IMPROVE YOUR COMPANY'S FINANCIAL RESULTS WITH PRODUCT INNOVATION

As part of SEMA’s Aftermarket Survival Webinar Series, last Thursday’s webinar, entitled “Leverage Your Company’s Strengths in a Difficult Market” presented by Mike Madden, demonstrated how members do not need to invest in new product development in order to overcome economic challenges and market shifts, but can instead use existing tools at hand.

Madden presented a process for financial improvement built on product innovation, which can include changes in product description, slight product changes and the development of different distribution channels.

“Product innovation doesn’t have to be radical,” Madden said. “It can be evolutionary. It’s sometimes nothing more than finding better ways to describe your products to customers that communicates more clearly the benefit that they will receive, or more clearly the reason they should believe that they will actually get the benefit that you talk about.”

Madden also advised members to put out a quality product as soon as it is possible in order to get revenues flowing.

“Never delay to produce and put on the market a gold-plated product with all the bells and whistles,” Madden said. “If you can build a quality product right now, get it out there, start the revenues flowing.”

At the same time, he stated the importance of staged releases of product improvements.

“The obvious truth here is that small, continuous, evolutionary product modification can benefit total revenues over the life of a product. It may also extend the product life cycle over a much longer period of time.”

For an audio or a PDF download of this webinar, along with an archive of past webinars, click here. Also, don’t miss these upcoming webinars:

Thursday, July 31, 2008 - “Highly Effective Low-Cost Marketing Strategies,” 10:00 a.m. (PDT)
Thursday, August 14, 2008 – “Inventor Management: Mark It Down, Move It Out, Make More Money,” 10 a.m. (PDT)