Detailed Notes
In the Building Better Developers podcast, in the season Building Better Businesses, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche dive deep into one of the most important yet often overlooked aspects of building a successful business—product placement strategy. This episode explores how intentional product and service placement can shape your brand, attract the right customers, and set you up for long-term success.
Read More: https://develpreneur.com/product-placement-strategy-how-to-position-your-product-or-service-for-success/
*Building Your Product Placement Strategy*
To wrap up, Rob offers a practical challenge to the audience:
Identify and document your product or service placement strategy.
Ask yourself:
* What is my product or service? * Who is my ideal customer? * Am I positioned as premium, affordable, boutique, or mass-market? * How will my placement strategy influence my pricing and customer experience?
Understanding your placement will shape everything from your sales approach to scaling your business.
*Additional Resources*
* The Product Launch – Shipping Your Software Product (https://develpreneur.com/the-product-launch-shipping-your-software-product/) * Creating a Social Media Strategy (https://develpreneur.com/creating-a-social-media-strategy/) * How to Succeed with Digital Marketing for Small Businesses (https://develpreneur.com/how-to-succeed-with-digital-marketing-for-small-businesses/) * Introduction To Market Research – Interview with Anne Laffin (https://develpreneur.com/introduction-to-market-research-interview-with-anne-laffin/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] the cloud and we we are live so just watching I had a bird just like land right over here it's like two feet away um all right what are we talking about this time do we I don't think we have any leftovers do we so no I I tried to throw one out there but apparently it came out uh spell check or auto correct really made it funny uh where was it which one was that I think I remember that something that was very yeah I I tried to put you pursuing the gold standards in your uh industry or product but it came out as that actually like yes are you pursuing the gold standard in your insults or product I'm like well of course I'm pursuing the gold standard in my insults my product I don't know but the I'm like the Platinum standard on my insults come on are you P are you pursuing that gold stand in your industry or product where are you thinking to go with that one uh so it's one of those where are you like if you're building a product or software are you building best in class or are you basically just another option in a sea of products does that make sense sort of like product positioning yeah okay I like that um I think that's actually not a bad start so what we're going to do is we're just going to dive right into this sucker and we will see what happens with product positioning and we'll figure out the next episode after this episode do me a favor um because this is a weird topic if we go slightly off topic uh just kind of hand it off with like just remember where or you know what are your thoughts on X Y or Z just cuz uh I think last one or one or two back I kind of went a totally different direction because you kind of deviated from the topic slightly and I took that and went a totally different direction well as long as it turned out entertaining then we're good I don't think we have to worry yeah we just have to cover that in the uh in the editorial stuff is to make sure we've got the right you know that we aren't you know we don't say it's one topic and then do another topic U although sometimes I have done that it's like start off and say hey we're gonna talk and we never talk about I'm gonna give a little three a two a one hey how you doing we are back or this is you know welcome home or welcome here if this is the first time you've been here we are develop and or we are the building better developers podcast the season is actually about building better businesses and this episode we're going to talk about product placement now before we do that I'm going to introduce myself myself being Rob Broadhead one of the founders of develop andur also a founder of RB Consulting where we basically we help you figure out the best way to Wrangle all of that technology sprawl whether you're a little business and you're trying to figure out whether it's you what accounting software you're using or whether you're a larger organization that's trying to figure out who your IT staff needs to be what kind of skills do you need to have what kind of you know ERM or CRM or Erp or ABC all of those things that you may not even know what they are but you hear that you've got to get them we help you figure out what is the best solution for you not only today but six months and six years down the road and our you know if you call it our secret sauce it's not very secret basically what we do is we sit down and talk to you understand your business look at what you have where you at and through whether it's integration implementation Innovation simplification automation any shun you can think of basically we will work with that and go out there help you find the best solution to your problem or problem so that your business can be focused on business and not technology good thing bad thing so good thing um I mentioned in a previous episode that we had had a house that was we got a offers on our house right away had a nice little like but it was like you got to be out in two weeks well the good thing is have made it past that out of the house got it closed the bad thing is is it was bad let's just say this is like a portion of my life I just want to like black out and forget because it was a rough time it started coming back late on a Monday night very like I think we got home at like 11:30 or midnight and then at 8:00 a.m. the next day we had movers we had lost that whole three or four days on a cruise which was not a bad cruise but boy it it hit us right in the chops when we came back so if you have a choice I recommend not doing that but you have no choice even though I do recommend you listen to Michael as he introduces himself thanks Rob hey everyone my name is Michael Mage welcome to building better developers developer uh I'm one of the co-founders like Rob I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we are a software company that helps businesses look at their software stack and help them determine if they are working with the correct technology for their business or if they're working for their technology meaning that they are having to implement processes to make this cookie cutter software work for them our ideal solution is to come in help you do a software assessment of your processes and help you kind of build a road map or build software put the pieces in place place that you really need to be very successful in your business