16: You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone – Joni Mitchell

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I’m writing about one hundred things I’ve learned about being a product manager.

People value something most when they’ve just lost it or come close to doing so.  If your product prevents this happening, take some advice from Joni Mitchell: you need to save your client the heartache of loss by helping them remember how much they value what they have now so that they don’t take it for granted.

This was brought home to me recently in a couple of different ways:

• How much I valued my door keys when I remembered I’d left them on my desk at the office a three-hour round-trip away.
• How I now value even more highly my motorbike security lock after it prevented someone stealing my bike

(Yes, it’s been one of those weeks.)

What have I learned from this?  For starters, I’m not going to forget my keys again.  Or park my bike in that spot again.

Relevance to product management?

Remind people of the value they’re taking for granted before securing the next payment

Your product should solve a problem for your target customer (if not, you have a more pressing issue to resolve).  Also, it is natural for people to take things for granted until it either stops working or is lost.  Just ask your IT team how often they’re congratulated for things working as they should.  If your product is based around a subscription model or some other recurring fee, you may find you need to remind people of the value they’re taking for granted before you can secure the next payment.

If you can remind your customers how valuable your product is to them just before asking them to pay their subscription fee, you’ll find the conversation much easier.  Better still, consider this: how could your product sell its own ongoing value to the customer on your behalf?