By Bob Jones
I have long believed that there is only one non-negotiable requirement to have a successful business: customers. You can be smart, well-funded, energetic and kind to animals – but if you don’t have customers, your business will eventually fail. I also believe that in the early days of a young company, it’s premature to broadcast the benefits of your product or service – it makes far more sense to go out where the customers are, and find out who wants what you are offering. The market research that you conduct sitting at your desk may tell you who needs it, but probably won’t tell you who wants it. And that distinction is crucial to the success of your business.
I’ve seen an awful lot of innovative companies get seduced by the elegance of their technology or the cleverness of their solution, and fail to ask such fundamental questions as:
- What’s broke that we fix? How do we know that the problem exists?
- Who has that problem? How many of them are there?
- How do we know that they will spend money to solve the problem? What are they spending their money on now to solve that problem? Why will they consider your solution to be better?
- How will you find them? Who influences them? How can you influence their influencers?
Answering these questions (and other questions like these) is crucial to getting your venture pointed in the right direction.
In my work with clients, I talk about my entrepreneurial failures and occasional successes, and show how the differences connect to a real understanding of who my customer is. This often encourages participants to look at their own successes and failures through a different lens.
We have a series of structured exercises that help build a clear understanding of who you want as a customer, how you’ll find them, who influences them, and how you’ll influence the influencers. The client team works through the exercises and presents the results to the group. They get feedback from the group and from me, and everyone reports a steady increase in the clarity of their goals. And if your idea is likely to fail, we’ll save you years of time (and possibly millions of dollars) by helping you figure that out quickly. With luck, we may be able to help you pivot to something that is more likely to succeed. Many people have emerged from these workshops with dramatically different ideas about how to build a successful business.