Why won’t they buy my amazing product?

Because you have built it for yourself, not for your customer’s needs!

As a product creator in the Edtech world, you may be eager to jump right into the development phase and bring your ideas to life. However, skipping the discovery phase can lead to serious problems down the line. In this post, we’ll explore why the discovery phase is so important and how it can help you create commercial products that truly meet the needs of schools and MATs.

The discovery phase is all about understanding whom you are building the solution for and understanding their needs and not wants. It involves conducting research, gathering insights, and validating assumptions to ensure that you are on the right track. Skipping this phase means that you are creating a product based on assumptions (even if you have been in the role) rather than actual data, which can lead to costly mistakes.

One of the main benefits of the discovery phase is that it helps you get under the skin of your target customer. This includes understanding their pain points, needs, and desires. By gathering this information, you can create a product that meets and solves their needs. This can lead to higher customer satisfaction and increased loyalty over time.

Additionally, the discovery phase can help you identify opportunities for innovation. By exploring the Education market and gathering insights, you may discover a gap that your product can fill. This can lead to a unique product that stands out from competitors and has the potential to generate significant revenue.

Furthermore, the discovery phase can help you save time and money in the long run. By identifying potential issues early on in the process, you can avoid costly mistakes down the line. For example, if you discover that there is little demand for your product, you can pivot early on before investing significant resources into development.

To conclude, the discovery phase is a crucial part of product creation that should not be skipped. By conducting research, gathering insights, and validating assumptions, you can create a product that truly meets the needs of schools and MATs. The discovery phase can also help you identify opportunities for innovation, save time and money, and avoid costly mistakes. By prioritizing the discovery phase, you can set your product up for success and positively impact your customers and your bottom line.

We’ve just finished a brilliant week delivering product training in New York with the Tarigo Product Management team.

The week involved delivering an intensive Product Bootcamp based around Tarigo’s 5D Product Framework. It’s an externally accredited, comprehensive course covering all aspects of product management and the typical lifecycle of a product, from ideation right through to product retirement. It’s also fun, practical and engaging, and involves completing group ‘missions’ every day.

As much as this week has been about training and coaching, we’ve learnt so much from spending time with the new team of employees comprised of fairly recent graduates/interns:

👉 The teams collaborated so easily and so successfully. The discussions were intelligent and respectful, roles were assigned fairly and everyone played an important part – and the results were amazing.

👉 The ideas, plans and pitches they came up with within a short amount of time were incredible. It goes to show that, with the right guidance, coaching and templates, innovative ideas can be formulated in a matter of hours and days. It only takes months to get a business case on the table if you allow it to take that long (something that we’re all a bit guilty of, perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise after all).

👉 Gen Z won’t stand for greenwashing. One of the overall goals was to come up with solutions focused on sustainability – and they expect companies to truly live their values. Inspiring stuff.

A fantastic week, I look forward to doing it again. Now for some sightseeing! 🗽

The next in our series of EdTech Thought Leader Q&A sessions is with Mark House, Product Manager at RM Education.

Mark was a teacher for over 20 years and has been working at RM as a Product Manager in the Education market now for 5 years. Our discussion includes:

• Whether education technology in the UK and globally needs to be more innovative; what’s stopping it?
• RM’s work on innovation in assessment that will save teachers time, but also take away the issue with unconscious bias.
• Any advice Mark would give on looking at new technology, and seeing how this fits with delivering an innovative solution.
• Where Mark sees the next big thing in Edtech?

Last week I took the opportunity to have a virtual get together with thought leader Graham Reed to talk all things edtech.

Graham has a diverse background and knows the MIS and epayments sectors particularly well. Amongst other things, we discussed:

• What made Graham start Omega Pegasus
• What’s driving more market movement than ever to challenger cloud solutions
• Views on recent acquisitions, and Graham’s predictions for the future of MIS
• The future of the e-payments sector which Graham knows well, including potential new players and innovations
• Graham’s separate app projects, and the thinking behind creating them

Please note: We chat about the future of MIS and how challenger solutions might look to compete by working with adjacent solutions, in particular epayments systems. However, this was recorded a few days before it was announced that Montagu intended to acquire/invest in both SIMS and ParentPay so things have changed!

