The Right Product Strategy: How to Build What Customers Actually Buy

What if the reason your business isn’t growing has nothing to do with your effort—and everything to do with your product? 

In this powerful episode of 10 Keys to Thrive, international business strategist Jim Krigbaum breaks down one of the most critical (and overlooked) truths in business: you don’t sell what you produce—you produce what the market demands.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re spinning your wheels, working harder but not getting results, this episode will shift how you think about your entire business. Jim reveals why so many entrepreneurs fail to gain traction—not because they lack a product, but because they don’t have the right product for the market.

You’ll learn how to identify real demand using “pain point radar,” uncover what customers actually want (even when they can’t articulate it), and position your product in a way that makes it stand out. This episode also dives into the powerful shift from competing as a commodity—where price is everything—to owning a niche, where your product becomes the obvious choice.

Jim shares real-world examples from global markets, including how companies differentiate through branding, certifications, packaging, and perception—sometimes more than the product itself. You’ll also discover why using the customer’s language (not industry jargon) can dramatically increase your conversions, and how involving your customers early can create instant buy-in and loyalty.

This isn’t theory—it’s a practical framework you can apply immediately. From understanding your capabilities through SWOT analysis to aligning your product with real market demand, this episode gives you the tools to stop guessing and start building something that actually sells.

If you’re ready to stop pushing products that don’t convert, find your niche, and create something the market truly wants—this episode is your blueprint.