help it grow and if you are building software we also can bring a software team in and help you go from a small team or a struggling development house to a full-fledged development team and get your products out quicker and happier good thing bad thing uh good thing it is finally warming up I'm finally not freezing anymore downside I can't go outside without wearing a mask right now there's so much pollen in the air it is just driving my sinus is crazy so let's talk about product placement and this is this is really important I think for us when we're doing the side hustle because with a in a general business I think it's hopefully it's more likely that we have spent some time we've done some market research we've thought about our product we we've figured out what do we want to do we've got a we'll say a culture or something like that within our company that is s about this is what we're going to do this is what we're going to produce some notable kinds of things would be like and apple apple has always been you know the the gold standard whatever they don't care about price I mean it it's going to be pricey but the whole point is it's G to be pricey but it's going to be a higher end product versus if you go like think about uh like McDonald's they are very much like we want to get you affordable food quickly things like that so there's a you know there's a wide range and obviously those are two companies that are very successful and there are examples throughout you know from the the very uh like the people that are the lowcost Kings and the people that are the you have to be a king to afford our product kind of products like where will you go with these now Within These are also uh there's things particularly with software and and digital stuff there is a level of uh where in physical in the physical world things wear out things just you know will degrade over time naturally it doesn't matter what your product is however in the digital world it's a little different it doesn't necess you could run your same application on the same operating system same machine for quite a while and never see any degradation now the machine itself may change but especially if you have a virtual machine which is very easy to have these days you don't really have to worry about it so instead it's really more some of things like is this going to be maintainable is as for yourself maybe depending on how you position the product is this something that you want to be able to do multiple uh versions and enhancements and upgrades is it really more of a oneandone uh is it something that you want to position as a an integr an integral part of something else for example like I said I mentioned earlier a CRM maybe what you have is a let's say you have a website that's really or you have a product that is about mail campaigns email campaigns and that's it you don't really care about the customer management side anymore than you absolutely have to and so what you end up doing is you have something sort of like a plugin maybe that would run beside pick your favorite CRM and so maybe you do something like that so do you want to be Standalone do you want to be part of something else do you want to be that high-end product do you want to be a lower-end product and there is a long list of pros and cons wherever you pick these things if you want to be higher in then you need to be higher end you need to make sure that you have high quality you need to have the right processes all those things in place to make sure that when somebody gets it they've paid that extra you know that high dollar amount for it but they are going to expect certain things and you better deliver on it if you do great if you don't you're G to have problems because we're say I could buy the cheap stuff and it would save me money and I'm not going to get anything worse than you do so you can you have challenges up there depending on what you're building and what your goal is now software sometimes I will say that just getting a product just solving a problem is in itself almost the gold standard because nobody else can do it maybe or nobody else does it uh in a way that you do it okay you can cut yourself some slack but then you have on the other end is the I want to be able to provide this at a low cost to whoever wants it and then in those cases you know it ends up being like yes you're going to be able to maybe have more people afford your product more customers but there with that comes the expectation in the types of customers that you're going to deal with we've mentioned many times the 4our work week and this is something that Tim Ferris has mentioned before along with many others that are very all these it's about for like a better term I'm trying to find out like the politically correct way to do it but just like some people are annoying more than others and some people are really you know are lower class or lower brow however you want to do it and if usually if you're buying the cheapest product you're probably not you know you you're more likely to be like P pinching pennies and things like that you're going to be more costc conscious so you're going to be arguing that hey instead of $10 can you get it to me for $9 and the support of it there's there's a wide range just a broad range of issues that come with that now I don't want to say that that's not necessarily the right way to go it depends on what your bent is it depends on what your product is a lot of it does depend on things like Automation and mass production and things like that because if you can automate your uh your customer service so that it's maybe just you but there's an automated piece that could handle hundreds of thousands of complaints and customer calls and a given hour then go for it like roll that dice throw that stuff out there if it's affordable go for it if that's not what you want to do if you want to have like that very Personal Touch for everybody then maybe think about maybe I don't want to have as many customers as much as I want to have like more of my ideal customer less customers overall but the ones that I have are going to be you know more near to dear to my heart as we would say and therefore much more a better fit for what you're providing now I know I've I've gone pretty broad on this uh but I want to just sort of think like what are your thoughts in product placement and maybe even some of your experiences with it Michael yeah so it's interesting you really focused kind of on the product itself but sometimes as a business owner or as a uh you know we are service providers we're not necessarily product providers so we don't have a physical product or software we're actually selling our services so that still Falls within the conversation of product placement though because your product in it of itself is your services you know how are you selling yourself or what it is that you offer to your customers now before I