Lots of insightful stuff was discussed so we’ve split the interview out into separate parts below – enjoy!

Nick

What a great 2019!!

I’m now 13 months into working for myself and running my own business and it’s great. Not only do I get to work with all sorts of inspiring people around the world, I also get to wear many hats and that variety makes me love my work.

Our Finnemore Consulting business focuses on helping business grow in the education sector. Sarah and I work with Exec teams on product strategy, biz dev, sales, product marketing, channel partnering, acquisition and client management. I’ve worked directly with foreign governments and we also get to work with educators, MATs and Support Teams directly who we’ve known for years – a definite bonus!

In addition, we’re proud to be part of the CJK Associates team. We support their work with investors and trade-buyers to help them find acquisitions, and with owners of small education companies who are looking to sell. With so much market movement going on in the Edtech sector it’s an exciting area of work.

In amongst all this I work with the excellent Tarigo in delivering Product Management and Leadership training across all sectors. It’s my area of expertise and it’s great to use this knowledge with new companies, from grads to experienced product leaders.

2020 looks like an exciting year ahead and I look forward to wearing more hats as the year goes on. If anyone’s going to #BettLondon or #BettAsia and would like to catch up, drop us a line.

I have worked with many CEOs who say the trouble with strategizing is that is all that happens.  They want action!

People can procrastinate around the strategy.  In many cases, boards are reluctant to spend money if there are potential questions unanswered. As Donald Rumsfeld said “known unknowns”.

However, as with a lot of situations in business, how do you know what is the right amount of information to make a decision?  You’re never going to know everything at the beginning and, like the rest of the product process, you will continue to iterate the strategy as you have more information and realign.

So why is it important to have a strategy?

A product strategy is essential to product execution and achieving the product’s business goals.

A strategy lays out a plan on how that goal will be achieved. Without a product strategy, product execution is often haphazard. You risk moving from one crisis to the next – or from one deal to the next, as you will be redirected by the different priorities of your internal stakeholders.

If you do not own the strategy, communicate it and get buy-in from all your stakeholders, everyone else will set a strategy in their heads. It will become hard to own the direction of your solution(s). This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be listening to all stakeholders, but you need to own the strategy and direction of your solution.

Remember you are the CEO of your Products!!

Throughout many years of working with different companies, it is amazing how many people say the product sells itself. Yet the truth in many cases is:

• The solution has cost far more than it had to because they didn’t truly understand their market needs, so compensated by building everything a customer wants.
• They had no control on costs and this means no control on profit
• The price normally was too low, as no understanding of the competition or value was understood
• The product was not used to its full potential, so customers didn’t understand the true benefit
• The business doesn’t understand the value of the solution, so direction of where the business is going is organic, with no true vision.

Getting the Product culture right

This is where Product Managers are able to add value to a company. They drive the commercial success of a product and lead the cross functional teams to deliver a solution that meets the needs of customers and drives the greatest growth for the business. It is an important organisational role that:

• Sets the Vision and Strategy for the business solutions,
• Communicates the roadmap
• Defines the feature definition for a product or product line.
• (The position may also include marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities. In many ways, the role of a product manager is similar in concept to a CEO of a solution)

Product managers provide the deep product expertise needed to lead the organisation and make strategic product decisions which is why they analyse market and competitive conditions. They lay out a product vision that is differentiated and delivers unique value based on customer needs. The role spans many activities from strategic to tactical and provides important cross-functional leadership most notably between engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.

The Product Manager needs to lead cross-functional teams from a product’s conception all the way through to its launch. Therefore, they are the person responsible for defining the Why? When and What? of the product that the engineering team builds – and it’s ultimate success.

The ability to communicate well is an important skill for any Product or Business Development Manager. This means, among other things, that you should be able to present about your solution fluently and to different stakeholders, who will require a different level of information.

