Your product efforts need to focus on reach

Do you consider ‘reach’ when trying to optimize your product offering?
If not, you’re likely missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Most companies have a gazillion ways to evaluate product performance like:

– Satisfaction
– Product mix
– Frequency of purchase/use
– Time motion studies
– Labor cost per unit
– Food cost per unit
– % of products per pricing band

Yet, these are all results.

End results that don’t address ‘reach.’

Usually, when I ask the reach question, I get the same measures above, but now cut by something like customer segmentation.

Which is only getting you halfway there.

As it’s not addressing what your customer wants from you.

Instead, what needs to happen is that the company needs to have clarity on what are the key buying situations/occasions for which it wants to win.

The company should be able to describe what these look like in customer terms.

Typically, they take a functional, emotional, or social form or some combination thereof.

For example, a restaurant company could focus on delivering a fast lunch for me, offering me customization and little moments for myself.

While some would want more detail around these terms, what happens now is an exercise to understand how well the current offering lines up against these different key buying situations by depth, price points,

Once the menu is optimized against these key buying situations, products can be evaluated against the above outcomes.

Ensure your offering is better optimized for effectiveness before optimizing for efficiency by following this approach.