Pipeline Accelerator Insight #11: Plan for Resistance to Your New Products
Most companies assume that if they build a better product, customers will naturally adopt it. But there is a hidden hurdle of customer resistance to new products that kills more launches than poor design ever will: human habit. Your customers have learned to live with their current limitations for so long that they’ve built workarounds. Often, they don’t even realize they are stuck or constrained anymore.
Why Resistance to New Products is Inevitable
The truth is that every new product requires some kind of change from the user. Even if your solution is 10x better, it asks the customer to break a habit, and that’s where the friction starts – where customer resistance to new products becomes a drain on new product growth. Because change is hard, some level of resistance is likely no matter how great your specs look on paper.
To win, you have to do the detective work early. You need to discover exactly where that customer resistance to new products might come from while you are still in the early stages of development. Is it just the comfort of the “old way” of doing things? Is it a technical barrier? Or is there something structural or regulated in the industry? If you wait until development starts to find out, it’s usually too late to pivot.
Assess the Difficulty Before You Commit
Once you find the source of the pushback, you have to be honest with yourself. Can you actually design a way to overcome that resistance? Sometimes, a small tweak in the user interface or a better training plan is all it takes. Other times, however, you’ll find that overcoming the resistance is a fool’s errand.
The key to a healthy innovation pipeline is knowing the difference between a hurdle you can jump and a wall you can’t break down. Assess the difficulty early, plan for the friction, and don’t be afraid to pull the plug if customer resistance to new products is simply too great.
Or Book a Free Zero-Pressure Call to Discuss Your New Product Growth
