Spring is here, and we can finally look forward to the weather warming up a bit. Speaking of which–if you haven’t done so already–it’s time to warm up to your customers, too. Detach from your masterpiece a moment (this is the hard part) and allow yourself to see what they see, feel what they feel (this is the easy part).

Forget for an instant that there’s a very good reason why your plasma gun runs on AA batteries (no proprietary parts! easy to replace!) and ask yourself if someone who had no prior knowledge of your product or who had no experience with a plasma gun at all would get why that’s important.

If most people who use your plasma gun like the AA batteries then you might just have a messaging problem. If the majority your customers complain, or if you in fact have no customers at all, well wake up, because running a plasma gun on Energizers is not going to work buddy.

There are two important caveats here.

First, true innovation happens way ahead of the market–usually measured in years. If you wholeheartedly believe that you fall into this category (a risky assumption), your strategy better include plenty of time to wait it out. And when it finally does catch up, remember that it’s not necessarily a bad thing so long as it legitimizes your idea.

Second, companies don’t become successful until they find a problem worth solving. Often, the problem they end up solving is different from the one they first believed in, which makes it a common reason–or excuse–for anyone who wants to abandon something that’s not working. This is risky, too, because abandoning a great idea before it gains traction is tantalizingly easy compared to seeing it through.

The hardest part is remembering to apply this test to every aspect of your business, every day. What’s right today may not be right tomorrow.