dive into that though I do want to touch on one thing with the product placement though so if you are building a product as mentioned you know price point is critical but the other problem you run into potentially is competition is your product something that is too generic or too General that you are one of hundreds so the problem you're going to have is how are you going to stand out how is your product going to differentiate from those other uh competitors and price points one of the big things Rob mentioned using automation uh things to improve you know time to Market you know lower your cost there's still some issues with that because if you are trying to sell a product in a vast industry or with vast competition you have to be very careful to position yourself in a way that people don't forget about you or you're going to run into what Rob was mentioning where you're going to have those Penny Pinchers or not even really that but one customer saying well why is your product 50 bucks but this person over here is $10 so you've got to be very careful where you place your product now if you are more of a niche more of a um Etsy kind of person Etsy is a great place but Etsy still has its competition the other thing you could look at is maybe smaller markets like your local uh towns flea markets uh other areas like that but in the digital world most of your customers are going to be online so you're going to have to figure out how to place yourself in a position where you stand out so either it is better quality product use higher quality materials which does justify the cost but you need to make sure that the cost is still something that you can pass on to your customer that your customer can afford your product so just some caveats there to be careful of if you're doing a product based um company and you're trying to position it all right I want to flip over to the service side now because Services is a little more of what me and Rob kind of do uh from a Consulting from a developer perspective we're out there providing software services to companies we build software we provide services we help them analyze do assessments things of that nature the problem is if your customer is non technical or your customer is very technical you're going to run into a couple situations one how are you going to justify your cost to sell your product to someone that knows nothing about what you do what what is the value of what you're providing so the first thing I want to talk about is value how are you going to show your service will provide value to their business so if you're a software company I build software that can improve your production time so if you have this clunky old 30-year old system that is working but it takes you two hours to do something that you can do in 5 minutes right there you can show a Justified here if I come in I can help you do this which will eliminate 45 minutes 2 and 1 half hours whatever from your day multiply that by a week and suddenly your cost savings are going to be justified that hey if I provide you four weeks of work at X I'm going to save you 6 months worth of value over time so those are just some calculations you can do to kind of help justify the cost of reducing service times you know your cost coming in will reduce red their overall return on their investment or increase their return on investment the other thing is trying to talk to customers well not necessarily as a service but when you're talking about building them software like websites are a very good example I don't like really building websites for customers because a lot of times there's too much competition out there you can go to like Fiverr you can go to uh freelancer there's so many places where people can just quickly throw up a website and AI is making that even more difficult with all these uh like Wix uh Ary or all these like host Gators they all have ai now so basically you just go fill in a couple questionnaire boom you've got a website how are you going to compete with that so be careful when you're offering services that you're also like the product you're not offering something that is too generic or too has too much competition in the industry one of the interesting ways I heard someone explain how they essentially build and sell websites is they offer like Rob actually mentions in some of his uh pitches they they offer a boutique experience they come in they walk through the life of a customer and then they build the website from a customer's experience totally different approach it's still building a website but the pitch is different enough that it makes them stand out so the second thing here is your pitch how are you presenting to your customers and are you presenting to the right customer base so you again this is like the products you want to make sure that the price you're charging for your service for the product that you're going to build is in the right price range for that Target Market because if you're too low you're going to get the people well hey I want this and you're going to run into situations where it costs you too much in time not enough in returns you actually lose money on the deal so those are a couple of things that I think of when I talk think about product placement any additional thoughts on sorry yeah and I think you know really there is a difference in the service side versus the product side definitely and on the service side it is um I think it's a little more dangerous a little bit because as Michael alluded to is that there is a there's a Time cost that can often be hidden that maybe you want to spend as I mentioned like you want to have a better connection a better relationship with your customers well that is going to require time that requires investing in those relationships and your customers and all of the things that that you know involve that and it can be something that if it's not part of your uh your billable hours or your contracts or things like that then it's essentially free time it's comp it's time that you are not charging for and over time that can actually become um you know unsustainable basically because you can only be split so many ways now you can you know hire people and things like that but then there's a cost and all of those things continue so I think that's with a service it's it is definitely something that you want to and again this goes back to the developer side of this whole thing what from a service point of view there are you can position yourself in uh technology stacks and things like that you can be somebody that is a uh a a big provider on like your upworks or your gurus or you know those kinds of sites or you can be somebody that is uh very active in maybe LinkedIn or one of the job sites that is you know like a monster or somebody like that where you're you're working with lot of stuff or as Michael alluded maybe you're part of your local you know rotary club or something