Hit play and learn how to build the right product… for the right market… at the right time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So we started with you. You have to have the right you. Today we're going to talk about the right product.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Are you sick and tired of spinning wheels, wasting time and money in your business, but getting nowhere fast? With the 10 Keys to Thrive podcast, it's your masterclass in momentum by International Business Strategist and your host, Jim Kriegbaum.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hi, I'm Jim Krigbaum, your mentor and host of 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life. In the first episode of this series, I taught you that you are the first product. You have to have the right you to appeal to the market. In this session, we'll talk about having the right product. In my networking with companies around the world, I've seen the same situation, the same pattern. People technically have a product, but they don't have the right product for the market. Today I'll leave you with some tools that will help you identify the product that you need to produce. We will teach you to produce what you can sell. Don't sell what you produce. To do that, you have to know what the right product is. To do that, you have to identify the opportunities. So you've gone through your SWOT analysis that we talked about last time. You've identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your individual company, of your individuals within the company, of products and product lines. Now that you've got that information, you can take a look at it and try and determine what is the product that you should be producing to meet the market demand. Remember, it all begins with demand. It's not a supply chain, it's a demand chain. Identify the demand, identify the product, and identify the market. The game changes when you decide to move your product from a commodity to a niche. A commodity is a product that's no matter what it is, it sells on price. My product is identical to my competitor's product. Buyer can choose from me or the competitor or anybody and have the exact same product. Price then becomes the only factor. So how do I separate my product? How do I make it so that the customer demands my product? They demand it by brand. They demand it by characteristics. To do that, you have to find a niche. You have to find what separates your product. You have to be able to answer the question, why in the world would anybody buy my product versus everything else that's out there? To do that, you have to look at your product. You have to look at your capabilities. You've assessed your capabilities. Now you assess what product meets the market. Consumers buy things because it solves a problem or it satisfies a need. The bigger the problem, the bigger the need, the bigger the opportunity. We can't always quantify what those are. Jensen Wong with Nvidia, the CEO of NVIDIA, works with his business to develop a product. It has to be able to go from zero sales to a billion dollars in sales. He can't look at the track record and say this particular product sells this much. He has to understand the market. But he understands the market, he applies that to his company and their ability to produce. The same charm dance characteristics that work on developing the right you also work on developing the right product. We'll walk through them. Here's a couple of tools that'll help you understand that and help you move forward. The first is point of pain radar. It's really identifying where the pain is, what it is that you can solve, what is it that the customer needs. Steve Jobs developed the Apple iPod. He had to first identify that there was a need. Nobody knew we needed music in our pocket. That was totally out of the world. We had Walkman, we had the ability to listen to that, but nobody knew we needed an iPod. Now, today, almost everybody has a cell phone. When I travel around the world, I can be in third world countries, I can be in the middle of the desert, the middle of the jungle, the middle of the city. And everybody, almost of every income group, has a cell phone. So he identified a demand that was there even though it wasn't specific, even though it wasn't identified. He knew what the consumer wanted. So by knowing what the consumer wants, by having a pain point, by understanding what it is they want to solve, what is it that you have the ability to solve for them? That's the pain point. That's the first tool. The second tool is to move your product from a commodity to a niche. To do that, you have to differentiate your product. Sometimes you can differentiate your product in the product itself. Larger packaging, smaller packaging, larger size, more power, less power, plastic versus steel, steel versus plastic. There's all kinds of modifications that you can do to your product. You can also differentiate your product by certification. What certifications does it have? Sometimes those certifications are quality standards or safety standards that are set by the government. Everybody's got to meet them. So how do you differentiate? What if you have a product that's fair trade? All of a sudden you can qualify it. You're qualified to market is a niche to consumers that are looking for fair trade product. What if you have a product that's non-GMO, non-genetically modified? You've set your product apart. What if everything you have is natural ingredients? What if it's sustainable? There are a lot of different ways you can differentiate your product. So how do you move it from a commodity to a niche? We did that in our container business. We had the ability to import containers from around the world. We needed to find a competitive and comparative advantage with the relationships that we had. Our manufacturer produced two styles of containers, a pressure container and ambient pressure container, which meant it didn't carry pressure. In the United States, there are a lot of producers of ambient pressure containers, but globally, there's very few producers of pressurized containers. So we had a competitive advantage. The fact that our manufacturer produced 13,000 to 16,000 containers a year allowed us to have a competitive and comparative advantage. We were able to identify that. We didn't move a commodity because everybody could move the same thing. So how did we differentiate? We competed with Chinese manufacturers. How do we differentiate ourselves from that? We worked with European manufacturing, we worked with European craftsmanship. So we were able to elevate the quality image of our product. A lot of times they met the same exact standards, but in the mind of the consumer, we understood that if a consumer in the beer industry, for example, was going to buy a container, where beer comes from? It originates primarily in Europe. So if we had a European designed and manufactured container, that gave us competitive and comparative advantage. So we built that. How did we prove our product from a commodity to a niche? You have to look at your product and figure out what we can do that's different. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's mental, sometimes it's superficial. But in the mind of the consumer, it becomes important. Third step is to make sure that you produce what you sell, don't sell what you produce. A lot of times companies go, we produce this product, therefore we have to sell it. We hire our sales team to go out and sell the product that we produce. But it's more important that you produce what the market demands. We saw that when we worked with the Georgian wine industry. Georgian wine industry had Russia as their primary market. They had produced wine for centuries. They have the oldest wine production in the world, according to many. And their consumers knew what they wanted. All of a sudden, that market changed. The Russians stopped buying the product because of politics and economics. All of a sudden, they needed to find a new market. They tried to apply the same product to the European market and to the US market. Well, Europeans know their wine. The varieties that the Georgians produced were totally different varieties. So how did they differentiate it? How did they set it apart? So the consumer then would look at the product and say, we need to buy this because it's Georgian wine. The Georgian wine producer said our product is the finest in the world. That was great. It was the finest in the world for them. The finest product in the world is a product that you can produce and sell at a profit. So even though you produce a product and you've done it for centuries, doesn't mean it's a right product. For years I produced wheat, but I never made money. But I always produced wheat because that's what we did in the past. What if I all of a sudden start producing Onica or I start producing Stevia or I started producing quinoa or started producing other products? So you have to look and say, okay, this is what we did, but what resources do we have? What capabilities do we have? I saw this in Romania where we went into a company and the company goes, we produce window frames. And as we walked to the factory, this guy that I was with was a wood products expert. He looked at their piece of equipment and said, You have that piece of equipment. That piece of equipment can produce this niche product for the Japanese market. People are like, what? We never even heard of it. We never thought about that. So by understanding their production capabilities, their resources, by doing the SWOT analysis, we were able to identify what they could do that's different, how they could set themselves apart. So they needed to produce what they could sell, not sell what they produced. They had to think differently. They had to think about their business and rearrange their thought process so they were producing what the market demanded. Again, we go back to the market, the M and Charm Dance in markets and understanding what that is, and we'll cover that next time. But understanding what your capabilities are and understanding that you have to have a product that midset market helps you analyze the market so you can look at it from what can we do? How can we set ourselves apart? Fourth tool is to make sure that you use the customer's language. I don't mean English, Spanish, French, or whatever, but the language that they describe it in. And a good way to do that is take some time and interview your customers. Ask your customers, what does this product mean to you? Record what they say, take notes. When you then go to market your product, don't use jargon that is in the industry. Use jargon that's in the consumer's mind. Use what they want. I ran into that situation when I was working with the French. When I was working with the French Road selling containers here, they developed a brochure, very expensive brochure, and one of the terms in that brochure was that the containers they could produce bespoke containers. Well, bespoke is an English word, but at the time, most Americans and most Americans in the industries that we're going to didn't know what bespoke was. To me, at that point in time, I thought bespoke was a form of speaking. In reality, it's a form of production. It's the ability to produce something custom and a custom design. So I had an argument with my boss. He wanted to keep the brochure as we do bespoke containers. He said, that doesn't work. My consumers don't understand that. Good, but it's an English word. You should understand it. It's like, yes, English and American are not the same. English is interesting because we have English, we have American, we have what they speak in Hong Kong, we have what they speak in Singapore, what they speak in the Philippines, what they speak in India. All are English, but they're different. So not only do we have different languages, but we also have different ways of describing things. Make sure when you develop your product, when you develop your marketing materials, when you develop your advertising, use the language that the consumer uses. Listen to the consumer. One of the things we did when we developed a label is we take the label, we did what we thought was right based on the information we had, and then we went, took it to the consumer. We took it to our buyers and said, What do you think about this label? The buyer would look at it and say, Oh, I don't like this color, I think this should be larger. In which case, we would go back and change it. How a couple of things happened there. One, we got what the market demanded, but also we got the buy-in from the customer. If he recommended that he wanted a blue label, and then the blue label didn't sell, who was responsible for that? He would take responsibility, he would feel guilty, and they'd have an incentive to buy more product. So we got the buy-in from them. We also in the process was able to make sure that we met all the technical requirements. It wasn't just me trying to interpret, in this case, Japanese law and labeling regulations. It was my Japanese consumers. It was my Japanese customers that helped with that. So involving the customers at an early stage allows them to give you input, allows you to listen to what the customer said and adopt your product, adopt your packaging to meet the market demand. When I first started working with Japan, there was a brand that we worked with on food products going into Japan. It was a beautiful black label. So