When I first built Clarity.fm, it wasn’t a marketplace.
It was a call list app.
The concept was that I could add anyone to my list, with phone number and description, then it would robo call each person, reading to me the name of the person and reason for the call.
In short…
I was building a productivity tool, NOT a marketplace.
A strategic “face palm” that would greatly handicap the business’ potential for growth. (#2 on my list of inputs to build great product).
Even after I held a 300 person launch event in my hometown of Moncton, I refused to build search into the product.
What I did instead was build a page that listed all of the experts who were available for a call.
Stupid.
It wasn’t until after months of getting emails to our support team that I realized we needed to add a search feature.
What happened next was the beginning of what made Clarity a huge success.
We launched the feature and it doubled our growth.
What I break down in this week’s video are the 3 inputs (or categories) of feedback you have to leverage to build a great business that doesn’t ignore it’s customers AND builds real revenue.
Over the next two years, we leveraged this framework to help our product roadmap strategy…
… each team member brought ideas and categorized accordingly:
1) Market and Needs: Is this something the customers are asking for in numbers? What are they expecting that we don’t offer?
2) Business Goals: What features do we need to add (like search) to help the business grow and succeed?
3) Key Features/Differentiators: What makes our product different, or offers a product hook that we can lead with to differentiate ourselves from existing solutions?
Understanding each of these buckets allowed us to quickly sort and build a product roadmap that would deliver the traction we needed to grow.
So my question to you is…
Do you have a way to capture & categorize customer feedback?
What about the input from your team?
How is it managed?
If you don’t, create one now…
If you had that in place, how would it change the way you build your product or service today?
Leave a comment below with your answer!
Have an amazing week!
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Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.
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