Over the past two months I've read several good articles and blog posts related to finding out what your customers need.
At What's Your Brand Mantra, Jennifer Rice writes the following:
My personal philosophy on customer involvement is this: Find out what they want. Then figure out how to deliver it. Customers should be involved in "need identification"... or as John puts it, they should serve as the inspiration. But it's the company's job to figure out the best, most cost-effective solution to that need.
Don Dodge at The Next Big Thing has an interesting story about Napster with some good lessons listed at the bottom. I'd like to list several of the lessons, but the one that is most pertinent is:
Test your assumptions before spending lots of money. Interview your potential customers. Understand what their top 10 problems are. Don’t try to convince them that you have a solution to a problem they don’t know they have. Take a survey of 100 potential customers. Ask them to list their top 10 problems, without prompting from you. If you don’t see your problem area listed…move on to another problem.
And lastly, here's a blurb from a Small Business news article on MSNBC.com. It proposes that targeting a narrow customer base (i.e., a niche) can be help your business gain a foothold on the beach,
Before launching Designing Solutions, Wiener did her homework to see if there was really a need for the niche enterprise she was contemplating. An interior designer by trade, she took various friends and acquaintances with children out to lunch in groups of three and four. She asked them what they thought of local interior decorators, and most said they were too "fancy," offering suggestions not practical enough for people with kids.
What do these writings tell me? Get out the door and talk to people. Don't do something unless you know somebody, or several somebodies, need it. Be the expert in solving, not imagining, problems.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: Business, Customers