As an entrepreneur or product manager, no doubt you have identified a market problem to solve, gained knowledge of who the customer is, and come up with a solution they likely will value. The work is not over though, you want to continue to engage the customer-base and get course correction as you push ahead.

Customer surveys #2

With a newly product concept, it is time to go back and bounce it off a few more potential customers. You should connect with customers on the periphery of your market. You now want to understand what possible opportunities might exist in adjacent markets or how you might want to bisect the market into segment or vertices to prioritize how you go to market. You will also want to survey customers across organizations, geographies, etc. Make sure you connect with, or at least build up an understanding of, whomever fills the roles of users, payers, and deciders.

If you can, spend the day with someone at their site learning as much as you can about their problem and how they might use your solution. 

It is always a good idea to revisit your original questions to add additional points of view and sources

• Tell me about your role/job?
• It is my understanding that ___ can be a real problem for you. Is that accurate? Can you tell me more?
• How much time in a given week do you spend on this problem?
• Do others spend a lot of time on it?
• Does your organization spend a lot of money on it? Do you know how much?
• Who in your organization is responsible for that budget?

We also want to start to discuss our solution, pre-selling it to someone we hope is an early adopter. Ask how they value or potential solution, how they buy, who is involved:

• What do you think of my solution to the problem?
• How much do you think you would pay for that solution?
• How do your direct reports and your management view the problem?
• Who would use my solution on a day-to-day basis? Who is responsible for choosing to use it?
• How are decisions made in your organization? Who approves purchases? (see post on decision-making unit)
• What is the timeline for bringing in new products and solutions like mine?

Refinement of the Value Proposition and Solution

As you continue to develop the product concept and continue to gain insights from customer interactions and surveys, it is important to keep refining your value proposition. This will become a key component of pitching the concept to investors and potential customers.

Refer back to your original problem statement. For our airport marshaling wand example:

Airport ground crew batons use a lot of batteries. These batteries typically only last 7-10 days. An Airline has to keep 25% more batons on hand to allow rapid swap when battery dies.

Now articulate the value you bring the customer with your solution. We have learned that the problem is important to the customer, their dissatisfaction with current state is high, and we think we have something significantly better than alternatives. Let’s spell out exactly how we provide the customer value:

Our solution offers a wand that always works, no running around to replace them. It saves money spent on batteries and labor spend replacing them. It reduces the overhead of having extra batons on hand to cover batons in for “service”.

Given that value proposition, how can we deliver value for the lowest cost and complexity? Literally what actions will your employees take to deliver the solution to the customer. Can you spell them out in a few sentences?

A service that provides airlines at an airport with working batons, guaranteed, for a flat rate. We stock each gate with a working, fully charged baton set daily. A staff of 1-2 people uses bicycles to pick up and deliver batons to airport gates each morning before flight operations begin. The rechargeable batons are recharged each night at a central facility no more complex than a trailer then delivered fully charged each morning.

Now summarize it into a clearly articulated value proposition:

A service offered to airlines that ensures a working, fully charged baton is available for their ground crew at each gate at all times. We handle all maintenance, recharging, and placement of the batons. The baton is ready waiting for each crew in the morning for a day on uninterrupted use.

Craft your Elevator Pitch

Both entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs have to be adept at delivering a great elevator pitch for their offering and opportunity. New products and sales efforts need funding from investors or executives, recruiting requires on-boarding new team members to the shared vision, and customers want to be assured of your focus. The pitch has to convey enough info that someone is confident you can execute, they understand the basics of the plan, and they see the potential. Conversely it needs to be concise enough that the listener can absorb the information before their attention is lost. You have perhaps 30-90 seconds, thats why its called and elevator pitch!

This isn’t just for investors, it is for every new hire or new team member, it is for the manager who approves the budget

Now we are going to combine a refined problem statement, articulation of the value we provide, our solution, and our first-cut business model, into a concise elevator pitch. The key here is short and simple. If you can’t explain things easily then you have not defined each of these key concepts narrowly enough.

You can now use this elevator pitch to quickly and easily explain your offering to investors, colleagues, and customers. You might be thinking about investors at this point. With an elevator pitch coming together it is the perfect time to start discussing your business idea with potential investors. Before those conversations go too far you will want to further refine your business model.