A Cool Way to Gather Market Data
While working late this weekend, I came up with a neat way to gather market data when you just aren’t sure about specific decisions that need to be made.
I’m by no means saying I came up with this concept - it’s probably been around longer than I’ve been alive, but I thought I’d share it.
We’re at a point in product planning where we are starting to throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. In short: we need customers to help start driving product-related decision making. I got a taste of it while at CES, but now we need to start tightening the belt on some of our leads and being winning and losing deals to see what prospects really need.
We have our CEO and lead BizDev guy headed over to France for another conference in our space this week. This is a great opportunity to get some fact finding completed, as is the other show coming up at the end of the month.
So, I’ll be providing the high-level points / features that we have come up with (we = me and the CTO and other key stakeholder’s) for the current iteration of the roadmap so they can start gauging interest for them in the market.
Do we know what’s going to stick? Nope. But we’re starting to arrive (very quickly) at the point where driving decision making based on opinion is going to eventually lead us astray.
Now, does that mean I’m saying there aren’t innovations out there that prospects and customers haven’t even thought of yet that we shouldn’t make because no one is asking for them? No way.
All I’m saying is, when you aren’t sure, get out in to the market and ask. If that means equipping folks on the front lines with knowledge about what you are at least thinking of doing, then do that.
Same goes for pricing. We are having a little trouble coming up with effective pricing. So, I’m hoping a strategy of saying, “ok, - here are the components we KNOW we want to have, and here are some controlling variables. Based on x, y, z here are some rough estimates / ranges for each of those components - let’s see what works.”
To me, this is a lot better, and still fits within the realm of focus, than just sitting on your hands trying to extract things that the market may have a hard time coming up with without some guidance / gentle pushing.
Get the stuff out there, share your ideas, and see what happens. At the end of the day, everyone (vendors, clients, etc…) all want the same thing: to make money. So long as your product is offering them ways to do that, and you aren’t too far ahead of your time, you’re on the right track.
