Releasing an ebook or selling a service is a great achievement. Having a business means more than having a single product. On the other hand, a fully-fledged business means that, even if interest in one of your products disappears, you’ve still got a stable of great offerings and a diverse group of customers to buy them. A business provides goods and/or services to consumers. A product is a good and/or service provided to a consumer. Whether you have a product or a business, you know that sales don’t just happen. According to Forrester Research, “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.” Yes, a single product can have lead capture mechanisms in place. Neil Patel explains why having a carefully-crafted sales funnel is so important: “No matter how they get to you, as many as 73% of leads are not even ready to be sold to. What to do if: You’re not ready for a business If you’re not ready to jump into building a full-blown business, you can still apply some of these foundational business principles to your current product to ensure its success. Next, make sure the product is designed to optimally provide the value you’ve just defined.
Releasing an ebook or selling a service is a great achievement. But a lot of digital entrepreneurs believe that’s all there is to being in business.
Having a business means more than having a single product. It means committing to continuous sales funnel development, and to being thoroughly invested in the success of your consumers over the long haul.
Yes, the risks are huge. The rewards, however, are even greater.
If you don’t have a business – if all you have is a single product – you’re putting your financial future in jeopardy. What will happen if, all of a sudden, demand dries up for your product?
Maybe you’ve saturated your market, or maybe changes in your industry make your product obsolete, but if you’ve staked your claim on a single product, you could lose it all in a day. On the other hand, a fully-fledged business means that, even if interest in one of your products disappears, you’ve still got a stable of great offerings and a diverse group of customers to buy them.
Below, I’ll help you determine if you have a product or a business. If you have a product, I’ll talk about the key steps you need to take in order to change your thinking from a salesperson of a product to an entrepreneur in business.
We’ll also touch on what you can do if you want to function like a business, but don’t want to jump in head first just yet.
Product vs Business
Before we dive in, a little definition magic:
Per Merriam-Webster, a product is “something that is made or grown to be sold or used.”
According to Wikipedia, a business is “an entity involved in the provision of goods and/or services to consumers.”
The difference is subtle but the key is in continuous process. A business provides goods and/or services to consumers. A product is a good and/or service provided to a consumer.
For example, many of the items on Kickstarter and eBay are products. They aim to sell a single thing. A great example of this is the Toasteroid. The makers of the toaster are focused on this one product. Even their website is entirely devoted to just this product.
An Etsy shop, however, can be a fully-fledged business. Wallplays, for example, sells more than 200 different kinds of wallpapers. Their brand isn’t dedicated to only one type of wallpaper, which is important in an industry where design trends can change in a minute. Instead, they diversify their offerings by selling repositionable, colorful, and modern wallpaper to suit all lifestyles and decor preferences.
At this point, you may already have a good idea of whether your endeavors constitute a product or a business. But if you’re still on the fence, consider the following questions:
Do you have a plan for developing, releasing, and promoting new
products to capitalize on your previous success?
Carter Wigell, writing for Ideator, shares MP3 players as a great example of an industry where individual products grew into full businesses. Noting that Microsoft’s Zune player preceded the transformative iPod – but failed to ever gain real market share – Wigell suggests that “[Apple’s] delivery, ecosystem, marketing and macro trends of consumer behavior were timed perfectly.”
Not only was Apple able to identify and capitalize on opportunities that Microsoft missed, they were able to leverage the business they built around the iPod to transition into tablets, smart watches and more.
Even if the tech giant’s sales are cooling now, the company still managed astronomical revenue growth from $8 billion in 2004 to more than $230 billion in 2015.
You definitely can’t say that about the Zune.
Do you have lead capture mechanisms in place?
Whether you have a product or a business, you know that sales don’t just happen. Before they hit the “Buy” button, buyers have to first recognize that they have a need, identify alternatives to evaluate, and carry...
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