Do You Have a Winning Product Idea? (6 Ways To Find Out)

It’s easy to come up with a new product idea.

Heck, a drizzle of cold water in the shower can help you think of 10 things to sell for your business. But that doesn’t mean those ideas will be successful.

In reality, thousands of new products are launched worldwide, every single week. Yet only a fraction gets enough attention to be considered winning products.

Now unless your product idea turns out to be a breakout success, you’ll have to know the factors at play to determine if your idea is a winner.

That will involve a lot of market research, product contemplation, and competitor analysis.

*sigh*

Sometimes, we could only wish that there was a tarot reading solution out of this predicament. While there is no crystal ball to see if your product will succeed, here we listed 6 ways to find out if you have a winning product idea.

Say You Have A Product Idea, What Now?

Winning product ideas don’t just happen. 

They’re not thoughts that smack you in the head while you aimlessly stare into the abyss. Product ideas that bring home the bacon take dedication, focus, and hard work. 

You may have a product idea. But have you gone through the effort of seeing if it’s what your clients clamor for?

Keep in mind that winning products are those that are loved by your audience because they satisfy a real felt need through pain and pleasure points. As a result, new products can increase your business’ validity and add to your revenue.

Without an amazing set of products and services, you can only hope for a short-term lift, even with the best marketing. Building long-term competitive success for your business means focusing on enriching whatever it is you sell.

So, if you’re an HVAC contractor looking to install more germicidal light systems, you won’t settle for one that only eliminates molds and microbes. You’ll want germicidal lights that do just that but also has controls for UV-C intensity to protect the household users.

That’s what having a winning product or service means.

At Wizard of Sales®, we help residential home service businesses market their winning products and services so they can leverage their market share. 

Book a demo with us today to learn more!

What Makes a “Winning” Product Idea?

Now that’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?

Inventing the best high-demand products to sell for your business will not only boost your brand awareness, but increase your sales, close more deals, and ultimately, ensure your company’s legacy.

The 6 powerful guidelines below won’t teach you how to transform any product idea into a winner. Instead, they’re meant to inspire you on how to segregate winning products from your long list of ideas.

1. It Must Solve a Problem 

There must be an existing problem that customers have expressed a need for. 

This is where most businesses fail on product ideas. Often they create preemptive solutions first and then find problems to solve. While you may get lucky, it’s not the optimal way to go about solving a problem.

In this context, you can’t call your new product a ‘winning idea if it doesn’t address an actual concern from your customers. Many products miss the mark because businesses fail to understand the underlying problem. 

While surveys, forums, community observations, and competitor research will give you insight into the market’s problems, another great way is through “discovery calls.” Discovery calls are interviews specifically designed for you to understand your buyers’ real felt needs through pain and pleasure points so you can craft the best winning solution.

2. Should Have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Your unique selling proposition, as the name suggests, is the element that sets your business apart from your competition. 

For example, your USP could be offering a 50-year non-prorated warranty for your metal roofing products, just like one of our clients. While most people see this as a means to satisfy the need for performance and durability, the savvy seller uses it to deliver a cost of ownership story that makes their roof a lower price not the cheaper price. 

3. Under Profitable Product Category

Discovery calls are meant to do two things: understand the entirety of a problem and learn if the problem is even worth solving. 

Apart from meeting your customer’s concerns, considering your company’s profitability is equally as important. It’s not worth investing your money, energy, and time on products that won’t generate sufficient income.

Don’t waste valuable resources if the cost of developing a product idea or stocking up on a product outweighs its potential revenue.

4. It Must Have Good Demand

According to Business Wire, the best way to successfully enter a market, say when introducing a new product idea or a service, is through demand analysis. This technique helps you see which high-demand markets you can add to your company’s offerings. Moreover, a demand analysis helps you understand if you can generate expected profits if you expand your operations.

In other words, double down on solving problems that are highest on your customer’s priority list, otherwise, they won’t be interested and you’ll waste resources.

5. Something to Be Proud Of

Consider the last Facebook ad you saw and clicked on, and ask yourself why you did it. Is it only because of the product or service, or because the company did well in advertising?

Winning products or services should be things you’re proud to let the world know about. And being proud directly translates to your willingness to allocate resources that will inform the world of your winning product idea a.k.a. advertising. 

If you’re a new industry sprout or you’re selling a new product, chances are most of your sales will come from online advertising. Sometimes, marketing makes the difference between a winning product and what’s not. So don’t be afraid to spend ads to test how your audience warms up to your product or service idea.

But if you don’t have the sales skills to acquire customers for your products, pick up the phone and let us do it for you.

6. Worth the Splurge

The only people who can validate your product ideas are your customers. If you learn that there’s high demand for your product, expect that they’ll be willing to pay a premium for it. But the cost of your products and services must always coincide with the value you’re giving. 

If the perceived value of your product idea is low, then customers will be reluctant to pay a premium, especially if there are alternatives. That’s where good marketing enters. The craft of a marketing professional is to increase your product’s perceived value to make it superior against the competition. Or in the case of a novel product, to make purchasing worth the splurge.

So all in all, a high-demand product (or service) partnered with a solid USP and good marketing to back it up is certainly a winner — and buying customers would gladly oblige.

What if Your Potential Investors Reject Your Product Idea?

As mentioned above, only the market can tell if you have a worthwhile product idea. Even if potential investors reject your proposal, they don’t invalidate the relevance of your idea so long as your data tells you the market demand is solid. 

A rejection from investors in some way is meant to help you. So the best course of action is to thank them and ask if they’d be willing to share the reason why they rejected your proposal. They might have some input you failed to consider. In this case, the best solution is to take their suggestions and refine your proposal for the next investors you’ll approach.

The bottom line is that only the market can verify if you have a winning product idea, investors cannot. If you fail to secure funding, you just have to look for other options to get it built.

Bring Your New Product Idea to Life

Coming up with new product ideas is easy enough. Picking out the winners from the obscurity and creating them is what requires the real effort on your part.

If you have a product idea you’d like to develop or your’re thinking of adding some new winning products to your inventory, test it out. Seek your target market’s opinion to see how they warm up to your product idea. You can conduct surveys or discovery calls for that matter. Alternatively, you can build landing pages and spend ads to see how much traffic you can drive and assess your customer acquisition cost. All of these are building blocks that will let you know if you have a solid product idea or not.

And once you do, we at Wizard of Sales® are dedicated to helping residential home service businesses sell their winning products and services. 

If that’s what you want too, book a demo with us today!