“You’ve heard of early adopters? They’re too late”
For decades, brands that offer innovation have treasured their early adopter customers. These enthusiasts – the ones who seek out and buy your new product, service or technology before anyone else – are also the ones who find the bugs, lend the cred and start the craze that leads to volume.
Some brands we know have decided to cultivate groups of these people, turning them into partners who get involved at an early stage in product or service development.
So how do you do it? How do you get your most demanding customers to join the R&D team? And then how do you manage their input and motivation to make sure the relationship remains mutually worthwhile?
Commitment first. Choose a senior manager in your organisation whose project this is going to be. Someone who has enough clout to earmark budgets, overcome inertia and get things done.
Recruitment next. Remember, you only need a handful of people – this is not quantitative. Find a few opinionated individuals with some influence over their peers. Get your salesforce or top retailers to identify them. Talk to distributors or resellers - they’ll know who they are and they’ll help you get in touch.
So now it’s time to get talking.
You need conversations, not questionnaire answers, so get your dozen or so partner customers together in a good hotel, give them your beta product, your model or your sketches to play with and just be there, listening.
And if you’re worried that they won’t want to travel or can’t spare the time, consider this:
They’ll spare some time just before joining you at centre court, Wimbledon! They’ll be happy to play with your product before watching Manchester United play!
Last thing: after each meeting, you must feed back on what their input has achieved. New sketches from your chief designer; new projects that their opinions have prompted.
Your competition may already court early adopters and even ask their opinions. But by setting up groups of partner customers at an earlier stage, you’ll produce better products and sell them more easily.
You may also find yourself referring to competitors as ‘late competitors’!