like that you're part of one of these local organizations or meetups and things like that where that's really where you're your Niche is is you're just going to go with that you know sort of that geographically small area you may also want to go with something technology or or line of business small so instead of uh I'm in healthc care maybe you are in um devices for heart transplants Health Care you know something that's like very much more Niche but then you can also maybe you know charge a little better charge a little more but also you don't have to you you don't have to have a pitch to large numbers of people you can actually have a more much more personal pitch to to maybe potentially every single customer and I think that is a value we provide as when we're sending out we're going out there to provide a service part of that is how we build that relationship how we maintain that relationship and where that fits in and so you know some of it you want to think about and this gets into the challenge is your challenge is what is your primary product and where if you had to get give let's say five bullet points that are placement points on your product what would they be would it be something around um pricing for example like we you know we give you the best deal or we you know we are the the Porsche of this product or the service is it have to do with the the customer experience you know some places that's the whole thing is like is it all about the customer walking away and your product may or may not be great but their experience with you in your product or your service is great uh does it have to do with um like a niche or something like that like are you as part of it is that you place your product in a area where others don't maybe you're a combination of things that others aren't you know maybe you're the first um you create shoes that have you know for example uh you shoes could have bells on them but maybe you have shoes that have fidget Spinners on them if somebody wants to sit there and fidget spin their shoes I don't know there's you know you look look for some different combination some unique problem that you're solving that can be part of your placement but I think there's there's a couple factors into it so that becomes the challenge this time around is list those out be you know be self-aware in your businesses like what is your product what is your service and this is going to help you with things like identifying your ideal customer uh and even pricing and things like that um for those of you that are watching this I think that would be part of my bonus material that we do offer on the YouTube side is I want to talk a little bit about pricing as we get into the bonus material that being said our overtime is coming soon because this one's wrapping up as always should send email at info devel or.com Reach Out Us in all the different ways that we provide it's whether it's a a review here where you're listening to wherever you listen to podcast or out on YouTube and the developer Channel if you want to go out to developer.com we have contact forms we have feed Back available on every one of our articles and all of the kind of stuff that we've got there you can catch us on X develop andure you can get us on Facebook we have a developer develop preneur page there as well that all being said harder than it seems sometimes go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time all right bonus material before I forget it pricing the key to pricing is I you sort of talked about it but I want to go back and revisit that a little bit is the key to pricing is not what the market will bear necessarily or uh sometimes I mean there is supply and demand obviously have some level in that um but it really is I think it comes down to what particular with Services what is the actual value to the customer of what you are providing now it could be something that's very hard number like you're saving them time like Michael gave in his example that it's you know you're going to cut their processing time from an hour to 5 minutes those are very nice to show because it's they're hard numbers it's you're going to save in that case 55 minutes a day five days a week blah blah blah what's their hourly rate you can do these things and you can say this is what the value is and then figure out you the the good and the bad is like if you know if the value is $100 a week then your price still have to deal with your price point do you want to save them then you know charge them $90 a week and so they're only saving $10 you want to charge them $50 a week so it's only you know it's saving $50 there's there's things like that that come into play but I think the first the first step is always what truly is the value of this to my customer uh and if it's a service yeah sometimes it is a little easier because it's just like this is the rate this is the cost of doing business in this area you're going to you know you're going to spend X dollars an hour for somebody that does this kind of work and that kind of stuff you can find through you know do some comp competition research see what other people Bill how they work and maybe that's part of your you know what your special sauce is is that you can change your uh your cost structure so that you can actually charge you know a little less or you will adjust it and you charge a little more but it shows in the the service you provide bonus material from you Mike yeah so it kind of tacking on to that so one of the ways to help you especially if you're in the service business is go out and look at things like freelancer.com go look at your competition go look for services that you provide online and find out what other people are charging but also make sure that you're looking at these in your market so if you have a specific Niche where hey I build iPhone apps look for people that are building apps for the iPhone if you're looking for people that are building or if you're looking to build a service where your app is on every platform now you're in a bigger market and chances are you're going to have a lot more competition so even there you look and see hey how can I tailor what I do into a smaller pocket of customers now it does reduce your customer size but it could potentially even increase the cost of your service because you can provide better quality and support a specific uh industry or product better because you're not trying to compete with everyone think that's that's probably just a good point to wrap up there I think that is you know those are those are a couple of key things that we definitely want to keep in mind it's the the market itself what's the competition that we're going up against how are we going to differentiate it can be a price it can be in quality it can be in you know all time time to delivery it could be that you you know your goal is you you're going to compete against maybe even AI where you're going to say hey we can turn this around in 24 hours or something like that uh all of those are things to keep in in consideration as you're putting these together and if you have those and you're struggling in uh AC ing customers then maybe that's one of the things you do is look at what these points are that you put together and is there something that you can adjust that will shift you into a different Niche um maybe suddenly eliminate some of the competition because they're not going to go there but you have a value that does there things like that to keep up with but for now we'll wrap this one up thank you as always for joining us we'll be back with yes yet another episode because we've got a ways to go in the season and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
