1.3. Customer Development

A lot of people wrongly believe that in order to become a successful businessman and make millions you must begin with only a strong desire to be one. Internet offers a prodigious amount of “effective ways” to enter into entrepreneurship, but they are so different that it is really hard to get a full picture. In this article we decided to share our experience of what you need to know before you start your own business, what steps to take and questions to ask, and what can help you save a lot of time and money.

What is Customer Development?

You decided that you have come up with an excellent idea and discussed it with yourself, if you are going to be a self-employed person or an individual businessman, or with your team, if there are more of you, and you are ready to put things into action. Stop right here or this might become the beginning of the end. Customer development starts with the main idea that "There are no facts inside the building, so get the hell outside”. You can discuss something and share opinions with your team, but in order to get the true picture, you need to talk to your customer.

Where to Start?

You have an idea. An excellent one. The question is whether others would like your idea as mush as you do and be willing to pay money for it. Accordingly, customer development consists of two parts: search and execution. The word 'search' implies that you need to spend more time on identifying and finding potential customers, understanding if your idea would help them solve their problems, and learning how to better meet the clients' needs. The following can be achieved by filling in the business model template and conducting user interviews.

It Is About Asking the Right Questions

User interviews means to ask questions and get quantity. When we test something with customers using interface, we can get both quantity and quality data, depending on what kind of questions we ask. The point is that if you want to get the right answers, you need to ask the right questions. If you ask a customer, "How much do you earn?" Usually, the customer lies. Why? Experience shows that customers are more inclined to talk about their past than about the present. That is why we usually ask the customer about one’s past problem-solving history and how the problem was solved before. This way we can get real answers.

Be Quick, but Do Not Hurry!

You believe you have found a client. Provide the customer with MVP, but do not get off the track. MVP can be an imitation of the product or solution to a problem, but it should not be a bike for the car. It should be a car for the car. Moreover, do not hurry or dive into providing one with a finished solution or especially an already working product. People tend to change minds or have second thoughts; thus, it would be wiser to present only an idea of a solution, a potential solution to the problem. This will save you a lot of time and money. It is like with the water flow model, where the price of changes is different depending on the various stages those changes are to be implemented.

Final Word

Customer development is the opposite of the "providing a solution, finding a problem" approach. If you are very rich and have a lot of money, then possibly you can invest in hundred solutions and win with one, but in real life you need to start with understanding whether there is a customer, finding one’s problem, providing and validating a solution, creating a product, scaling it, and only then creating a company. It works only this way, no other ways. Remember this by heart, as it will save you not only money, but also time, which is priceless.