Build A Customer Advisory Panel. Now!
Before you go any further, you need to get customer advisors. These are individuals that will be your first customers and will give you feedback. They will need to do two essential things for you. They will need to give you honest and detailed feedback, and they will need to buy what you are selling.
Feedback
First, read this: How to give better product feedback
Ok, you want someone that can:
- Communicate — They need to be articulate. Not Shakespeare, but if they can’t be detailed and accurate, you will have a harder time
- Help — If they are too busy, they won’t be able to help. Which also means you need to keep the process precise and on task.
- BE HONEST — This person needs to not worry about how you will feel and will be able to approach this from the first person, what they care about, not the world.
I believe that you can potentially get good feedback from anyone. My kids have given me good feedback on something especially if it doesn’t work.
But I also want this customer advisory panel to be able to buy what I’m selling. For two reasons. 1. They will be the first group of customers and 2. You can test the viability of your pricing. If this group doesn’t buy, then you will likely have a tough time selling to anyone.
You want about 12 individuals. Depending on what you are doing of course. You might only need a couple of you are working on an enterprise problem, and maybe a few more if you are working on consumer product.
I have several templates if you are interested. I’d be happy to share, just hit me up on twitter @davemerwin.
Ok, short newsletter this week. However, this is extremely important to your process, so don’t skip it.
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This is the from the archive of an ongoing series called Making Things That Matter. Each week I will send you an email with another step in the process of building products and launching ideas. Signup here to join the conversation.
