Why does the product fail?

We all know that the success of a product is accidental, and failure is inevitable. So what are the reasons for our failures? How can we avoid them? In fact, the answer can be found in the market: any new idea has a 90% failure rate.

First, the success of the product is determined by the market!

I often wonder why most of the new products released on the market end in failure? There are common causes of success, and there must be common causes of failure.

After doing the product myself and interviewing a lot of people and learning about their failures, I found that a clear failure pattern gradually emerged, and most projects failed because they were launched, operated, or advanced. Let me analyze each of these three reasons one by one.

1. Failed due to positioning

This is usually the case when sales, marketing, or distribution investments associated with a new product fail to achieve the necessary exposure or availability in the target market.

In other words, there is no clear positioning of the product. For those who should need or want your products and services, your target market group, many of them either don't know that your products and services exist, know very little, or just want them but can't buy them.

You may have the best idea ever, it's been executed, and it's the perfect solution to a big problem, but if you can't get the product available to reach your target market, it's going to fail.

2. Failure due to operations

This is usually the case because your new product is not designed to meet the minimum requirements of user expectations, functionality, or reliability.

For example, useless features, pages with a poor user experience, restaurants with delicious food but poor service, and mobile apps that keep crashing.

You may be able to attract some early users to buy or use your products and services, but if you don't put your ideas into place, the public opinion will eventually dissipate and failure will inevitably occur.

3. Failure due to creativity

When this happens, it's usually because people aren't interested in your idea. They know your product and service, understand it, and recognize it for doing everything you promise to do reliably and efficiently.

And they can easily find these products and services, try them out, place an order, but they just don't like it.

These are the three reasons I have summarized, and this answer also makes me a little entangled, so who is to blame?

When a project fails, people blame each other.

For example, if a product project fails, the CEO blames the product director, the product planning is not in place, the product blames the operation and promotion is not in place, the operation blames the technical service architecture for too many bugs, and so on.

In the same way, if a restaurant fails, people blame the chef, the waiter or the marketing team, or even the interior designer. But when I asked the interviewees to put aside the finger-pointing and try to find out the deeper root cause of the project's failure, they found that most of the people involved in the project were actually capable and even quite good enough to carry out their design, build, marketing, and sales responsibilities.

They may also have some problems with start-up and operations, but these are not the root causes.

Putting aside the blame, most people have a similar epiphany: "At the end of the day, we did a great job of designing and marketing the product, but not enough people wanted or needed it." After dispelling the fog of accusations, a root cause gradually emerged: the premise!

A small percentage of products fail in the market because they didn't do a good job of launching or building the product, while most products fail because they have a problematic product idea.

We live in a myriad of expectations, not believing in failure, but also allowing failure

When the market feedback is lower than expected or even diametrically opposed to expectations, we can call it a "market failure"

Let's consider a high-frequency interview question: What kind of product do you think is a successful product?

I think many people will answer: to meet the needs of users, beautiful interface, no lagging, excellent after-sales service..... it is best to make money for the company.

This kind of answer can only give 60 points, and the most important thing is whether you can make money.

But whether you can make money or not is not determined by the product, but by the market. However, there is only one criterion for judging the success of the market, and that is: whether it can make money.

It's important to note that even if some products don't make money, they may be successful by other criteria.

For example, for a movie, even if it receives high praise, as long as it is a dismal box office, it is still considered a market failure, especially for those who have invested in the film and expect to make a profit. Everything that should be done can be done and done the best, but it doesn't sell well and can't become a profitable business, and such a new product may be considered an engineering miracle, but it still counts as a market failure.

Second, the truth of the market: any new idea has a 90% failure rate

I haven't found any industry where most new products have sustained success, and that's reasonable, because if there is such an industry, it means that there is endless demand and resources in the industry or market, but this is obviously not possible.

1. What are the ingredients for market success?

The answer is: the key to success.

What are the key elements? Elements are the circumstances, facts or events that have an impact on the outcome or output;

Key elements are the elements that an idea must be done correctly or done correctly in order to succeed in the market.

Most outcomes and outputs depend on the addition of a number of key elements, and success requires that all of them are done correctly.

