So many wonderful ideas flood your brain as you consider a new business venture. As you imagine your potential customers, ideas on great ways to make more money and augment your business keep tumbling into your brain.
All the ideas seem feasible, but you often get nagging doubts about if they will really work. Are these new ideas worth quitting your job to pursue? Will their sales replace the income you currently enjoy?
The key to confidence in your idea is knowing who your ideal customer is – what problems they experience that they'll pay money to have solved. I recently worked with a lady who knew she wanted to do something in the wellness nutrition area. This is a vast field, but she was extremely passionate about it and had an enormous amount of knowledge and training.
But, she couldn't see how to create a business in this arena. When we brainstormed business concepts, we covered most of the field, but selecting one that would be the hook for her business was much harder.
So we returned to her ideal customer and described in detail their life, problems and challenges. We then started to match her clients' problems with the business ideas generated earlier, looking for a fit.
Identifying and deeply understanding your ideal customer, will give you more confidence in the viability of your business idea. Ensuring you have a market that will pay you to have their problem solved is the essential foundation for your business. Without this, no amount of marketing, social media or PR will drive sales; if a need doesn't exist, no one will buy.
Try this four step approach to getting the confidence that a market exists so you can then narrow your idea down to a tight business concept.
Have an ideas bucket
This might be a notebook or a file on your computer. Whatever it is, use this space to dump all of your ideas, brain waves, inspirations, and observations. Write freely and don't censor yourself – an idea that seems irrelevant now may be extremely useful in 12 months' time.
At the start this may seem a little contrived. If you find it difficult, start writing about your frustrations with products and services, and consider how you would improve it. The key thing is to sharpen up your observation and idea-generation abilities.
Who is your ideal customer?
Where do they live and what work do they do? What do they do in their spare time? Where do they find out about new products? Get as specific as you can, as this will help you understand if you're solving a real problem.
Put yourself in their shoes and think about what frustrates or worries them. By focusing on one type of person, you aren't automatically excluding anyone else – you're sharpening up your proposition. Remember, a confused prospect never buys so the clearer you are the easier it is to sell your idea.
It can help to think of someone you know who you would love to buy your offering. Get them in your mind's eye and jot down a description of their life. There will be many other people with a very similar life, problems and frustrations. Understanding this is key to creating an offering they will want to purchase.
What solution can you give your ideal customer?
Consider the simplest way you can meet their needs. What solution will you offer? As you consider the business, what will the customer be buying?
Again, put yourself in your customers' shoes. Open up your ideas bucket, and select the ideas that solve your customer's problems. It may be that you can't decide on just one idea, so choose a few. You are still at the refining stage, so a range of ideas will give you plenty of feedback fodder.
Make your solution vibrant and appealing but keep it focused on one, clear proposition. The easier it is to understand, the easier it will be for a customer to buy.
Get some feedback
Once you have refined your ideas, it's time to get some feedback. Use this as a chance to refine your idea further and to gain confidence in its viability.
Feedback can be obtained in many ways. Try asking family and friends, but make sure they are honest. You could create an online survey on SurveyMonkey and email your contacts or push it out on social media. Face-to-face feedback is also useful – you could host a drinks party/coffee morning or set up a table outside a busy shop and ask passing people for their thoughts.
The more feedback you get the better. You will understand more about what your ideal prospect needs, how they think and what their reaction is to your idea. Take all the information and use it to refine your idea further. This process will give you more confidence and understanding if your idea will work.
Wendy Kerr leads Pearson College courses, including Start Your Own Business.
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