Here's something I've been doing for the last few years that I've found is the best way for me to develop new products.

It's something I thought was relatively unique to me because most of my business comes through my Momentum Club membership program. But I realised recently that almost any business can adopt the same approach. Pay attention and you should be able to tweak it to fit your situation.

What I do is pretty simple. Whenever I'm thinking of producing a new product I make a free version of it for my existing membership site members first. I've done this with my Facebook Advertising course, my Client Winning Websites course, my Lead Magnet Masterclass course and my Content Marketing Mastery course.

I go through a few phases. Firstly I confirm via email and our private Facebook group whether the course I'm planning would be useful.

If it is, I then draw up a timeline with the main components I'm going to include and start working on those modules bit by bit, usually over 4 or 5 weeks.

I drip-feed those modules out to my Momentum Club members whenever they're available. And recently I've started doing short Facebook Live broadcasts with Q&A for members only.

Based on the feedback I get I update the modules or add new components. At the end of the 4-5 week period, I have a course that I know delivers what my best customers are looking for that I can now promote to new customers.

This method works brilliantly for me because there's no downside. Normally when you produce a course, if you don't get many sales then you've wasted a lot of time and effort.

In my case, even if I don't get any new sales, I've created new content and given it free to my existing customers in Momentum Club. I've built goodwill and created yet another reason to join and stay in the club.

Of course, I'm quite likely to get new sales because the development of the course has been steered by my very best customers. But even if I didn't, I'll still feel like it was a great investment of my time.

And there's no pressure when I'm developing the course. Because it's a free gift to existing members, if I get ill for a week and the timetable slips or there's some other delay, there's no anger or pressure to deliver. It's all goodwill all the way and viewed as a bonus.

The end result is a course that's much better than it would have been had I tried to develop it on my own. And happy customers even before I sell a single copy.

Even if you don't run a membership program like me, you can do something similar in your business as long as you've got some existing customers.

As soon as you have an idea for a new product or service, test it out with those existing customers.

Email them or call them first and get their feedback. That in itself is a good way of keeping in touch and broadening their awareness of what you do.

Then invite them to participate in a pilot version of the new product or service.

That might be a one-off workshop or training course run across your client base. It might be a day's consulting for one of your best clients in this new area to test out your new methodology or approaches.

There are many ways you can do it. The key is to make it really valuable for your clients and to get feedback from them to help you shape the new product or service.

Don't try to sell the service itself to them – this isn't a sales pitch in disguise. But quite naturally, if you have a couple of their staff on a brilliant new course for example, word of mouth will generate demand and pull in more people for further paid versions of the course.

Worst case, you'll have generated a ton of goodwill with your existing and ex-clients and reminded them of the other things you do. Best case, you'll have shaped up a great new product or service, generated demand for it, and got a bunch of testimonials you can use to promote it.

Now doing all that will take time and effort. But it's going to be a lot less effort and a lot more effective than starting from scratch and then having to market your new product cold to people who don't know anything about it.

As I say, I have a natural outlet for this with my membership program. But with a bit of thought, you can do this in pretty much any business.

The upside is a great new product. The minimum you'll get is happy customers.