3 builders who never spoke to each other

Sell the relief, not the mechanism

People pay for the problem going away, so describe the product as the distance between where the buyer is now and where they want to be. Frame it against the obstacle rather than the feature, and design around outcomes they will pay for: progress at work, status, protection, a capability they did not have.

The method

1. 01

   Treat a worry that many people in a market share as a product seed, and sell the relief from that worry rather than the mechanism.

2. 02

   Sell the removal of a problem rather than the idea itself, because the problem going away is the thing people hand money over for.

3. 03

   Sell the outcome your buyer already pays for rather than the clever machine that produces it, because you then have nothing to talk anyone into.

4. 04

   Design the product around outcomes customers will pay for: clearing obstacles, visible progress at work, status, good feelings, protection from future threats, new capability.

5. 05

   Frame your opportunity as the distance between a person's current situation and the better one they picture, given that whatever they tried before has failed them.

What it returned

• Intercom's chat widget addressed the owner's nagging fear that visitors arrive, fail to get an answer and leave forever; adopters see sales rise and the anxiety disappear.

• His friend Ryan had built Magic Sales Bot, which pulled several data sources into GPT to spot sales triggers and write tailored pitches. Turning it into delivering leads to companies directly proved far easier to sell than the software had been.

• Kathy Sierra's version: make people better at the thing they want to be better at.

• Justin's worked example: a boss who arrives at 6am each Monday to compile executive reports by hand wants to arrive at 9am instead, so the product is a script that runs the reports automatically.

Sources

• ⭐️ The channel/offer/unfair advantages framework for evaluating business ideas – Jakob GreenfeldScott Harrison · jakobgreenfeld.com · ⭐️ The channel/offer/unfair advantages framework for evaluating business ideas · 2022-05-10
• ⭐️ The Grand Unified Theory of Product Ideation – Jakob GreenfeldNathan Barry · jakobgreenfeld.com · ⭐️ The Grand Unified Theory of Product Ideation · 2020-10-09
• Thinking harder doesn’t work (or how I learned to love the right half of my brain) – Jakob GreenfeldJakob Greenfeld · jakobgreenfeld.com · 2024-04-10
• How do I build something people want?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Third, build a killer solution · undated
• Is this a good idea?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · How to figure out if your idea is good · undated
• Watch for mind gremlinsJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Building a new product? · undated
• Why most product ideas aren't that goodJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · A framework for finding product ideas · undated
• What the People of Wal-Mart wantJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · A fishing story · undated
• We all want progressJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · We all want progress · undated
• Succeed with your own product in 2014Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · What are you building, and why does it matter? · undated
• Why people buy softwareJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Why people buy software · undated