Your Business ideas may seem very real to you, sometimes they may be vague, but something important to know is that success and failure come to both and what differentiates these are the steps taken a step make it what they become.
Executing a business idea with a very huge capital does not necessarily lead to success in business as these are some of the excuses given by young entrepreneurs who have a vision but see their ideas and goals rotten in shelves due to lack of capital. Capital as a substitute for success doesn’t always work, that is, not all well-funded projects succeed. Therefore an important factor that ensures the success of an idea known as idea validation will be discussed in this article. All business idea will be discussed as a product in order to make it simple and easy to understand
What is business validation?
This is the process by which others confirm the validity of our idea. We hear from people how important our products or service idea can be beneficial to them. It can also be seen as the act of verifying if our product is acceptable to the target market or it’s just a surface idea with no basis in the market.
During the process of market validation, the necessary interview is carried out to determine the validity of your business idea.
We will be going through how to use the lean market validation to determine the validity of your business idea, remember here your business ideas will be considered as a product. This does not have anything to do with your experience, the only thing required is the right process
Using lean market validation the followings are very necessary for achieving success, these are tested and trusted validation steps.
How to validate your product?
· Know your product;
Before taking your products out to be validated there is some question that will require answering about your products by yourself before even asking others' opinion on them.
It is worthwhile to write some of these features out, this will allow you to remember most of the product concept. These concepts should not be confused with the business plan as they are two different things. After outlining these concepts it will help you to know exactly what you are going out to test, and also help restructure your business plans.
This concept is all about your imagination building a lot of assumption, it is this assumption that will create the necessary questions you should test, which may include the following;
· What is your market: It is very important to determine what is your target market, that is the identification of the customer they are to serve. Customers can be classified base on their needs and characteristics. Some product is meant to serve in any of these markets; mass market, niche market, diversifies the-market, multiple-sided market. These steps will help you to know the exact market you belong to.
· What are the problems of the market: These are the challenges you think is affecting the market, writing them down will help you in confirming such a hypothesis from the customers, during validation. It may seem to be a big problem to you but on validation, you can determine if the target market really sees it as a problem in the first place not to talk of it is worth solving.
· How do you intend to solve the problem with your product: Here your product is directly related to your customer problem. Can your product really solve this problem? Even after solving this problem what are the possible hazards, your product can cause, and is the benefit greater than the hazard?
· What feature gives the problem-solving ability: Your product should be very specific, which enhances its uniqueness to solve a certain problem. This features requires more than the ordinary and at the same time should be cost-effective
· Waste no time
Make quick decisions about your products, after putting down your idea on the book (itemizing your assumptions). Start testing your assumptions without much consultation; this is to prevent you from wasting time on the assumption that will later be rejected by the market during validation. You and your team may see the idea as ideal for the market and will start to plan and work on it but on the other side (customer view) your customer will not really be interested in such idea, leading o a total waste of time. Therefore it is sometimes enough to make a calculative guess and move on to test it.
· Test your hypotheses
Depending on the characteristics of your intended customers, you can decide exactly how to test your assumptions. Some testing can be carried out on the internet by creating surveys, ads etc. While some may require entering into the market and having a conversation with potential customers.
This can also be done by an interview with market leaders and professionals such as sale manager, industrial workers, consultants, and other important personnel. Using the lean market validation the idea of the customers is known for granting interviews.
· Do not go far
It is crucial to know the view of people close to you before moving out to test, others' opinions. Some people may have mixed feeling about this ( I do also) because close associate tends to introduce bias into the product. These set of people are our friends, family, relatives and associate, therefore because of their friendly nature they don’t like hitting the nail on the head by heavily criticizing the product but on the other hand, you may be made to know how bad your idea is before even wasting time testing with strangers.
· Interview potential target
During this period, ensure that the questions to be asked are already written down. It is very significant to note that the interview should not be done in hast as this may impact the resulting feedback on the product, as the result may be superficial.
The question asked should be modeled in such a way that the problem faced by the customer is revealed. The interviewer should avoid asking polar questions, that only allow the customer to answer with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as this will not show you the real problem and a possible way to tackle them. Ask a question like why, what, and possible solutions should be asked
· What value does your product brings to the table
Discuss the possible value your product will give to the target market putting little or no emphasis on the product concept or features. This value may be qualitative or quantitative. You should be able to express the value your product will give the customer.
· Identify the false-positive results
The fact that people want to be nice and lovable, makes them give a subtle answer to question been asked during the interview with a stranger, therefore, you should be able to discern between pleasing you and giving the right answer to questions which are the main reason you need to allow them to express themselves. Some of the potential customers are in love with your validating strategy but not your product thus, you should learn how to bring out the true opinion from them.
