How did you validate your Product <> Market Fit?
I'm collecting input to compose in a few blog posts around this concept of the Product-Market Fit. The PM Fit area is perhaps one of the toughest things to get right, and I think a lot of us spend a lot of time in solution land that we don't truly work in the problem land - according to Dan Olsen, author of The Lean Product Playbook. I definitely recommend reading it!
Here's the format:
- Idea name and how you identified your target customers?
- How you validated the problem? (tools, surveys, face-to-face)
- How you solved the problem? (your solution)
- What would you do differently?
I welcome your feedback and any additional thoughts.
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Hi @Eharris04. I just happened to post a short piece about this earlier today. You can see it here on Startup Sanctuary.
I think that PMF is something to continuously strive for.
Many profitable companies that have a lot of revenue would even argue that they still have not nailed product market fit.
I think, like any business, it is a process of consistently refining your product and service offering based on user feedback.
Conducting customer interviews and iterating based on the problem they are experiencing is the key to refining PMF as your business evolves.
Hi Eric,
We developed a simple and effective model to both understand and to perfect any product/market fit for b2b company - and it's pretty simple.
You have achieved product market fit, when you understand why your clients buy from and these same reasons are the same reasons the next potential will buy from you as well.
The only way to do this right, is to go ask...
First ask everyone in your company: WHY do you believe your clients buy from you?
Secondly, ask your existing clients the exact same question
Third, use the essence from what your existing clients say and inject it into a sales pitch and then begin calling/meeting potential customers to clarify - and start learning the truth about your product.
For what I learned is, you only get the truth from your client, when you try to sell him, what you are offering. He will always reply yes or no, to taht question. The quest is to find out why.
I would love to discuss the approach - it's awesome - because its built on real customer feedback - so it's your indisputable raw reality - thats why I called it BMoreRaw.com :D
my mail is [email protected]
All the best and good luck!
Stefan
Thanks for the tip... and shameless plug. Your product assumes something already in market which is good and helpful. My question is prior to that.
But that raises a few questions for me. The name BMoreRaw gives me a knee-jerk reaction and doesn't clue me into what your solution offers. I can go into 50 different ways "raw" is good and applicable but none of them help me understand the raw aspect of data and feedback.
Who do you define as your target customer?
How did you get qualitative and quantitative feedback on deciding the problem area for your target customer?
You are right - later there I will include a startup process.
What I propose - and always do propose when mentoring prelaunch startups - is to talk to clients. At least 200 - and write down their why's to not engaging or engaging with you. For that purpose I created a "more raw" sales process that gets the conversation going when calling potential clients:
First define what "This is" - what we are trying to sell.
Gatekeeper Pitch:
Hi my name is Stefan, I sell "This", who should I talk to about that?
When you find the right responsible, you continue with your
Icebreaker Pitch:
Hi, Stefan here, I sell "this" - would you like to talk me about this, and do you have a couple of minutes?
No matter what the potential clients says yes or no, you ask "Why" - and you remember to write down the answers. (did you know 50% of rejections are due to the fact that they are in the middle of something else - so it's wiser to schedule another call)
Now you know he wants to talk to you -he said "Yes!", and you also understand why, because you asked - so we continue to the
Core Pitch:
Which is simply a description of what you sell, how it is delivered and what value it gives your client - and then you end the sentence with: What do you think of that?
And whatever he should state you continue with the notorious "why" - and from here on you may free style as you may, as we have the best information, we can get: Their immediate response in an actual sales situation. The data we need to perfect our pitching towards our target markets...
AND - if the client would like to talk to you, tell you why he wants to talk to you, and he furthermore likes what you are selling and tells you why he likes it - well... Then you also have a warm lead :)
It's a simple process - that takes out the pain of "trying to sell", as the real task is to get the information out of the client - A "No" is as good as a "Yes" as long as we get a chance to better understand the flaws of our product and market approach. - It takes some more testing of course - than if you had clients onboarded already you could ask why they bought - and by doing a/b split testing on a variety of the pitches, one can easily improve - just like people do with online marketing.
AND - it works - it's nearly impossible to not have success with your startup, if you speak to your future clients (I just provide the tools - to explore the raw reality:) ) thx
Thanks for your thoughts. This is good info and I agree with you on the approach.
Thanks :)
Hi Eric, I'd recommend looking into Rahul from Superhuman's, PMF 'engine'. He did a few podcasts on it and definitely summarizes his thought process really well.
I remember reading that ideas should arise from the fitness of the market-product rather than trying to fit the product into the market. The other leads to more time and constant validation time after time after time.
I'm not sure if I understand your actual question, but I think real product-market fit happens over time in the process. It's an incremental process of observing your customers ("observing" means all the metrics in the world, looking for the conversation, ...) and from those insights, to adjust your product in a way that resonates.
The question is...if you have developed a product, how did you validate the "product to market fit" for the product? While it is a journey, if you bring a product to market, what validation did you do to determine the target audience and correct features?