Entrepreneurs who thoroughly understand potential buyers have a terrific opportunity to grow their businesses by building and selling superior products to meet customers' needs.
The best approach to developing award-winning solutions is to talk with customers to learn about what they want. This begins by learning what clients have been buying to meet their needs. Questions might include the customers' satisfaction level with the current offering, the price, where it was purchased and information about product features, warranties and support.
With this in hand, a customer-focused entrepreneur can build the first version of a compelling product. Potential customers can comment, allowing the entrepreneur to implement modifications. The goal is to repeat this process until the ultimate solution is in hand.
Savvy entrepreneurs generally adhere to a set of principles and best practices to achieve superlative product results. Parameters might include making a product that works faster or is less expensive.
With competitors in mind, entrepreneurs should also consider product features, costs, margins, pricing, service and support issues. The end goal will be to build and sell a highly differentiated product with superior advantages to current products.
Consider the success of these two entrepreneurs.
Amy Anderson of Mediconnect has built a company that sells a service to health and life insurance companies and law firms. Curt Geiger is the founder of the startup company Geiger Rig, which sells a consumer product to outdoor enthusiasts.
Both have exceptional companies that are flourishing with astonishing revenues. Why? Each is delivering exactly what their customers want.
Mediconnect's team of agents utilizes custom-built, proprietary technologies to retrieve, digitize, index, code and securely deliver thousands of medical records from millions of facilities and provider locations across six continents. These digitized records are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for immediate access by any authorized request from anywhere in the world.
Mediconnect's products meet the health information technology demands of marquee health, life insurance, and legal services companies with medical record retrieval, online documentation and exchange.
Each request to Anderson's business goes into a database of more than 1 million physicians and hospitals. As soon as the request enters Mediconnect's system, the retrieval staff begins contacting providers, requesting copies of medical records that they immediately scan, digitize, index and link to the client's system.
Mediconnect is successful because it has developed a service that surprises and delights its customers by delivering digitized medical information quickly, reliably, securely, accurately and at an exceptional price.
Outdoor enthusiasts need a source of clean water as they enjoy recreational activities. Geiger Rig's hydration pack and filter system is taking the country by storm with thousands of customers telling their friends how much they appreciate this innovative product.
Why is this new company soaring high? Why is it winning international new product awards? CEO Curt Geiger has the answer.
"I am making and selling products that customers have been waiting to buy. I am replacing the competition's products."
The Geiger Rig's patented advantage involves putting a container of water under pressure so it can spray its contents. Competing products require users to suck the water from their hydration packs, not an easy thing to do when racing along a country road.
Geiger Rig products are designed with the customer in mind. They have the features, benefits, accessories and warranties that are important to all serious recreational buyers.
There is much to learn from these two entrepreneurs on how to build a high-flying business. Entrepreneurs who rise above the rest do so by providing compelling products with extraordinary customer demand.
Do you have a comment or an example story to tell? Connect with me at @AskAlanEHall or send me a message at www.AlanEHall.com.
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