· Take the risk
TIPS TO GET THE BEST OUT OF CUSTOMER VALIDATION INTERVIEW
Validation through customer interview is critical for product development. Customer validation interview aids in the confirmation of assumption about the problems and possible solutions in the market.
Your product affects two sets of people in the market;
1. Buyers
2. Users
Who to interview may seem difficult if you don’t know how they are interwoven with each other.
Interview the buyer - the right decision
When bringing a new product to the market, the main aim is to serve as a solution to customer’s problems, which is seen as the main function of production manager as opposed to just formulating a good looking product. Therefore, having a product that solves customer’s problem should be delivered.
A company makes their money from the products they sell, but before a product sells it has to solve a problem. Simply put, ‘solve the problem and get sales.’ That is, the sales made by the company are exclusively based on the problem-solving ability of the production manager.
How do you get to know the real problem in the market? The buyers who may not necessarily be the user are the main sources of information this is because relayed information about the problem are directed to the buyer by users, therefore, bulk information can be gotten at a go. Thus, buyers' feedback are of more importance than that of users. Of course, the user's needs will be met through solving the buyer’s problems.
Quizzing potential customers are the best way to predict whether you’ll certainly achieve product-market fit. By asking the right questions, you can know if your idea solves a huge problem, which your potential buyers are, and whether or not there’s a market for your product.
Customer validation doesn’t promise success, but it’s the easiest and lowest-cost way to reduce the risk of new products.
How to conduct effective customer validation
· Start your customer validation process immediately
It is advisable to start your validation as soon as you have your product hypothesis and answered the questions; what, why and how of the said product as above.
Once you can give answers to this assumption then, you now have the required basis to interview real prospective customers. These answers to your assumption may be totally wrong, but this will help to narrow and channel your efforts to the right path as it gives you insight on the customer that your product will affect and in what ways it will affect them.
· Take your time to interview
Your interview should not be hastily done; therefore, it is reasonable that the potential buyer grants you an interview in their leisure time.
Creating enough time will allow you to ask important questions such that none is left out. A good interview should take about 50minutes, spending such period on the interview will prevent having superficial interaction or arriving at a poor conclusion.
· Conduct as many as possible interview
It is preferable to conduct as many interviews as possible, as this will allow you to find the different confluence point where the problem meets, allowing you to tailor your product decision.
The first sets of questions should be on problem discoveries. Even if we do not have perfect numbers of interviews to be carried out, an estimate of 15 buyers is not too small.
In this type of interview, only problems facing the market should be discussed, keeping your solution in the pocket especially at the beginning. You are just trying to understand a day in the life of your potential customers, the problem faced, and how your product will solve them.
After problem discovery, validation of your product is next, where you ask the opinion of buyers about the product you have, giving them tips on how your minimum viable product can help solve their problems.
· Have one on one interview
Having a face to face interview with the potential customer will allow you to read the body language and help to create a good rapport with the customer which may lead to other beneficial relationships in the nearest future. In cases where this is not possible, a phone call which is supplemented with a video conference may be helpful in the validation interview of this nature.
The best method yet for validation interview is through physical personal interaction. There are some few mistakes to avoid during interviews one of which is offering money for product validation interviews to be granted as this will affect to a great extent the outcome of the process, though gratitude to be shown afterward. Validation interviews should be granted voluntarily.
Finally, the interview should not be conducted through E-mails, this is because it may take longer than expected or may not even be seen by the buyer.
· Interview and take down notes
During validation interview, learn to resist the urge to introduce your products early. You should always take time to understand the problem, the great prospect you see in your product may end up being worthless after validation the interview, thus, introducing the product early may divert the attention of the buyer from the real problem to the goodies of your solution, making the process superficial
After understanding the problem, however, possible adjustments and representation of your value proposition may occur.
During the interview ensures you are not the only one listening so that you can hear from different perspectives. The essence of having more than one interviewer is to make sure that remembering and quick interpretation of customer validation is possible. With more than one interviewer, a quick recap with a co-interviewer after every interview will enable highlighting the key point and also ensure that no point is left out.
Conclusion
Business idea validation does not guarantee success, but it’s a low cost, most effective means of reducing risk in business.
Both the feedback received from users and buyers are very important to the success of your business but, buyers feedback should be held in high esteem.
Enough time should be set out for market validation as this will prevent arriving at a trivial result.
During validation ensure you get out the problems before validating your product idea proper which will serve to be the solution.
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