographer.

Your job is to choose an audience, observe them and analyze their wants and needs.

Pain Matrix helps you make sense of your observations.

Build Your Product

Build your product by working backwards.

Amazon uses this WORKING BACKWARDS approach

The Project Owner

• Writes A Press Release
• FAQ Document
• Definition of Customer Experience
• User Manual

Press Release identifies what the product does & why it exists.

FAQ Document answers the questions someone might have after reading the press release.

Definition of customer experience is the story of what the customer sees and feels when they use the product, as well as relevant mockups to aid the narrative.

The user manual - what the customer references if they need to learn how to use the product or service.

If the press release is hard to write, then the product is probably
going to suck says
Amazon's Ian McAlliser

Regarding committees developing alternative revenue streams, products, services.

Follow Jeff Bezo's "Two Pizza Team" rule: your team should be small enough that two pizzas could feed them. No more than six people!

And only allow team members into the room if they're educated on the research you've conducted on your audience through the Pain Matrix.