Your Flagship Product

A flagship product is a product or service that you and your business becomes identified with. It's something that communicates a concept or solution that people automatically and favorably associate with you.

What a flagship product does is give you and your business instant credibility. When people purchase your flagship product, they are more likely to buy other products and services from you.

A flagship product should have the following characteristics:

1. It provides a unique solution or approach to a problem and is seen as new and memorable.
2. It is the starting point for all of your other spinoff products or services.
3. It is branded in a distinctive way with a name and identity that is unlike other products or services.

Your flagship product may be a book, an e-book, a workshop or training program. But it really has to be at the heart of the work you do and must have some passion behind it.

Complete More Clients eZine - Your Flagship Product

This week, please share the following with us:

How does this concept of a flagship product relate to your own business? What flagship product do you need to create or leverage?

Comments

[Alfred Opare-Saforo]

Thanks for this article. its very helpful. Launched my website just after christmas and am yet to make a substantial sale, i think i need a flagship product/service to make me different from the rest. i have an idea already gotta run.
Ta.

[Janice King]

This article made me realize I also need to think about a flagship focus. I have just released my flagship product: the new book Copywriting That Sells High Tech.

But as I think about which books and information products to do next, it's easy to get distracted away from my market focus on technology companies. I realize now that maintaining this focus is important to attracting and leveraging prospects for both my books and my copywriting services.

Thanks for another of your many helpful and practical insights.

[Sean]

Everyone should have a flagship product. It's like the sun in the solar system. Everything needs to revolve around a basis or a foundation, just like a country rotates around a constitution.

Sean

[Galba Bright]

Hello Robert:

Once again, you've hit the nail firmly on the head! Based on your InfoGuru concept, I decided to reposition my generic consulting and training service to one focussed entirely upon emotional intelligence services and products for leaders. In January, I launched a free quarterly newsletter by email, as I haven't got a website and it's been well received. I followed up with a free e-book called "Tune Up Your Emotional Intelligence," which is going down well. It will take some time for the $ to roll in, but it's giving some real momentum to my business.
Your ideas are really encouraging me as my "plan" unfolds.

[Barry Leder]

If the value of an article is the good ideas and the intent to take action, this for me is one of your best recently.

I have the idea that can become this flagship product and have used it very successfully to talk with clients and sell them other services. But I have not really given much thought to 'productizing' it for its own revenue stream and the assist it would give to other sales efforts. Thank you for planting this seed this morning. I have work to do.

[Lyle]

Just wanted to add.. that YOU also own the term InfoGuru..

Someone else may have said it first, but that term is now associated with you ... and the manual.

L

[Academic Coach]

Robert,
Thanks so much for this article about flagship product. It is a key concept -- although a bit intimidating for those of us trying to work on our own initial products for sale.

So glad to see that you have a blog now;)

[John Black]

The ultimate flagship, of course, is your reputation, which is built on quality work (and no cute product can outweigh that). In my industry -- garden design -- reputations rely on visual presentations; this flows easily into "flagship" books and magazines. Some gardeners (e.g. Ken Druse, Saxon Holt) have become celebrated as much for their luscious photos as for their design work.

I myself am questioning whether the "Verdant Thoughts" newsletter (e-zine) I publish for my clients, with insights and advice on landscape design as well as timely gardening tasks, can become a flagship, but I don't see it satisfying your second criterion ("starting point for all your other spinoff products or services") or becoming a revenue stream.

Thanks for another provocative topic!