Avoiding feature wars

When I was asked "What makes your product different from other competitors?", I always answer confidently "I have feature X that they don't".

After putting some thought, I think feature X that I proud of is just a nice to have feature. I don't think I can use it as the silver bullet to sell my product. Also, if competitors want to, they might able to copy it in a couple of weeks. Worse, others might sell their newly developed feature Z that I don't have.

I'm unconsciously going into feature war state, I try to outdo the others. I know I should sell the benefits instead of features. But my mind always got trapped in feature wars state, to give customers these benefits I need this feature.

I want to escape this feature war circle, but I need things to differentiate my self from others. So, I squeeze my brain out to find a way to sell the product without focusing on features.

Finally, I decided to take a different approach. I choose to use a new pricing model and switch from B2B to B2C. Now my focus is to provide affordable service to save customers money. I don't have the intention to race features with others. If people need some advanced features I left it for bigger guys. But if they need a solution that just works for a tight budget, my offers might fits their needs.

The common pricing model is to pack the whole bunch of features into a tiered plan. My approach is to use the à la carte pricing model, features are sold separately, customers only pay for features that they need. That way customer doesn't need to subscribe to the highest plan to get some specific feature which makes them save money.

For now, that's all I can share, let's see how it's going.