The heart of creating a business that is scalable depends on doing multiple experiments and adjusting the approach based on results of the experiments.
For example if you want to sell a retail product, you may want to find out the most appealing packaging, the killer taste, the color of the product and the quantities that are most likely to be fast moving.
When people start a business and have big money, there is likelihood that their experiments will involve huge expenditures in terms of quantities of samples and machinery involved. More often than not the initial product that you develop may be so distant from an acceptable product from the customer’s point of view.
The best way to go about these experiments is to use the least resources to create what is called a minimal viable product and use the product to collect feedback. A minimal viable product is one that has the least common features that resonate with the bulk of the customers that you surveyed.
This takes us a step back to what should inform the creation of the first products. In order to make a product that has the potential to be sold, it is important to conduct surveys and interviews with a large pool of potential customers. NB: We will cover the topic of who is your ideal customer next.
To make the most of these interviews you need to create a comprehensive questionnaire that allows you to understand the nature of the need and also the alternatives that exist. Some people think that by carrying out surveys others will get an idea about the product that you want to create and copy you. Well, from my experience the chance of that happening is minimal.
From the surveys and interviews you can then quantify the needs and the kind of product that you envision can meet that need. You can then draw several designs on paper and carry our focus groups so that you get feedback on product packaging, quantity per item and color.
This means that by the time you make the first real product you will have shielded yourself from unnecessary expenditure that often would be unnecessary.
