One of the first critical steps that you must take to a develop a successful product or program is to determine the ESSENCE of your product. The ESSENCE of your product is the “heart” or core of your product. You should be able to communicate this instantly in five words or less. Think about it from an “elevator” perspective. You’re in an elevator and you have 30 seconds to answer someone who asks you the question, WHAT DOES YOUR PRODUCT DO? Don’t forget, they’re really trying to determine the value or benefit that the product has for them. If you’re not clear about the ESSENCE of your product, you’ll wander in an aimless verbal maze until the elevator bell “clangs” and you’re communication comes to an abrupt end (and maybe the person you’re talking to breathes a deep sigh of relief).
Here’s why the ESSENCE of your product is important.
- The ESSENCE or core of your product contains, somewhere inside it the value proposition for the consumer. If you can’t reduce the ESSENCE to five words or less, you are unclear about where the product benefit lies and you’ll probably have a difficult time communicating it to your consumers.
- When you work on reducing your product concept down to it’s ESSENCE, you can discover where to go next to determine your unique selling proposition or point of difference from the competition. For example, if I think the ESSENCE of my new fitness product is as broad as fitness, I’ll lose. In today’s competitive attention scattered marketplace, I need to take the next step and determine something special about the type of fitness product that I’m offering, and that something special better be “special”. That next step begins to “flush out” the product point of difference and value proposition more thoroughly. For example, the ESSENCE might be portable fitness or entertaining fitness. The best case scenario is when your product ESSENCE is five words or less, crisp, unique, concise and compelling.
- In working with companies, groups and individuals on product ideas, I’ve found that if I toss out the question of product ESSENCE, I often get a very different answer from members of the same team that are working on the project. This is a problem, this means that different team members are probably on a different ”page” about the product benefits or the value proposition. This is especially prevalent in the early stages of product development. It then becomes important to create a deeper dialog among team members about the ESSENCE of the product. Once some level of agreement has been reached, the door to creative ideas around the ESSENCE has been opened wider and the possibilities for “drilling deeper” are greater.
PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX: Product Essence
Spend some time discovering the ESSENCE of products that are in your office or that you see on television commercials. See how quick you can get to the “bottom line” , heart, or core of a product. Move through the most general ESSENCE to the more specific ESSENCE. Pick a couple of products that you have done this with and ask some of your associates or friends how they view the ESSENCE of the product. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.