when you had peaches or corn, that its product stood out against the black label. We sent it to Japan and the Japanese said, we can't sell that here. I said, why? It's a beautiful label. It's, you know, the image really stands out. It pops off of the label. Said, yeah, but the black is a color of death. Why would anybody buy a can that's a color of death? Good point. So we had to change it, even though I love the label. And one of the things I always say, it doesn't matter what I like, it matters what the customer wants. So you may feel the pride in the product that you produce. The Georgian wine manufacturers felt great pride in the wine they produced. It was the finest in the world to them. We told them, go ahead and produce it. Consume it yourself. Consume it within your industry, within your market. But for the US market, you had to adopt. You had to adjust. So we taught them how to do that. The fifth tool is that you have to identify that your product fits the market. So there's a test that you can have. This is a tool for you. Does your product dissolve a problem or a pain that the consumers have? Does it fill a desire? What is it? Specifically, write it down. Educate your staff as to what it is you're producing and why you're producing it. Can I explain the value of my product in a simple statement, in a simple sentence or two sentences that a 12-year-old would be able to understand? A lot of times, particularly when we're dealing with consumer products, we put them at a higher technical level and consumers don't understand it. I got a thing the other day and I read it and it's like, what are they saying here? I had to use my chat GPT and my perplexity to say, what do they mean in this label? What is it they're trying to say? Make sure that the language that you put into the packaging, into your marketing, is something that a 12-year-old would be able to understand. That's one thing I learned when I was working and developing my style for doing a podcast. I couldn't do a podcast that was only understandable for people with PhDs and people with MBAs, but I needed to develop something that everybody could understand, have a broader market. Now, there are tools that we have within some of our other networks and some of our other platforms that allow for a higher level and allow people to dig deeper. Plus, I can give one-on-one consulting and support to help people apply the charm dance principles to their specific situation. And thirdly, can I produce the product repeatedly and make sure that I can deliver the same quality, the appropriate quality for the market? Can I meet the demands of the market? Can I produce it? And if I produce it, can I produce it for a profit? What can I sell it for? What are my costs of production? And what is the consumer willing to pay for? It doesn't matter if the consumer has a big demand but isn't willing to pay for it. Water is a great example. Everybody demands water, but at what level are people willing to pay for it? Water is another great example is how do you set water apart? How does a Voss or a Fiji or Icelandic water set themselves apart? Water is pretty technical. It's H2O, but they do it through marketing. They do it through creating a story. So that's how they move it from a product to a niche, from a commodity to a niche. So can I produce it consistently? Can I deliver it? Is there demand for that? The people that are willing to pay the price for a premium bottle of water is a limited market. It's not as great as a consumer that's willing to pay for water. So if I'm in the desert, I don't want to say all I have is Fiji water. All I have is Icelandic. I want to say I have cheap water. One of the things we saw when Costco first started is their whole goal was to have inexpensive product, quality product, but inexpensive. So they were able to stop doing the advertising on their bottled water, and they just came down with the package and a design that was cost efficient, met the consumer's demand, and it met their price. They can also market a higher quality water, and they do now, that allow they market some Italian water that allows the consumer that's willing to pay the higher price to get the product. The demand is smaller at the top of the pyramid, but there's still demand. So you have to quantify the niche. How big is the niche? How much consumption is there, and can I meet the niche and develop the profit? So those are some tools that you can have. What I'd like you to do in the next week is sit down and work through these tools. List what demand you're meeting, what consumer pain are you relieving, what niche, what demand requirement, what desires are you meeting. Take a look at the products that you produce. Put them on a ladder. There are four rungs of the ladder, the raw product, commodities, water, grain, whatever. There's improved features. So there's you take the grain, you make flour out of it. That's an improved feature. Flour is pretty much still flour, but it's no longer wheat. So flour is a little bit different. Bundling solutions, okay, then I can sell flour. It's in a certain package. Or the final thing is I can do flour in a bake mix. I can do a bread baking mix. I can do a cookie baking mix. So I'm moving it up the product chain. So when you list your products, list your products and figure out where you fit on that chain. Take a look at those products and say, how can I move my product up one niche? Take the top two rungs, the ones that are the signature product that only you can produce, and the bundled product that others can produce, but you can somehow set it apart. Work and focus on those. Take your other two, which is a raw product and an improved product, and either eliminate them, stop spending your money on them, or identify them as a product that can be a cash cow. We talked about that earlier. It's a product that's going to develop demand, that's going to create cash flow, it's going to give you the resources to continue to develop, especially in your niche products. So, in summary, here are the tools. Find the pain point and find how you can meet that pain. Move your product from a commodity to a niche. Produce what you can sell. Don't sell what you produce. And use the language that the consumer uses to describe the product. By doing those four things, they will help move you to having the right product for the right market. Couple that with the right you, and you've got the next step, the next tool that we're going to use is to identify the market. How do I identify where I should be selling this product? Stay tuned next week, and we'll see you then. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeystotrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's gift. And join us on the next episode.