Manifesto Manifested

As a sole proprietor, it is important to understand the role business structure plays in the success of your business. Although being a sole proprietor is sometimes interpreted as “being a business of one,” (Nazar) there are numerous people that are involved with your business’ development and success. Three major parties involved are your team, the companies you work with, and the consumers you work for. This week’s class focused on developing relationships with your consumers through a series of notable techniques that enable customer development. 
As we continue to integrate the Business Model Canvas into our business planning, it continuously becomes evident that customer development is critical to the success of any business. “The Startup Owner’s Manual,”(Blank and Dorf), “The Four Steps to Epiphany,”(Blank), and “Sprint” all provide great insight as to how to approach customer development. The first step of customer development is to identify who the customer is. This stage of “customer discovery” allows for identity development. By stating your hypothesis, testing the problem and the product hypothesis, then verifying your hypothesis with a potential customer, you can connect with your end-user and find out valuable information about what business’ needs going forward. After you verify that your hypothesis is relevant (or not) you can move on the next step in the process which is customer validation. By the end of the validation stage, you are able to verify whether or not your product is viable. These two stages are critical stages to be explored early into your business planning. Doing so will save you time and money. In the case of the RealDeal, customers are easily discovered and the need we meet can be validated, making our product viable. Knowing this, as I mentioned last week, this observation has inspired us to use Sprint’s approach to complete the rest of our project. 
An expansion to the day-by-day development approach we were introduced to in “Sprint,” Steve Blank’s “Customer Development Manifesto” can be used as a guide to plan consumer relations and customer development. A number of his suggestions in the Manifesto are applicable to the RealDeal. Out of Blank’s 17 suggestions, suggestions numbers 1,6, and 8. 
№1: There are no facts inside of the building. So get outside — Since the RealDeal App requires a significant amount of consumer interaction, it is obvious that we cannot move forward in our business development without taking into consideration what consumers want in such an app. The best way to do this is to talk to potential consumers. I think interpersonal communication (i.e. walking up to people in the mall) is the best way for us to capture their needs and feedback on our idea. This can be done through surveys and assessments. 
№6: Validate your hypotheses with experiments — As mentioned above, the only way for us to find out if our product has high utility, we need to engage with consumers and get their feedback. Additionally, we need to develop measurement processes for retailers to track fluctuations in sales in result of our application. These two tests will provide feedback essential to our business development.

№8: No business plan survives first contact with customers — This is important for us to remember as we begin testing our hypotheses and getting to know our customers. Personally, when someone walks up to me in a mall trying to solicit a product or service, I am usually uninterested because I assume they are selling something that will just be a waste of money. I am sure some of our potential early adopters will assume the same about our product. The key is to continue testing our hypothesis until we begin to connect to consumers.