the
cloud and we we are live
so just watching I had a bird just like
land right over here it's like two feet
away
um all right what are we talking about
this time do we I don't think we have
any leftovers do we so no I I tried to
throw one out there but apparently it
came out uh spell check or auto correct
really made it funny
uh where was it which one was that I
think I remember that something that was
very yeah I I tried to put you pursuing
the gold standards in your uh industry
or product but it came out
as that actually like yes are you
pursuing the gold standard in your
insults or product I'm like well of
course I'm pursuing the gold standard in
my insults my product I don't know but
the I'm like the Platinum standard on my
insults come
on are you P are you pursuing that gold
stand in your industry or product where
are you thinking to go with that
one uh so it's one of those where are
you like if you're building a product or
software are you building best in class
or are you basically just
another option in a sea of products does
that make sense sort of like product
positioning yeah okay I like that
um I think that's actually not a bad
start so what we're going to do is we're
just going to dive right into this
sucker and we will see what happens with
product positioning and we'll figure out
the next episode after this episode do
me a favor um because this is a weird
topic if we go slightly off topic uh
just kind of hand it off with like just
remember where or you know what are your
thoughts on X Y or Z
just cuz uh I think last one or one or
two back I kind of went a totally
different direction because you kind of
deviated from the topic slightly and I
took that and went a totally different
direction well as long as it turned out
entertaining then we're good I don't
think we have to
worry yeah we just have to cover that in
the uh in the editorial stuff is to make
sure we've got the right you know that
we aren't you know we don't say it's one
topic and then do another topic U
although sometimes I have done that it's
like start off and say hey we're gonna
talk and we never talk about I'm gonna
give a little three a two a one hey how
you doing we are back or this is you
know welcome home or welcome here if
this is the first time you've been here
we are develop and or we are the
building better developers podcast the
season is actually about building better
businesses and this episode we're going
to talk about product placement now
before we do that I'm going to introduce
myself myself being Rob Broadhead one of
the founders of develop andur also a
founder of RB Consulting where we
basically we help you figure out the
best way to Wrangle all of that
technology sprawl whether you're a
little business and you're trying to
figure out whether it's you what
accounting software you're using or
whether you're a larger organization
that's trying to figure out who your IT
staff needs to be what kind of skills do
you need to have what kind of you know
ERM or CRM or Erp or ABC all of those
things that you may not even know what
they are but you hear that you've got to
get them we help you figure out what is
the best solution for you not only today
but six months and six years down the
road and our you know if you call it our
secret sauce it's not very secret
basically what we do is we sit down and
talk to you understand your business
look at what you have where you at and
through whether it's integration
implementation Innovation simplification
automation any shun you can think of
basically we will work with that and go
out there help you find the best
solution to your problem or problem so
that your business can be focused on
business and not technology good thing
bad thing so good thing um I mentioned
in a previous episode that we had had a
house that was we got a offers on our
house right away had a nice little like
but it was like you got to be out in two
weeks well the good thing is have made
it past that out of the house got it
closed the bad thing is
is it was bad let's just say this is
like a portion of my life I just want to
like black out and forget because it was
a rough time it started coming back late
on a Monday night very like I think we
got home at like 11:30 or midnight and
then at 8:00 a.m. the next day we had
movers we had lost that whole three or
four days on a cruise which was not a
bad cruise but boy it it hit us right in
the chops when we came back so if you
have a choice I recommend not doing that
but you have no choice even though I do
recommend you listen to Michael as he
introduces
himself thanks Rob hey everyone my name
is Michael Mage welcome to building
better developers
developer uh I'm one of the co-founders
like Rob I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where we are a software
company that helps businesses look at
their software stack and help them
determine if they are working with the
correct technology for their business or
if they're working for their technology
meaning that they are having to
implement processes to make this cookie
cutter software work for them our ideal
solution is to come in help you do a
software assessment of your processes
and help you kind of build a road map or
build software put the pieces in place
place that you really need to be very
successful in your business help it grow
and if you are building software we also
can bring a software team in and help
you go from a small team or a struggling
development house to a full-fledged
development team and get your products
out quicker and happier good thing bad
thing uh good thing it is finally
warming up I'm finally not freezing
anymore downside I can't go outside
without wearing a mask right now there's
so much pollen in the air it is just
driving my sinus is
crazy so let's talk about product
placement and this is this is really
important I think for us when we're
doing the side hustle because with a in
a general business I think it's
hopefully it's more likely that we have
spent some time we've done some market
research we've thought about our product
we we've figured out what do we want to
do we've got a we'll say a culture or
something like that within our company
