Small Business Can

As we are working on the new start up knowledge centre, I came across this quote:

Suggestions and even complaints by early users can be used to powerfully reshape the initial offering. In fact in our work with startups we encourage venture managers not to count early sales as revenues at all, but count them as market research inputs.

Early selling as market research inputs. Any views?

This sounds similar to prototyping, a technique often used by designers to gather as much information about the product or service in unproven markets by using customers as part of the experimentation, then using the findings to shape the final product and/or strategy. This allows changes, tweaks, or revisions to be made at the early stages before the completed project is rolled out, and before the full weight of the business is put behind it.

A few simple examples of “in the field” experimentation here:

www.fastcodesign.com/1662169/ideos-axiom...ptive-new-businesses

I would agree that all customer interactions are useful feedback and can form part of the market research process however, isn't there always an however, what can happen is that if the feedback is not documented properly it becomes anecdotal and can often be distorted particularly during the sales process when feedback may not be at its most 'honest'.

Be wary of making business decisions based on what interested parties are telling you, make sure you think about who you are getting your feedback from! In addition, make sure you make your decision after a number of potential customers have provided feedback, just because one user doesn't like something may not mean another won't..

And finally .... make sure your sales person is asking the right questions of your customers, otherwise you really will be getting the wrong answers!

In today's world the early adopters are most likely people who have a following in the start-up's niche.

They blog, review and post videos that relate to that niche. I think a start-up's objective is to get these people to tell their friends and followers about the start-ups product.

Therefore, feedback from these people is priceless information. It shows the start-up what needs to be done to get the early adopter to spread the word about the new product.

The golden phrase that all start-ups should love to hear is "it would be cool if..."

Feargal
http://www.imarketingireland.com