Howard Gordon
Howard Gordon, Co-Founder of Customplasticpart.
Know Your Customers and Leverage Their Feedback
What helped us in the beginning was to be deeply involved in the industry where we try to solve a pain point.
We have talked to company owners and employees and started to build our SaaS around their needs. After that, you need to allow a prospective customer to test it intensively. A demo, video, or presentation alone does not do it.
Ask them for a wish list of features that are missing in the current version. You surely will get good feedback out of this.
Create a Product Roadmap Based on Customer Needs
To determine which features to focus on, SaaS companies should ask prospective customers what their biggest concerns and objectives are and what tasks the product should complete for them. Once these needs and wants are identified, companies can create a product roadmap that includes those specific needs as well as other general needs. This ensures that the company sets priorities based on the customer’s needs and doesn’t spend too much time (or money) on ideas that aren’t as important to them.
Amit Ranjitkar
Amit Ranjitkar is the CEO and Co-founder of Agentcis, a CRM software for Education and Migration Consultants.
Sam Niro
Sam Niro from Acquire.
Consider Calls, Feature Adoption, and the Competitive Landscape
There are three things SaaS companies should reference:
- Calls or call recordings
- Feature adoption
- The competitive landscape
Calls provide unfiltered access to the voice of your prospects, outcomes they want to achieve, and how they suspect they’ll achieve them. Feature adoption will help weed out the nice to have’s versus need to haves once customers sign. Looking at competitors helps reflect larger market trends — Is there a new capability multiple companies are releasing? Usually, that indicates a wider need in the market.
Create a Minimum Viable Product
A minimum viable product (MVP) is the cheapest and most bare-bones version of your (potential) product that you can give to customers to gain feedback. An MVP is the cheapest, least risky, and most effective way to gain feedback from your customers regarding what features they’re most interested in.
While I encourage doing market research to find out what customers want, the best way you can know what they want is to put something in their hands that they can use, evaluate, and give you constructive feedback about.
Ayesha Bose
Ayesha Bose is currently a Senior Product Manager at Threads.
Gather Information and Test Out Your Hypothesis
To understand product features prospective customers are most interested in, I think you need to approach the problem in two main ways:
- Gather as much information as possible
- Test out your hypothesis
It’s critical to work closely with your Sales and Customer Success teams to get as much information as possible from customers early on in their journey. To test out feature ideas with prospective customers, it’s most helpful to look for their willingness to put “their skin in the game.” Paying for your product is the strongest signal here, but other approaches like participation in a beta program or willingness to invite others can also help determine intent.
Create Customer Personas
When trying to establish what products your customers will be most interested in, create customer personas. Customer personas are a great way of understanding your target customers and their needs and desires. Make these as in-depth as possible. You need to include their demographic details and a few bullet points on their interests, dislikes, background, and identifiers. The more characteristics and traits you give your customer persona, the better equipped you’ll be to create products they’ll want and need.
Nathan Gill
Nathan Gill, Chief Product Officer at Epos Now.
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