A persuasive presentation not only requires thorough preparation of content, but also good style. It takes considerable skill to come across coherently for any particular audience and to stay in control of the situation. For this purpose, the following 7 tips may offer some guidance to help you on the way to delivering a memorable presentation.

1. Show your Passion and Connect with your Audience

But time and again, the great presenters say that the most important thing is to connect with your audience, and the best way to do this is to let passion for your solution shine through.

Be enthusiastic and honest, and the audience will respond.

2. Focus on your Stakeholders Needs

As you prepare the presentation, you always need to bear in mind what your stakeholders need and what they want to know, not what you can tell them.

Don’t show your homework, just because it makes you feel good.

3. Keep it Simple: Concentrate on your Core Message

You should be able to communicate that key message very succinctly.

Always have in mind what are the core three points I want to get across?

4. Start Strongly you have 3 minutes to impress

The first three minutes, as when you first meet someone, is so important to a presentation. So smile, make eye contact and make sure the first 3 minutes of the presentation holds the stakeholders attention. Make them laugh!!

Think of a story that is relevant at the start of the presentation which will hold the audience.

5. Don’t use the presentation as a script

Don’t bore the audience by ‘Death by Powerpoint’. By all means use the presentation as a reminder, but do this in as fewer words as possible and use images if you can.

Remember you want your stakeholders to listen to you, not be deciphering what the slides are saying.

6. Tell stories

The best presenters are raconteurs , who can tell a story about the subject and keep an audiences attention. We all relate to stories, we also remember things better through stories.

Make your story funny and about you.

7. Relax and enjoy

Many people find it hard to relax and enjoy a presentation, but your body language and the speed you speak will have a major effect on the stakeholders perception if you know your subject and also if you can get a message across. Breath, and slow your delivery of the presentation down.

Remember you know more about your solution than your stakeholders

I have now been working with a number of companies across the Edtech market for over 18 years. The one thing that always inspires me is the innovative, engaging companies that want to get it right.

However, there are a number of companies that just do not understand the Education market.  And so, while they may have a great solution, they are not really working on their Product Strategy and how they need to adapt to a market where relationships and advocates are essential to strong growth and success.

The Education market is unique in many ways to other private sector markets and as an Edtech company you need to be able to talk the right language and work in a slightly different way. If I was a MAT or a school there should be 3 key things I would be looking for in a company, never mind the solution they are selling to me.

Relationship

Does this company want to work in partnership?  This means not going missing, once you have sold to a school or MAT.

A School is an exceedingly busy place with lots of challenging priorities for peoples time. The person in the office could be putting a plaster on a knee one minute and then dealing with the police on a bullying incident the next. But ultimately the children come first, not embedding a solution. A school needs support throughout this process and then ongoing support with new functionality and getting the most out of a solution.

Just because a school is paying for a solution doesn’t mean they are using it, eventually a school will stop paying and never go back. As a company stay in touch, help out!!

Also there are companies that can add support which are local to schools, engage with them to help make the most of a solution.

What the solution does now

Many schools don’t have the time to do an audit on their solutions, but I suggest they should. Remember, a solution is there to support a need.

Schools should look at their own processes and ask the question:

• Can this be done better via a technical solution or by a different solution?
• Are my incumbent solutions really meeting our needs anymore?
• Are our needs the same as a bigger school down the road? if not consider looking at lighter solutions or a reduction in cost due to the amount of the solution you are using.
• For the need that the solution meets, is the cost acceptable, is there an alternative?

Needs change along with your ambitions, so should companies to meet your needs.

The Future

Technology and challenges in schools are changing at a rapid pace. As a school or MAT you need to be comfortable that the Edtech partners you have are able to rise to this challenge.

To this end, I would be asking the companies you are working with for a view on their vision. Where they see the Edtech market moving towards, and how they are going to meet these future challenges for schools and MATs.

Gain an understanding of are they nimble or slow, will they let you down in the future? Will they listen to you and help find solutions to your needs in the future?

I am sure there are many other things a school or MAT is looking for in a company, when they are dealing with them, let me have your thoughts?