What Your Product Features

Say you enter a crowded product space. All the existing products, they all have the features that buyers expect.

And say this type of product is meant to be bought by a manager, and used by a team.

You want your product to stand out.

What will your product feature?

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You’d think that a product’s features are what you need to communicate, front and center, to showcase them, show how the product is built with care and quality. Focusing on the quality of the product, that’s surely important.

The buyer, though, might be coming to you with a different kind of urgency, not served by the wall of features, but overwhelmed by your wall of features. “I don’t know where to start here.”

It might have begun with a breaking point. Your buyer’s story probably started with an “enough is enough” moment, an event that changed something. “We have to move away from what we were doing. We need to get organized.” Maybe someone left the company, maybe someone joined the company, maybe some targets weren’t met, maybe it’s been going on for too long, and now a threshold has been crossed. It’s time for a change.

Upon seeing your product, you know what feature the product should showcase? It should showcase the buyer.

The product should feature the buyer.

Speak to the pain the buyer is going through. Highlight the “before” they’re trying to leave. Paint a picture of the “after” they’re seeking to get to. Make sure you understand.

And yes, showcase features that support that transition. Show how you’ve sweated the details for them and their situation.

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In a market with a lot of undifferentiated products, there’s a place to make that sort of product exist. A product that features the buyer, their team, and their struggle.

Your product will send a signal, a different signal than the rest, because your product showcased the most important feature: the buyer’s wish for progress.