You got an IDEA, what’s next?

We all get ideas, big ones. We all have that moment, when we believe “THIS IS IT, THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG” Now, when I say we all, I mean ALL, that includes, entrepreneurs, startup employees, people who are working in MNC’s and startup founders as well.

Most of us do one or more things after that:

– We write it in our secret IDEA document (common, we all got one of those)

– We share it with our closest and trusted friends/family

– We dont do anything and forget about it

A few months/year later we see someone implementing exactly what we thought, and we take a deep breathe (being sad that it could have been us) or become really happy (I know, 2 extreme emotions). Either way, we move on with our lives, and then this whole thing happens AGAIN.

Have this ever happened to you? If so keep reading, if not still keep reading. 🙂

Well let’s see what can be done about this.

Disclaimer: This article is for early stages of an idea, it can be modified for different stages but for today let’s stick to early stages.

Let’s start with money 🙂 Not funding, but who will pay for it?

If you have the IDEA, you should know who will pay for it, users or customer. What is the difference you ask, here it is:

1. We use Facebook as users and marketers pay to advertise as customers for it, and we use free apps as users and advertisers pay for it as customers

2. We buy cell phones as users and we pay for it as well as customers

I guess you got the basic idea.

Now, you have to have users no matter what scenario you belong to (from list above)

So, what do you do? Go talk to your users.

You have to understand who the product is for? And then simply understand their “world view” of things.

Let’s go in little detail:

Talking to customer is a HUGE topic and a lot of people have written great books about it, but for this post’s scope, I will cover what I understand.

Talking to customers is daunting task and it has to be done right, or you will end up with useless results.

One of the most important things is finding right customers and finding them early on. (Finding early adopters is a huge topic on its own and I might write about it someday, but for today lets practice “Talking to customers”)

Take a look at each of these filters and see if you have encountered them in past.

Opinion filter

A lot of times, we express our idea with great enthusiasm and passion and then ask listener “What do you think about this?”

Most of people say “its great”, “awesome”, “I would love to buy that”

FYI: This means nothing 🙂

Let me explain: We as humans are nice people, we encourage others who take initiatives and rarely shut them down. I am not saying its wrong, I am just saying this means nothing.

Opinions (at this stage) are pretty useless, do NOT ask your question that potential customer can illicit opinions.

How?

Instead of asking, would you buy that?

Ask: What did you do last time when you had this problem? or Talk me through last time you had this problem?

And then just listen, make sure to leave your preconceived notions at the door.

False positive filter

This is a tough one, you get to a potential customer and they start telling you what to do (solutions). That’s a big NO NO, a huge red flag. Ask them why they want that solution, keep asking “why” until you can understand the problem.

This is something which we all fall for, for example, my customers ask me add a feature in the portal and I ask them “Why” after 3-4 email exchanges I understand the problem.

Pro Tip: Ever heard about 5 why’s? Keep asking why until you get to the problem.

Idea filter

You: Hey, here is my idea…blah blah..its gonna revolutionize the way we do things in this industry…blah blah blah

Potential customer: Great man, go for it

Never do this, let me say this again. PLEASE NEVER TELL YOUR IDEA TO YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS. Not because someone will steal it, but because you want to know if problem exists and that is not coming out after a solution is already on the table. Just ask about problem you are trying to solve and everything around it.

Can’t Lie filter

Ask your question in a way that potential customer can’t lie.

For example:

If you ask me if I will buy XYZ service. I will probably say yes, because its not costing me anything to say yes. No one has bad intent to throw you off, but we as humans are incapable of knowing what will we do in future.

If you ask them, when was last time they faced this problem (the problem that you are trying to solve via XYZ service) and what did they do about it?

This will give you their real behaviour instead of opinion (I also call it: made up version of oneself).

ALWAYS ALWAYS ask about past, that gives you facts and behaviour, and NO OPINION.

Ego filter

Do not ask anything that will only boost your ego. We all have been there where all we want is for people to say YES.

In fact, a lot of times we ask questions just to make us feel better.

Question:Isn’t this amazing? or How cool is that?

These are useless questions which usually throw us off balance.

Acuteness test (not a filter, but test)

This is another BIG thing, how acute is problem and what have they done in past for this.

Right Question: How do you currently solve this problem?

What has customer done currently to solve this problem. You really want to know this, this shows intent and behaviour.

Have they googled it? Have they posted about it anywhere? Have they called “Just dial” and asked if they have someone? Have they asked their friends/family?

Example:

Idea: You are creating a service for having motor mechanics on call (24X7)

You see one indicator of my bike is broken (it really is)

I hate the fact that one of indicators on my bike is broken, I bitch about it all the time and if you ask me do I have the problem, I will YELL and say yes, in fact I will even say I will pay for it.

But if you ask me what have I done about it, I will have to say: hmmm, nada.

So your potential customer has a problem, he/she is will to pay (or at least they think that they are going to pay) but have done absolutely nothing about it. My dear friend, its a red flag 🙂

Pro Tip: Try to count number of passes (you will only understand this if you watch the video)

That’s all for this time. Please share your questions, feedback in comments section. I also welcome any criticism of the post.

Note: We practice all of this over weekend workshops in Bangalore. Let me know if you want to know more about them.