#36 Your Q4 Product Priorities
This week I have been deep in Q4 goal setting with clients, and for myself. I love the start of a new quarter – it gives new energy vibes similar to the new year.
But the thing about planning is that reality sets in... We want everything created and implemented and we want it now. And that isn't possible.
It doesn't matter if your company is one person or thousands, thoughtful prioritization is crucial to the bottom line and growth of your business.
As a product leader I'm tasked with managing the roadmap – what should we build first?
So today I'm giving you my method for prioritizing your product ideas to optimize for both happy customers and a happy bottom line.
If you're an entrepreneur then you know the feeling of getting so excited about an idea you just start running with it... the next thing you know you've got a product and a sales page.
And you also know that most of the time it doesn't work out as you imagined. That's because it was built from a spark of inspiration and assumptions. We're all guilty of it. This is what it's like to be creative.
I don't say this to knock you down, but so you can understand why this prioritization methodology I'll share with you today can save you a lot of time, money, and even heartache.
When I worked at a custom software agency we used this method to prioritize feature roadmaps – we dealt with challenges like... should we build a new series of HTML social templates, or update the library experience? (that one was a marketing platform for real estate agents).
Now, I use this method to help creators and brands prioritize their digital products like email sequences, courses, memberships, etc.
Here's a quick breakdown:
For each idea you have whether that be a new freebie, a huge initiative, a completely new business stream, you want to consider the following:
Customer Value - How much will this help and serve my community?
Business Value - How much value does this add to my business from either a revenue or long-term strategy perspective?
Level Of Effort - How much time, effort and money is this going to cost me to create?
The customer value is the most important thing. If customers don't value it, it's just not worth building. If the customer value is high then the next priority is to consider the business value.
If there isn't a business value, you'll just end up cancelling the project or sunsetting the product later when you need to simplify and optimize for cash flow. Save yourself a headache.
Lastly, we want to consider how hard this thing is to create. Oftentimes when the customer value and business value are both very high, the level of effort is going to be extremely difficult.
You can make a strategic decision as to which of these make sense to sink your costs and effort in. But when it's easy to implement and has a huge customer value, it's 100% worth prioritizing fast.
Grab your g-sheet template here and let's get to work!
In this video you'll learn how to:
Prioritize your product ideas and decide what to build first
Capture your ideas overtime
Develop a rolling quarterly product strategy
If you loved this, consider subscribing to my newsletter here.