Developing True Solutions – Not Product Development

Typically in the Form phase of the Customer Intimacy Journey, you will develop the initial True Solutions™ sets and take them to market. Like product development, a framework and process exists to define, develop and take your Solutions to market in a deliberate and defined manner. This building block is key to your Intimacy Engine™ success, so it is important to recognize early on what is different about developing True Solutions™ compared to typical product development.

So what is different?

Typically in the Form phase of the Customer Intimacy Journey, you will develop the initial True Solutions™ sets and take them to market. Like product development, a framework and process exists to define, develop and take your Solutions to market in a deliberate and defined manner. This building block is key to your Intimacy Engine™ success, so it is important to recognize early on what is different about developing True Solutions™ compared to typical product development.

So what is different?

Let’s answer this from two points of view: The Market, or external view and the Company, or internal view.

Buyers of True Solutions™ progress through a series of business decisions before deciding and committing to spend large sums of money to implement significant change to their business. I call this the customer journey and it is your job to provide everything they need along the way. Therefore, from the Market/Customer Point of View, solution development is driven by the following actions:
 

  1. Interacting with the market (customers) quickly and spending less time defining it up front. In other words, define and validate the Customer Journey early in the process. To me, this is often the most difficult brick wall to break through for those companies in the Form Phase.
  2. Understanding that your customer’s Solution inspection is on the significance of the problem or opportunity, not what the product will or will not do (i.e. feature and functionality).
  3. Designing Solution components to be modular to meet the needs of your customer’s specific and unique problem/situation.
  4. Designing Solution components to help your company understand the customer environment to better scope, design and cost the solution implementation and manage customer expectations.

Solution development process phases and activities are the same and repeatable, but the final output and who builds it is different per solution. Therefore, from the Internal/Company View – Solution development is driven by:
 

  1. Cross functional teams that possess customer, industry, product, business management, and marketing/sales expertise. The intensity of resource involvement varies throughout different phases of development.
  2. Piloting Solutions prior to a broader launch is the norm. The speed to pilot must be fast to get to market quickly to learn and make changes. Note that you might even “kill” the effort at this point, which takes discipline but is crucial so you are not wasting scarce, valuable resources.
  3. Launch activities are primarily focused on training and coaching the specific solution aspects (e.g. who is the target buyer and what/how we communicate the specific Idea) to sales and delivery resources. Note this is not a “check the box” process of completing documents then throwing the book over the fence to sales.
  4. True Solutions™ typically include products and services, but both are not always required.

In summary, a well crafted and defined solution development process allows for continuous improvement, incorporating both inward facing and market based criteria to ensure alignment with the target customer’s buying decision process, your customer engagement model and solution delivery. It is repeatable and has objective toll gates along the way.

Lastly, speed and momentum matter – the window of opportunity for both you and your customers only stays open for so long. It’s critical to instill a sense of urgency in the teams involved.