You need business ideas if you want to become an entrepreneur. You need business ideas if you want to stay on top of your competitors. Also, you will need business ideas if you want to be a market leader. You need business ideas if you want to satisfy your current customers and attract new customers. But how you will know that you have the right idea? Only if you test your business ideas you will know what you need to do next.
But, when we talk about business ideas, there is also 80/20 rule which means that means only 20% of all your business ideas will bring you 80% success in your intentions. Each business idea is not worth implementation today.
Because of that, you will need to test your business ideas before you start with the implementation process.
Here are 11 questions that you can ask and find answers to help you in your efforts to test your business ideas.
1. Who are my target customers?
You need to start with your target customers, and you need to know them. Who they are? How you can describe them in terms of their problems and needs? Where your business idea and their problems and needs will meet? These are important questions that you will need to answer before you continue with the next questions. You will test your business ideas according to answers on this question.
2. Where are my target customers?
When you know who they are, you need to discover where they are. All your target customers today have two types of locations where you can find them. The first one is their physical location as their homes, offices where they work, local stores where they buy, restaurants where they go to dinner… The second type of location is their virtual locations as social networks where they spend their time or blogs that they read. You precisely need to specify these two types of locations where you can find them.
3. What’s their biggest problems or needs that I want to satisfy?
Until now, you already know who they are and where they are. So, it is time to think more deeply about their problems and needs. Everyone has their own problems and needs, so your customers also have problems and needs. If you can discover their problems and needs and integrate them into your business idea, you will be on the right way to succeed. The test of your business ideas in most cases will pass.
4. How my business idea can help them?
Now, you can continue to answer this question that will tell you how your business idea will be integrated into the process of solving their problems or satisfying their needs. If you can easily find the connection between your business idea and their problems and needs, your business idea is on the right way to succeed and help your business.
5. How I can reach my target customers?
Because you already know where are your target customers – answers from the second questions, you can easily create different strategies to reach them. The type of strategies that you will use will depend on the type of locations where your target customers are. Simply start with the brainstorming of different ways to reach them for each of the locations that you already defined in the second questions.
The test of your business ideas will need to include your strategies for reaching customers.
6. How I can schedule appointments with my target customers?
When you already have defined how you can reach them, you can start making first contact and schedule appointments to talk with them for your new business idea. Think about different communication channels that you can use to make the first contacts with them.
7. What do I need to talk on the first meeting with my target customers?
Now, it is time to think about concrete things that you will need to talk with them when you have your first meeting with one of your target customers. Remember that your goal is to test your business idea and to ask about possible ideas for improvement. Make a plan that will help you at the meeting with them.
8. How I can effectively listen to them?
This process requires two-way communication. You will need to ask and present and expect feedback from your target customers. Because of that you will need an effective listening process that you can use when you meet with your customers. Many ideas for improvement for your basic business idea will come exactly from these meetings that you will have with your target customers.
9. What will be my offer to them?
One of the useful tests that you can make when you are testing your business idea is to test your offer including your business idea. Because after all, your main goal is to increase the success of your offers. This is a perfect time to start with testing different offerings options.
10. What do I need to do after the meeting?
Until now, you already have collected different information directly from your target customers, now it’s time to prepare your next action steps according to that information. What will you need to do next? Do you need to change something in your basic business idea? What will you need to change? How will you need to change your business idea? These questions are important for you because it will create an action plan for your ideas.
11. What do I need to do when I implement their proposals in my business idea?
And final when you implement the insights from your target customers into your business idea, you can simply call and tell them that your new product or service based on your initial ideas can make everything that they want. Now, your business idea is prepared for launching.o