that is s about this is what we're going
to do this is what we're going to
produce some notable kinds of things
would be like and apple apple has always
been you know the the gold standard
whatever they don't care about price I
mean it it's going to be pricey but the
whole point is it's G to be pricey but
it's going to be a higher end product
versus if you go like think about uh
like
McDonald's they are very much like we
want to get you affordable food quickly
things like that so there's a you know
there's a wide range and obviously those
are two companies that are very
successful and there are examples
throughout you know from the the very uh
like the people that are the
lowcost Kings and the people that are
the you have to be a king to afford our
product kind of products like where will
you go with these now Within These are
also uh there's things particularly with
software and and digital
stuff there is a level of uh where in
physical in the physical world things
wear out things just you know will
degrade over time naturally it doesn't
matter what your product is however in
the digital world it's a little
different it doesn't necess you could
run your same application on the same
operating system same machine for quite
a while and never see any degradation
now the machine itself may change but
especially if you have a virtual machine
which is very easy to have these days
you don't really have to worry about it
so instead it's really more some of
things like is this going to be
maintainable is as for yourself maybe
depending on how you position the
product is this something that you want
to be able to do multiple uh versions
and enhancements and upgrades is it
really more of a
oneandone uh is it something that you
want to position as a an integr an
integral part of something else for
example like I said I mentioned earlier
a CRM maybe what you have is a let's say
you have a website that's really or you
have a product that is about mail
campaigns email campaigns and that's it
you don't really care about the customer
management side anymore than you
absolutely have to and so what you end
up doing is you have something sort of
like a plugin maybe that would run
beside pick your favorite CRM and so
maybe you do something like that so do
you want to be Standalone do you want to
be part of something else do you want to
be that high-end product do you want to
be a lower-end product and there is a
long list of pros and cons wherever you
pick these things if you want to be
higher in then you need to be higher end
you need to make sure that you have high
quality you need to have the right
processes all those things in place to
make sure that when somebody gets it
they've paid that extra you know that
high dollar amount for it but they are
going to expect certain things and you
better deliver on it if you do great if
you don't you're G to have problems
because we're say I could buy the cheap
stuff and it would save me money and I'm
not going to get anything worse than you
do so you can you have challenges up
there depending on what you're building
and what your goal is now software
sometimes I will say that just getting a
product just solving a problem is in
itself almost the gold standard because
nobody else can do it maybe or nobody
else does it uh in a way that you do it
okay you can cut yourself some slack but
then you have on the other end is the I
want to be able to provide this at a low
cost to whoever wants it and then in
those cases you know it ends up being
like yes you're going to be able to
maybe have more people afford your
product more customers
but there with that comes the
expectation in the types of customers
that you're going to deal with we've
mentioned many times the 4our work week
and this is something that Tim Ferris
has mentioned before along with many
others that
are very all these it's about for like a
better term I'm trying to find out like
the politically correct way to do it but
just like some people are annoying more
than others and some people are really
you know are lower class or lower brow
however you want to do it and if usually
if you're buying the cheapest product
you're probably not you know you you're
more likely to be like P pinching
pennies and things like that you're
going to be more costc conscious so
you're going to be arguing that hey
instead of $10 can you get it to me for
$9 and the support of it there's there's
a wide range just a broad range of
issues that come with that now I don't
want to say that that's not necessarily
the right way to go it depends on what
your bent is it depends on what your
product is a lot of it does depend on
things like Automation and mass
production and things like that because
if you can automate your uh your
customer service so that it's maybe just
you but there's an automated piece that
could handle hundreds of thousands of
complaints and customer calls and a
given hour then go for it like roll that
dice throw that stuff out there if it's
affordable go for it if that's not what
you want to do if you want to have like
that very Personal Touch for everybody
then maybe think about maybe I don't
want to have as many customers as much
as I want to have like more of my ideal
customer less customers overall but the
ones that I have are going to be you
know more near to dear to my heart as we
would say and therefore much more a
better fit for what you're providing now
I know I've I've gone pretty broad on
this uh but I want to just sort of think
like what are your thoughts in product
placement and maybe even some of your
experiences with it Michael yeah so it's
interesting you really focused kind of
on the product itself but sometimes as a
business owner or as a uh you know we
are service providers we're not
necessarily product providers so we
don't have a physical product or
software we're actually selling our
services so that still Falls within the
conversation of product placement though
because your product in it of itself is
your services you know how are you
selling yourself or what it is that you
offer to your customers now before I
dive into that though I do want to touch
on one thing with the product placement
though so if you are building a product
as mentioned you know price point is
critical but the other problem you run
into potentially is competition is your
product something that is too generic or
too General that you are one of hundreds
so the problem you're going to have is
how are you going to stand out how is
your product going to differentiate from
those other uh competitors and price
points one of the big things Rob
mentioned using automation uh things to
improve you know time to Market you know
lower your cost there's still some
issues with that because if you are
trying to sell a product in a vast
industry or with vast competition you
have to be very careful to position
yourself in a way that people don't
forget about you or you're going to run
