Products Solve Problems

Clear solutions get specified.

In the hustle of everyday business, it’s easy to forget that products exist to solve problems. To stay relevant in a shifting market, manufacturers must refocus product strategy on customer needs. Products are answers, so be clear about the questions.

A standard set of customer behaviors and offerings defines any marketplace. Companies view themselves as competitors when they offer similar products and services to the same customer group, obligating them to position themselves differently in the eyes of their customers.

Product categories and customer needs are relatively stable when an industry is growing. It’s common for competitors to enter the marketplace and otherwise see growth simply by being a fast follower. Everyone is buying side chairs, so we can sell one, too, if we work hard to offer the right price and with the right features. What gets lost is why the product exists in the first place. More importantly, companies lose sight of the real customer problem and how it may have changed.

People want Holes, not Drills

In a sea of competitors, you expect a focus on product features, price, and placement. Expected marketing conventions can work in a stable, growing market. However, as Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt famously asked us to imagine, it’s vital for a company that makes hand drills that people don’t really want drills; they want holes. The drill business is at risk if a competitor invents a new way to create holes that doesn’t involve drills – especially if it is cheaper, faster, or otherwise better. When a category is upended, product features can become irrelevant.

You can’t simply ask customers what they want; you must discover what they need. While market research can help you understand competitors and customer trends, user research seeks to identify deeper motives and nascent patterns, often expressed as unmet, unarticulated needs. No one asked for a fancier, much more expensive telephone, yet we all carry smartphones today. Just as technology innovation has enabled marketplace competitors to re-envision the phone, eventually, all products need to be re-imagined.

Direct product competitors are only one threat. Marketplace alternatives or different industries that serve the same function or solve the same problem for customers are often overlooked, but can present a significant strategic threat. Alternatives to commercial furnishings include shared office solutions like WeWork, commercial real estate enveloping the buying process, and someone’s home office. Non-traditional competitors can take business just like regular industry players.

Over time, changing customer problems often diverge from standard product solutions. Customers frequently change more quickly than the organizations that hope to serve them, so keeping up with customers is among the most critical jobs. Leaders will stay ahead of what customers need.

Customer Knowledge

Peopledesign research shows that 74% of the customer knowledge commercial furnishing bases its decisions on is anecdotal. Salespeople can help because they are often in front of customers, but secondhand information isn’t enough. Take a more proactive approach. Seek to understand evolving customer needs, prevent product-solution divergence, and foster true innovation.

Manufacturers commonly rely on external product designers’ research to inform product development. It can be a way to solve for skill sets not well understood by the internal team, keep overhead low, and otherwise get to market more quickly. It can also create opportunities for “designer stories,” which suggest third-party credibility and possibly kinship with A&D specifiers. However, as a hammer views every problem as a nail, product designers find product solutions.

In addition, outsourced research can leave a knowledge gap, where companies don’t internalize evolving customer realities. Over time, manufacturers merely see themselves as makers rather than solutions providers with a deeper understanding of the user problem and the role a product needs to serve. Ensure knowledge transfer when working with external resources. Even more of a challenge, make sure your team is equipped to receive, internalize, store, and socialize your learnings. Knowledge management is about making tacit information explicit.

Do your homework. Customer problems change, and failing to meet their needs risks your product strategy and business.

Offering Solutions

What problem does your product solve? Why a product exists shouldn’t be a mystery, yet too often, me-too products are brought to market, leaving it to marketing communications teams to sort out what to say about them. What you say – or claim – about a product stems from why it exists in the first place.

Creating “product applications” is a common practice among commercial furnishings companies. Knowing how to use a product helps to explain features, develop product stories, guide campaigns, and inform renderings. While it makes sense to offer customers ways to use products, too often applications are designed retroactively. Ideally, the product itself comes with inherent applications. Even if that understanding exists with an external product designer or internal product engineering teams, the sales and marketing teams can sometimes lose the thread. Products should have an intended use thoroughly understood by internal teams.

Moreover, while furnishing competitors may aim to solve customer problems, the specification process can seem mysterious. Indeed, interior designers seem like an unpredictable wild card for many product makers. Creating effective working, learning, and healing environments is complex, but manufacturers can do more. We are not as logical as we think, and specifiers are no different. Our research with A&D specifiers reveals patterns that can aid product marketers.

If you survey designers, they say that product durability is paramount. That makes sense because they don’t want to be responsible for specifying products that fall apart. Designers also say they want always more options, which can lead manufacturers to have too many products. While both these things are true, what A&D says they want may not be what they need.

The Specifier Problem

Designers today are squeezed. Chair companies want them to be ergonomic experts, flooring companies want them to be space flow experts, lighting companies want them to be circadian psychology experts, and so on. There are fewer of them, and billable time governs their work.

The job of design specifiers is to make intelligent recommendations for their clients. Their choices reflect their professional identity. Yes, they need the products not to fall apart. They want enough options to resolve their clients’ needs and practice their craft. However, their reality is that they don’t have much time. They have a client presentation on Friday, and whoever helps them do their work is more likely to be specified.

Products and applications positioned as solutions to problems are much easier to specify. Designers may not admit this openly, or even to themselves, but they'll happily pick the easy button if you provide it. Help them get to 80% by giving application ideas, space plans, and customer use cases. Offer the additional 20% customization they want and need, but give them a big leg up. Your solutions may feature product variability, planning scenarios like lobbies and conference rooms, market segments like education or healthcare, space utilization goals, cost targets, reconfigurability, upgrade paths, or sustainability requirements.

Know the customer's problem and empathize with the specifier. Describe features in the context of usage benefits, and package your product with the issues it solves.

Better Answers

When answers are a mere AI-powered search away, companies need to be more niche and meaningful. Your products need to be answers to problems you fully understand.

Specifiers are empowered and overwhelmed by so much choice. Adjust your product strategy to focus more on the evolving customer problem to better define and communicate your value.