Five More Questions That Will Generate Ideas For Your Business
This is a continuation of my article entitled “Five Easy Questions That Will Ignite Ideas For Your Business”. Answering five more questions will surely indeed get your imagination pumping and ideas flowing!
The first five questions were: 1) In the next seven days what can I do that will fill in the blank 2) Regarding marketing strategies, which of them are being used successfully in your industry? 3) What would be five new ways to attain new customers? 4) How do I make it really easy for people to help me and who do I know that could really help my idea take off? 5) For only $10, how could I wow blank?
We will begin right away with Question Six: How could I automate XYZ?
Armand Morin comes up with so many different product ideas that I asked him once, “How do you come up with so many different ideas?”
His response was simple but made complete sense. “It’s simple. If something is taking me too much time to do, I ask myself, how could I automate this process? Ninety percent of my product ideas come from my ability to recognize what’s draining my time. I’m lazy. I want to automate everything.”
That’s where his product ideas come from. Powerful question, so ask yourself that question. How could you automate XYZ?
Question seven: How could XYZ be simplified?
Is it complicated to buy from you? Have you ever tried to buy from yourself and gone through the process? There are so many products that I’ve purchased that are absolutely painful to actually buy from somebody.
This happened to me recently actually. I was trying to purchase a server, a new dedicated server. The process the company was trying to make me go through just to purchase made me so frustrated that I ended up giving up and choosing a different company.
So they need to ask the question: How can they simplify the purchasing process for my customers?
It’s the same question you could ask yourself, and it can be a very powerful piece of stimuli to spark all kinds of new processes for you.
Question eight: Thinking about my target market, what product should I create to solve one of the problems they are experiencing?
A great tool to use for this question is the Ask Database. Alex Mandossian created this phenomenal piece of software. If you have it, use it. Use it to constantly ask people what problems they are having and make products that will solve them.
Being able to find problems and solve them is an attribute that all creative thinkers should have and use. Being able to solve someone else’s problem will always keep you in demand.
This website is extremely powerful and useful when finding problems. Make sure you write this down – it is www.Answer.Google.com
When you go there, I want you to click on the category that is most applicable to you and your business, and find out what questions people are asking. Those questions are problems.
If you see a common question coming up, that’s a clear indication that many people are probably experiencing the same problem. That presents a need for a product to help solve that problem.
Ask yourself this question on a regular basis: What product can I create that will solve the problems my target market is experiencing?
Question nine: Watching Alex Mandossian present at a recent seminar I heard him bring this up, and it is a very powerful question. How could my current products or services by residualized?
This is the best senario, constantly getting paid every single month, or whatever time frame you lay out. You should be looking at how you can get paid more than once, over and over again. Instead of having to find new customers, you will be benefitting and leveraging your existing customers.
Ask yourself that question: How could I residualize my current products or services?
Final question, the last thing I am going to leave you with is; with the products and services I have now, how could I increase their value?
Thinking in the customers favor and frame of mind is really going to get a whole bunch of ideas popping into your head.
When you start to benefit the costumer, the most positive feedback you and your business will receive. When you have a happy customer the more likely they will come back to you again, bring in more revenue for you and spread praises about your products and services.
Planning my first seminar a few years back I stopped and asked myself how could I increase the value of what I am offering before any of the attendees even got there. By doing this they were wow’d when I gave them bonus after bonus throughout the course of the seminar. This led to 100% satisfaction and all of them were asking when the next Idea Incubator would be. I still have some of those attendees still come every year to it and they are now all willing to spread the word about what a great time it was.
Their praise and enthusiasm about my event continued even to the Big Seminar. They continued telling everyone what a great time they had and how much valuable information they received from the Idea Incubator.
If I hadn’t asked myself how I could increase the value of what I was offering then that would not have happened.
When you do that, it just opens up a whole new opportunity area for you, your products, and your services.
That’s about it!
I hope you got as much out of this information as I did.
May ideas come to you when you need them most.
Filed under: Marketing