into what Rob was mentioning where
you're going to have those Penny
Pinchers or not even really that but one
customer saying well why is your product
50 bucks but this person over here is
$10 so you've got to be very careful
where you place your product now if you
are more of a niche more of a um Etsy
kind of person Etsy is a great place but
Etsy still has its competition the other
thing you could look at is maybe smaller
markets like your local uh towns flea
markets uh other areas like that but in
the digital world most of your customers
are going to be online so you're going
to have to figure out how to place
yourself in a position where you stand
out so either it is better quality
product use higher quality materials
which does justify the cost but you need
to make sure that the cost is still
something that you can pass on to your
customer that your customer can afford
your product so just some caveats there
to be careful of if you're doing a
product based um company and you're
trying to position it all right I want
to flip over to the service side now
because Services is a little more of
what me and Rob kind of do uh from a
Consulting from a developer perspective
we're out there providing software
services to companies we build software
we provide services we help them analyze
do assessments things of that nature the
problem is if your customer is non
technical or your customer is very
technical you're going to run into a
couple situations one how are you going
to justify your cost to sell your
product to someone that knows nothing
about what you do what what is the value
of what you're providing so the first
thing I want to talk about is value how
are you going to show your service will
provide value to their business so if
you're a software company I build
software that can improve your
production time so if you have this
clunky old 30-year old system that is
working but it takes you two hours to do
something that you can do in 5 minutes
right there you can show a Justified
here if I come in I can help you do this
which will eliminate 45 minutes 2 and 1
half hours whatever from your day
multiply that by a week and suddenly
your cost savings are going to be
justified that hey if I provide you four
weeks of work at X I'm going to save you
6 months worth of value over time so
those are just some calculations you can
do to kind of help justify the cost of
reducing service times you know your
cost coming in will reduce red their
overall return on their investment or
increase their return on investment the
other thing is trying to talk to
customers well not necessarily as a
service but when you're talking about
building them software like websites are
a very good example I don't like really
building websites for customers because
a lot of times there's too much
competition out there you can go to like
Fiverr you can go to uh freelancer
there's so many places where people can
just quickly throw up a website and AI
is making that even more difficult with
all these uh like Wix uh Ary or all
these like host Gators they all have ai
now so basically you just go fill in a
couple questionnaire boom you've got a
website how are you going to compete
with that so be careful when you're
offering services that you're also like
the product you're not offering
something that is too generic or too has
too much competition in the industry one
of the interesting ways I heard someone
explain how they essentially build and
sell websites is they offer like Rob
actually mentions in some of his uh
pitches they they offer a boutique
experience they come in they walk
through the life of a customer and then
they build the website from a customer's
experience totally different approach
it's still building a website but the
pitch is different enough that it makes
them stand out so the second thing here
is your pitch how are you presenting to
your customers and are you presenting to
the right customer base so you again
this is like the products you want to
make sure that the price you're charging
for your service for the product that
you're going to build is in the right
price range for that Target Market
because if you're too low you're going
to get the people well hey I want this
and you're going to run into situations
where it costs you too much in time not
enough in returns you actually lose
money on the deal so those are a couple
of things that I think of when I talk
think about product placement any
additional thoughts on sorry yeah and I
think you know
really there is a difference in the
service side versus the product side
definitely and on the service side it is
um I think it's a little more dangerous
a little bit because as Michael alluded
to is that there is a there's a Time
cost that can often be hidden that maybe
you want to spend as I mentioned like
you want to have a better connection a
better relationship with your customers
well that is going to require time that
requires investing in those
relationships and your customers and all
of the things that that you know involve
that and it can be something that if
it's not part of your uh your billable
hours or your contracts or things like
that then it's essentially free time
it's comp it's time that you are not
charging for and over time that can
actually become um you know
unsustainable basically because you can
only be split so many ways now you can
you know hire people and things like
that but then there's a cost and all of
those things continue so I think that's
with a service it's it is definitely
something that you want to and again
this goes back to the developer side of
this whole
thing what from a service point of view
there are you can position yourself in
uh technology stacks and things like
that you can be somebody that is a uh a
a big provider on like your upworks or
your gurus or you know those kinds of
sites or you can be somebody that is uh
very active in maybe LinkedIn or one of
the job sites that is you know like a
monster or somebody like that where
you're you're working with lot of stuff
or as Michael alluded maybe you're part
of your local you know rotary club or
something like that you're part of one
of these local organizations or meetups
and things like that where that's really
where you're your Niche is is you're
just going to go with that you know sort
of that geographically small area you
may also want to go with something
technology or or line of business small
so instead of uh I'm in healthc care
maybe you are in um devices for heart
transplants Health Care you know
something that's like very much more
Niche but then you can also maybe you
know charge a little better charge a
little more but also you don't have to
you you don't have to have a pitch to
large numbers of people you can actually
have a more much more personal pitch to
to maybe potentially every single
customer and I think that is a value we
provide as when we're sending out we're
going out there to provide a
service part of that is how we build
