Why should companies develop and introduce new products?
To help inspire new product development, we asked business leaders and CEOs this question for their best insights. From managing seasonal fluctuations to discovering unrestricted talent, there are several reasons why your company should develop and introduce new products as part of its growth strategy.
Here are 10 reasons why companies should develop and introduce new products:
- Manage Seasonal Fluctuations
- Improve Your Competitive Advantage
- Provide More Customer Value
- Diversify Business Risk
- Increase Sales
- Keep Your Company’s Soul Alive
- If You Don’t, Your Competition Will
- Innovate to Provide More Solutions for Your Customers
- Explore New Markets
- Discover a New Unrestricted Talent
Manage Seasonal Fluctuations
A new product launch can help you manage seasonal fluctuations and maintain your market share. Every year, customers want to see something new, but their attention span is shorter than you’d like. If market conditions dictate a new product launch every year around the same time, you need to take action to keep up with it. That’s the best way to boost your sales volumes and keep pace with or exceed the competition.
Randall Smalley, Cruise America
Improve Your Competitive Advantage
Not improving and innovating? Then you’re not moving forward. The only way you’re going to improve your competitive edge is by changing up your product line. Even if you only make improvements to a current product, you can sell it as new and grab more market share in the process. If all you sell is what you currently have, you risk falling behind, and that’s no risk you want to take.
Stephanie Schull, Kegelbell
Provide More Customer Value
Even if your designs are the most beautiful you’ve ever imagined, you should never take your customers for granted. Creativity has several stages of development, and they’re always in flux. Your development activity needs to keep pace with trends if you’re to provide more customer value than your competitors. As long as you keep coming up with new designs and products, your market share will be safe.
Nataly Vanunu, Boho Magic
Diversify Business Risk
When you only sell one product, you’re increasing the risk to your company’s bottom line. The more products and services you develop and offer, the more you diversify your business risk. If you only have one product and it fails, you’re out of luck. But if you have many products and only one of them fails, you can still dominate the domestic market.
Vanessa Molica, The Lash & Sugar Company
Increase Sales
New products help businesses gain new customers. As your new products address the needs of customers that your older products did not, more customers flock in. Often, a fraction of the newer customers check out your older products and buy them based on their needs. This way, the businesses not only see a sale of the new product but also an increased sale of the older ones.
Nathan Hughes, Diggity Marketing
Keep Your Company’s Soul Alive
You want to keep creating products to keep the soul of your business alive. If you start to care more about profit margins and less about launching new ideas and items, you will lose your sense of adventure. Even worse, you’ll lose yourself in the inertia of running a business. There is nothing more uninspiring than that. Conjuring creative ideas is what keeps the enthusiasm level high for your workforce. You don’t want to see that taper. Keep your focus on product discovery. It will keep things interesting.
Joel Jackson, Lifeforce
If You Don’t, Your Competition Will
I can’t even count the number of times a company leader has come to me and said “we were planning on releasing something just like that, but somehow our competition beat us to the punch!” Oftentimes it seems like they assume there’s been some sort of espionage or trickery, but rarely is that the case. The scope of your industry is fairly small when you think about it, and ideas spread quickly within that tight community. We’re all competing for top talent and trying to generate new ideas. When your process for product development slows, you’ll eventually be overtaken.
David Patterson-Cole, Moonchaser
Innovate to Provide More Solutions for Your Customers
Always aim to innovate and provide more solutions that speak to your company’s mission. For example, TurboTax offers different solutions based on the taxpayer’s needs.
The company took note of the unique tax challenges faced by its users and packaged the solutions into various services. Listen to your customers to find additional mission-related problems and develop solutions for an innovation-forward brand.
Amrita Saigal, Kudos
Explore New Markets
Developing a new product gives companies the added advantage of exploring new markets other than their existing ones. Whether it is a market where the product is bound to take the competition by surprise and leave it behind or one that has customers clamoring for the product, an unexplored market promises several new opportunities for success. Also, the added resources a company garners via its product sales in new markets can be put to work to initiate a spurt of growth for the brand, from expansion of its product line to further exploration of fresh territories.
Mary Jurgensen, Gary and Mary West PACE
Discover a New Unrestricted Talent
Discover a new unrestricted talent. Use the symptoms of burnout as a signal to check in with your employees by asking if they have in mind a new initiative to launch? Burnout is the reason why companies should develop new products to keep employees, grow talent, and keep the financial aspects stronger.
Spend 15 minutes each day of focused but casual conversations by asking members what they want to do with their day, the upcoming week, month, and year. This allows you to rethink new talent in the company’s members and introduce new product.
Liudmila Schafer, The Doctor Connect, LLC
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