All That Glitters Is Not Gold
Buy my product… it’s 10X faster!
Sometimes speed matters. If money is infinite, then customers will be happy to throw it at the problem to reduce development time. Typically though, there are budget constraints. In that event, your product may be the cat’s pajamas if the challenge you are addressing is the long pole in the workflow. If you are improving an area that will not have a significant impact on the overall delivery schedule, you may not get the ringing endorsement that you are expecting from the prospect.
Buy my product… it’s 10X more accurate!
Sometimes accuracy matters. If you are designing an airplane and it is critical for the safety of passengers onboard for the airplane to not unexpectedly fall out of the sky, it’s worth it for R&D teams to heavily invest in realistic simulations and physical test environments to ensure the preservation of human life. In that event, your product may be the cat’s pajamas even if it adds complexity, cost or time to the development process. While happy meal toys provide much joy, this type of product is not for them.
Buy my product… it’s 10X cheaper!
Sometimes cost matters. If your product is seen as a commodity, price is a major factor. If you making #2 pencils for elementary school students, parents are not going to research the best product or most reliable. Same thing goes for selecting screws at the hardware store. Conversely, let’s say you are producing a minivan to be purchased by parents of growing families. If your product costs one tenth of the competition, your ideal customer is unlikely to believe the vehicle will protect their family in an accident as well as the incumbent.
Buy my product… it has 100 features!
Sometimes gadgets matter. This is why the Swiss army knife is great to have in a pinch. This is ideal for target user personas with a limited capacity for supplies when hiking, backpacking, or camping. Users typically prefer to use the tool best fit for their needs, such as a full size screwdriver, scissors, or bottle opener that is both ergonomic and performant. Constructing a feature matrix to compare your product to the competition is usually not a fruitful exercise, whether it’s done internally or externally. Customers don’t buy features, they seek help to solve problems.
Buy my product… it runs on GPUs!
Sometimes new technology matters. It’s impressive if a GPU has the equivalent performance of 1,000 CPUs. This may unlock a set of previously impossible applications. Instead of taking a week to reach a solution, users could have answers before lunch. It’s also possible that CPUs already perform good enough. Let’s say an operation took 1 hour on CPU and now takes less than 1 second on GPU. That’s beyond awesome if this operation can be run fully automated 500X every day. However, the impact would be vastly diminished if that calculation is performed only once per week and still requires a human 1 hour to fully analyze the results.
Buy my product… it has AI!
Sometimes AI matters. If there are not qualified radiologists in a remote region to interpret scans and AI can instantly read medical images better than 95% of all specialists, it’s a no-brainer decision for a medical provider to buy your product. If you have an AI that predicts which of five roasts a customer will enjoy most at their local coffee shop, the value may not be as apparent. The operational cost to the shop owner does not decrease and the revenue remains flat as the chosen coffee is the same quality as before. Your product would likely be trimmed if the customer’s business ever took a turn for the worse.