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Problems You Want to Have: Generate Demand Through Your Product
Wouldn’t you love your customers to bring new product opportunities to you? Imagine a scenario where your product not only solves existing problems but also sparks a wave of enthusiasm and new demands from your users. These are the problems you want to have–the delightful challenges that signify a profound level of product-market fit and pave the way for growth.
Problems you want to have–the delightful challenges that signify a profound level of product-market fit and pave the way for growth.
Understanding Problems You Want to Have
In the vast landscape of product management, problems come in various shapes and sizes, each with its own implications for product strategy and development. One framework often used to categorize these problems is the Kano model. According to the Kano model, problems can be classified into three main categories:
Basic Needs: These are the fundamental requirements that must be met for a product to be considered acceptable. Basic needs are typically straightforward and expected by users. Failing to address these needs can lead to dissatisfaction and, ultimately, rejection of the product.
Performance Needs: Performance needs encompass features and attributes that directly impact user satisfaction and differentiate a product from its competitors. Meeting performance needs can lead to increased user satisfaction and loyalty, while exceeding them can result in delight and a competitive edge.
Excitement Needs: Excitement needs are the unexpected delights and innovations that captivate users and surpass their expectations. These features go beyond mere functionality and create a sense of novelty and delight. While not essential for basic product functionality, excitement needs can drive user engagement, word-of-mouth referrals, and long-term loyalty.
Over time, excitement needs become basic needs after being well-established on the market, becoming a basic expectation.
Within the realm of the Kano model, problems you want to have reside in the domain of excitement needs. Unlike basic needs, which are necessary for product viability, and performance needs, which differentiate your product from competitors, problems you want to have represent opportunities for innovation and growth.
Spot The Right Problems that Signal Product-Market Fit
Identifying problems you want to have is a key indicator of achieving product-market fit. These are the issues that go beyond basic user needs and performance expectations, signaling a deep alignment between your product and the market. To spot them, product managers must closely monitor user feedback, engagement metrics, and market trends. Look for signs of increasing enthusiasm, demand for new features, and user-generated innovations. Community forums, workarounds and add-ons provided by the community, and products your partners have built on top of your offering allow to identify the sweet spots for expansion. By listening attentively to your users and staying attuned to market dynamics, you can uncover these hidden gems that pave the way for exponential growth. Each problem presents an opportunity to not only enhance your product but to redefine your entire business landscape.
Strategies for Success: Tackling Problems You Want to Have
As a seasoned product manager, navigating through the realm of problems you want to have is both an art and a science. Here’s a comprehensive guide to unraveling the mysteries and harnessing the potential of these delightful challenges.
Embrace Thorough Analysis
Before diving headfirst into the fray, it’s imperative to conduct a thorough analysis of the newfound challenges. Delve deep into user data, conduct market research, and unearth the underlying motivations driving the evolving user behavior. By peeling back the layers of complexity, you gain invaluable insights that lay the foundation for strategic decision-making.
Seize the Opportunity for Growth
Problems you want to have are not merely hurdles to overcome; they are stepping stones to unparalleled growth. Embrace these challenges as opportunities to extend the boundaries of your product ecosystem. Whether it’s introducing new features, exploring untapped markets, or forging strategic partnerships, each problem serves as a gateway to new horizons.
Foster Innovation and Adaptability
Innovation is the key to staying ahead of the curve. Encourage a culture of experimentation and creativity within your team, empowering them to explore unconventional solutions to emerging challenges. Embrace adaptability as a guiding principle, allowing your product to evolve in tandem with the shifting tides of user needs and preferences. Reserve time for your team to pick up those new problems, and leverage early adopters or an experimentation framework. A significant number of those problems will just be moonshots, but staying persistent and open, you will find the one opportunity that will boost your product and significantly influence your market positioning.
Strive for Sustainable and Impactful Solutions
While it’s tempting to chase fleeting trends and quick wins, the true mark of success lies in crafting sustainable solutions that withstand the test of time. Don’t just become incrementally better, instead chase to become fundamentally different, as Jag Duggal, CPO of Nubank, reiterates on Lenny’s Podcast. As you navigate through the realm of problems you want to have, prioritize initiatives that lay the groundwork for long-term viability and scalability.
Don't just become incrementally better, instead chase to become fundamentally different.
Expanding Horizons: Generating Demand and Scaling Opportunities
One of the most exhilarating aspects of problems you want to have is the potential for bottom-up adoption and demand generation, particularly in B2B environments. Here’s how you can leverage these opportunities to unlock further growth and drive success:
Demand Generation and Upselling
Harness the enthusiasm and engagement of your existing user base to drive demand generation and upselling opportunities. Encourage user advocacy through referral programs, incentivize upgrades or add-on purchases, and leverage data-driven insights to identify and target high-value segments for expansion.
Bottom-Up Adoption in B2B
In B2B environments, bottom-up adoption can be a powerful catalyst for growth. Empower individual users or teams within customer organizations to champion your product, showcasing its value and driving widespread adoption from the ground up. Provide resources and support to facilitate seamless integration and usage, and leverage success stories to garner executive buy-in and scale opportunities within the organization.
Scaling Through Customer Organizations
As adoption grows within customer organizations, seize the opportunity to scale your impact by expanding across departments, business units, or even geographies. Identify key stakeholders and influencers within target accounts, tailor messaging and value propositions to address their specific needs and pain points, and cultivate relationships to drive adoption and advocacy at scale.
Conclusion: Embracing the Journey of Product Management
Problems you want to have serve as the catalysts for expansion and evolution. These delightful challenges not only signify product-market fit but also present unique opportunities to scale your business organically within customer organizations.
By embracing problems you want to have, product managers unlock the potential for bottom-up growth, where individual users or teams within customer organizations become champions of your product. This grassroots advocacy creates a ripple effect, driving widespread adoption and demand generation from within, ultimately leading to a multiplicator effect.
As adoption spreads across departments, business units, and geographies, problems you want to have transform into powerful engines of growth, propelling your business to new heights. By harnessing the enthusiasm and engagement of your users, you not only accelerate user acquisition but also foster a culture of innovation and collaboration within customer organizations.