Where do good second product ideas come from?

From the sentences your customers already wrote you, and the best place to find them is your cancellation replies. Read every one in a single sitting, on paper, for the line that goes past the question you asked. When 3 strangers write the same paragraph, you've found a product.

A Thursday with a pen

In my eighth year I printed every cancellation reply my stock-take planner had ever received and read them all with a pen. The planner helped small shops plan the count they do once or twice a year. Shopkeepers loved it for a week and cancelled in month 2 or 3. More than half the replies said a version of "I didn't use it enough". I knew that already. I was reading for something else.

3 replies said it, and then kept going. One shopkeeper wrote that what she really struggled with was her website: the products listed online kept drifting away from what was on the shelf. Something sold out in the shop and stayed for sale online. Every week she spent an evening putting it right by hand. A second, who didn't know the first, wrote nearly the same paragraph. So did a third.

I underlined all 3 and wrote one word in the margin. Weekly.

Why this beats an idea on a walk

The people already exist, and you know how to reach them. They've described the problem in their own words. And the shape is visible: the stock-take was twice a year, the listings drifted every week. I built a nightly listings check for those shops, and it still runs.

How to make it possible

• Ask one plain question when people cancel, with a box for words. Tick boxes only give you the reasons you thought of.
• Read the replies together, never one at a time.
• Look for "but what I really need", and for the same chore described by people who don't know each other.

The closing email works the same way: one line at the end, for anybody curious, has found me a customer for the next product.

The Second Product has both chapters.