The explanation is too complicated, directly above the formula:

Correct Ax Correct Bx Correct Cx Correct D....= Market Success

Think about it, if a restaurant wants to succeed in the market, what does it need to do?

First of all, we need a skilled chef, which we call (A), but also find the right thriving location (B), qualified waiters (C), good suppliers (D), strict financial management (E), and perfect operations (F), etc.

It is also important to demand key factors beyond the boss's control, such as the overall market economic environment, competitors, and customer reviews.

The above are the key factors for a hotel's success, and of course, even if you do both, you may not necessarily be able to make money.

I'm talking only about the key elements of success.

In addition, it only takes any single critical element to go wrong and it is enough to cause the project to fail.

This formula is multiplication, not addition.

Correct A× Correct B× Correct C× Wrong D× Correct E×...... = Failure.

Correct A× Wrong B× Correct C× Correct D× Correct E×...... = Failure

Remember the multiplication formula you learned in elementary school, where any number x zero is equal to zero.

For example, this restaurant is doing so well, and suddenly one day it was revealed that the staff actually steamed steamed buns for customers with their feet, so no matter how good this restaurant is in front of it, netizens have to wait for it to close.

2. Hypothetical products: What is a hypothetical product?

Sitting in an office, there is no data to back up a product that comes out of thin air.

I think most products exist at this stage, and the perception of the product is the construction of what you think you think.

The boss asked you to make an app that can help the elderly be safe, then you will directly think that this app can measure various physical indicators for the elderly, call the hospital, shop online, study, etc.

As for the logic behind the application, in what scenarios does the user use it, how often do users use this product, and can the product meet the market demand for profit?

All I have to do is to deduce the requirements from abstract to concrete, and nothing else is for me to consider.

The same is true of the boss, who thinks he has a great idea, such as a new way to solve the human energy crisis. So An couldn't hold back the joy in his heart and communicated with the team with creativity.

You share your idea with everyone, including your family, friends, partners, investors, and potential clients, but most of the time, you don't understand your idea, and all you come to the conclusion is: don't dream, why don't you do what others do? This idea is stupid, let's just work as planned!

At first, you can resist the pressure as much as possible, and you can remember a famous saying: "If people are suspicious of you, you can still be confident" and you pick yourself up and move on.

After a lot of blows, you start to accept some skepticism and ridicule, and eventually, you feel like you're giving up on the idea and thinking it's funny that you can believe that it can work.

About a year later, you learn from the internet that someone has managed to implement an idea that is very similar to the one you came up with. And this time the victim is you.

It's such a drama ....

The new product you imagine and the way you use it may be completely different from what other people imagine after listening to your introduction, and that's the root of the problem.

Limitations in people's mindsets, preferences, and perceptions can distort their understanding of your creativity. Not only will people understand the idea differently than you, but they will also judge it based on their own unique worldview.

So how do you find the real market and guarantee that it is extremely correct?

A: Don't dream, if there were a world, there would be no poor.

So what can be done to give it a go?

3. Data, data, data!

Data trumps opinions: A key rule that data must be used and practiced to improve an idea's probability of success in the market, without exception. Don't base your products on opinions, base them on market data, and not just some old data or someone else's data, but your own data.

What do you mean?

We usually do market research, first of all, you have to think clearly, the purpose of your research is to really find the real demand, or to meet the boss's research.

To meet the boss's research, you only need to cater to the needs of the leader, and then show your research results to the point, and this result only needs to prove one point, that is, the boss's decision is extremely correct!

If you are the boss yourself, then you must grasp the cutting-edge, authenticity, and relevance of the research.

Leading-edge means that you collect first-hand information and can ensure its authenticity, and then relate the results to your own product and then make decisions.

Again, I propose some methods just for reference:

• How do you know if the product you're building is what the market needs?
• Have you done market research?
• What kind of market research methodology do you use?
• How well have you used these market research methods before?
• How much money do you spend on research?
• How much truth can be maintained with the data from the survey results?

Failure is the first step to success, in general, an idea, incomparably perfect, but it just has no market, then it cannot succeed!

Author: Wang Xiuqin, WeChat public account: There is a hole in the product, senior product director of smart product industry and SaaS enterprise.

This article was originally published by @王秀琴 on Everyone is a Product Manager and is not allowed to be reproduced without permission.

The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0.

The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.