Conduct a marketing study after you have heard a sales professional say, "I can sell that."

At OBVIA we recommend that inventors invest as little as possible in their invention until there is some hope of earnings. Intellectual property protection is important in so far as it protects the idea enough so that the inventor can show it to a sales professional. Product presentation as well, is important in so far as it presents the product in a way that sales and marketing professionals can understand what the product is. When someone whose job it is to sell products in large quantities to catalog and retail buyers says, "I can sell that." The product then has promise. The world of product ideas has no shortage of product ideas that everyone wants but no one can sell. Here are some things that have been said by inventors about product ideas that had merit, but not one unit sold. "Everyone I know wants one!" "This product is going to sell Millions!" A marketing study done too early only adds empirical data to these two statements.

We caution inventors from spending large sums of money on 'Marketing Studies' too early on in the process. A marketing study usually states that a certain product, we will call it a Widget-EX, is part of the XYZ category of products and that XYZ products are sold worldwide in umpteen countries. Furthermore, if the widget-EX were to capture 1% of the XYZ market they would earn one bazillion dollars.

They are usually truthful. However, it is also true, more often than not, that sales professionals in umpteen countries have seen many Widget-EXs and have tried to sell variations of them before. If buyers from catalog and retail stores have not purchased any Widget-EXs then the inventor needs to consider investing in something else.

If, on the other hand, a sales professional has seen the widget-EX and said, "I can sell that Widget-EX!" then it is time to look into a marketing study to determine just how many Widget-EXs the sales professional is likely to be able to sell.