#SCAIWD2021: Will it work? — by Abiola George
Abiola George is an international development expert and PhD researcher at the open university of the UK. She put together a presentation that helps us figure out whether an idea will work before committing a lot of things to it.
This presentation contains nine(9) steps to take in order to test and validate your business idea.
Abiola emphasises that having the right mindset contributes to how we handle a lot of things. When something we put out fails or is not celebrated, most women take it personally and are reluctant to put out something new. For many men, when an idea fails, they move on to the next thing. You should learn to distance yourself from ideas and notice that it is the idea that failed and not you as a person.
1. Understand the problem: What is the problem that you are trying to solve. Many businesses fail because they put so much effort, financial resources and time into building the wrong product. You should ensure that there is an existing problem that you are trying to solve.
2. Customer segment: You cannot think of a problem without thinking of the customers or people who have that problem. The problem and customers are intrinsically connected, so it is important for you to understand your intending customer base, and understand how your product or service will help to solve their problem. You should remember that your customers and consumers are not necessarily the same. Your customers may not be the ones who consume your products. An example of this is children who are not the ones who buy their food and needs. They are your consumers but not your customer.
3. Unique Value Proposition: What do you bring to the table? This is the primary reason that a prospect should buy or patronize you. You need to understand what makes you different or unique from other people offering the same value as you. Why should prospects choose you? It should not be a generic reason like fast delivery or being hardworking. It needs to be something unique. You need to understand the value that you offer and how to position yourself.
4. Solution: This comes after identifying the problem and the people whose problem you are trying to solve. To understand what a solution looks like, you would need to make research. To figure out the solution to a problem, you will need to go out into the streets. This means that you need to interact with other people as well as talk to your prospective end users or people who will stand in for them. You also need to have an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concept. If you have an idea that you are willing to test, you should come up with bare bones of what that idea entails. This is in order to know whether people are willing to exchange money for your product or service. Having an MVP helps you find out if your idea is one that you can take to the market even before you invest too much time and resources devoted to creating a solution.
5. Channels: How do you access your customers? Channels mean the various ways that you access your customers. It could be via email, social media, targeted ads, blogs, targeted ads and more. You do not have to be omnipresent. You need to find out where your customer segment hangs out and go hang out there. This goes back to understanding who your customer segment is. By understanding who your customer segment is, you will then figure out what channel is best to communicate with them. You won’t make progress if your customer segment is on Instagram while you have a business presence on LinkedIn. It is through these channels that they will get to know you, and through which you can make your offers to them and see how they interact with you.
“ You do not have to be omnipresent. Find out where your customer segment hangs out and go hang out there. “
6. Revenue Streams: How will you make money? What is your pricing strategy? In order to understand your pricing strategy, you need to know what is going on around you, and also know what your market can absorb. This is only possible by research. Talk to people and get a feel of what they already pay for similar solutions and what they will pay for a better solution if available.
7. Cost Structure: What will it cost you to get your idea to the market? There are a lot of things that add to your cost structure. It may include your time, data, rent, among other things. To have a meaningful cost structure, you need to first understand all your costs. It is after understanding your cost that you will be able to know if your pricing strategy will be sustainable. If in order to get a single unit of your product, you spend more than the price you sell that product, you are losing money.
8. Key Metrics: How will you measure your performance? A lot of people do not think of this when planning a business, and it is very important. What will you need to see happening in order to know that you are on track to meeting your set goals? You need to decide from the start how you want to measure your progress. This helps you know when to change strategy and adopt a new strategy in your business.
9. Unfair Advantage: What is that thing that you have access to that cannot be copied or bought? It can be anything. It can be a different way of doing things that others haven’t figured out. Remember that there is nothing new, what is new is your own way of applying or doing that thing.
An unfair advantage can be somebody you know or your own unique perspective on things. By figuring your unfair advantage, you will then find a way to plug that into your business and also leverage it in your business. An unfair advantage is your secret weapon in crafting your unique value proposition. We all have one, you just need to figure it out.
These nine(9) chunks of information help you better see and validate your idea by quickly testing the market and returning to the drawing board to tweak your idea. It helps you know what to tweak in your business, and when to tweak it.
View Abiola’s Slide here, and if you missed the event, you can watch it on YouTube here . You can also read about other parts of the event here.