that relationship how we maintain that
relationship and where that fits in and
so you know some of it you want to think
about and this gets into the challenge
is your challenge is what is your
primary product and where if you had to
get give let's say five bullet points
that are placement points on your
product what would they be would it be
something around um pricing for example
like we you know we give you the best
deal or
we you know we are the the Porsche of
this product or the service is it have
to do with the the customer experience
you know some places that's the whole
thing is like is it all about the
customer walking away and your product
may or may not be great but their
experience with you in your product or
your service is great uh does it have to
do with um like a niche or something
like that like are you as part of it is
that you place your product in a area
where others don't maybe you're a
combination of things that others aren't
you know maybe you're the first um you
create shoes that have you know for
example uh you shoes could have bells on
them but maybe you have shoes that have
fidget Spinners on them if somebody
wants to sit there and fidget spin their
shoes I don't know there's you know you
look look for some different combination
some unique problem that you're solving
that can be part of your placement but I
think there's there's a couple factors
into it so that becomes the challenge
this time around is list those out be
you know be self-aware in your
businesses like what is your product
what is your service and this is going
to help you with things like identifying
your ideal customer uh and even pricing
and things like that um for those of you
that are watching this I think that
would be part of my bonus material that
we do offer on the YouTube side is I
want to talk a little bit about pricing
as we get into the bonus
material that being said our overtime is
coming soon because this one's wrapping
up as always should send email at info
devel or.com Reach Out Us in all the
different ways that we provide it's
whether it's a a review here where
you're listening to wherever you listen
to podcast or out on YouTube and the
developer Channel if you want to go out
to developer.com we have contact forms
we have feed Back available on every one
of our articles and all of the kind of
stuff that we've got there you can catch
us on X develop andure you can get us on
Facebook we have a developer develop
preneur page there as
well that all being said harder than it
seems sometimes go out there and have
yourself a great day a great week and we
will talk to you next
time all right bonus material before I
forget it
pricing the key to pricing is I you sort
of talked about it but I want to go back
and revisit that a little bit is the key
to pricing is not what the market will
bear necessarily or uh sometimes I mean
there is supply and demand obviously
have some level in that um but it really
is I think it comes down to what
particular with Services what is the
actual value to the customer of what you
are providing now it could be something
that's very hard number like you're
saving them time like Michael gave in
his example that it's you know you're
going to cut their processing time from
an hour to 5 minutes those are very nice
to show because it's they're hard
numbers it's you're going to save in
that case 55 minutes a day five days a
week blah blah blah what's their hourly
rate you can do these things and you can
say this is what the value is and then
figure out you the the good and the bad
is like if you know if the value is $100
a week then your
price still have to deal with your price
point do you want to save them then you
know charge them $90 a week and so
they're only saving $10 you want to
charge them $50 a week so it's only you
know it's saving $50 there's there's
things like that that come into play but
I think the first the first step is
always what truly is the value of this
to my customer uh and if it's a service
yeah sometimes it is a little easier
because it's just like this is the rate
this is the cost of doing business in
this area you're going to you know
you're going to spend X dollars an hour
for somebody that does this kind of work
and that kind of stuff you can find
through you know do some comp
competition research see what other
people Bill how they work and maybe
that's part of your you know what your
special sauce is is that you can change
your uh your cost structure so that you
can actually charge you know a little
less or you will adjust it and you
charge a little more but it shows in the
the service you provide bonus material
from you Mike yeah so it kind of tacking
on to that so one of the ways to help
you especially if you're in the service
business is go out and look at things
like freelancer.com go look at your
competition go look for services that
you provide online and find out what
other people are charging but also make
sure that you're looking at these in
your market so if you have a specific
Niche where hey I build iPhone apps look
for people that are building apps for
the iPhone if you're looking for people
that are building or if you're looking
to build a service where your app is on
every platform now you're in a bigger
market and chances are you're going to
have a lot more competition so even
there you look and see hey how can I
tailor what I do into a smaller pocket
of customers now it does reduce your
customer size but it could potentially
even increase the cost of your service
because you can provide better quality
and support a specific uh industry or
product better because you're not trying
to compete with
everyone think that's that's probably
just a good point to wrap up there I
think that is you know those are those
are a couple of key things that we
definitely want to keep in mind it's the
the market itself what's the competition
that we're going up against how are we
going to differentiate it can be a price
it can be in quality it can be in you
know all time time to delivery it could
be that you you know your goal is you
you're going to compete against maybe
even AI where you're going to say hey we
can turn this around in 24 hours or
something like that uh all of those are
things to keep in in consideration as
you're putting these together and if you
have those and you're struggling in uh
AC ing customers then maybe that's one
of the things you do is look at what
these points are that you put together
and is there something that you can
adjust that will shift you into a
different Niche um maybe suddenly
eliminate some of the competition
because they're not going to go there
but you have a value that does there
things like that to keep up with but for
now we'll wrap this one up thank you as
always for joining us we'll be back with
yes yet another episode because we've
got a ways to go in the season and we
will talk to you next time
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