You have an incredible idea for your business. You can’t wait to get your product, service, or technology out there. You’ve created a business plan and financial projections, and started picking out paint colors for your new office space…
Whoa, whoa … hold it right there.
Planning for a business without customers is like planning a wedding without a committed mate. It’s nice to have the vision, but vision gets you only so far.
OK, so how do you actually determine that your idea will work, before you invest a ton of time and energy creating something that may never get traction?
Build lean, and let people vote with their wallets.
Often we’re so impatient as entrepreneurs and so driven to create our vision that we forget that we need to find paying customers to buy what we’re selling. It breaks my heart to see people spend $100,000 investing in an idea that customers aren’t excited about, only to find out that they could have validated the idea with less than $500.
Now, you have to get creative to find lean ways to validate your idea. Here are a few strategies that you can implement.
1. Call a few people and ask them if they are interested in your idea.
Yup, this is super old school, but it works. Call a few people — it’s best they aren’t in your direct circle of friends — and ask them to sign up for your idea. If they say they aren’t interested, ask them, “What would compel you to sign up for this?” From this conversation, you’ll gain valuable insights about how to tweak or adjust your ideas to meet the needs of potential customers.
2. Build a landing page and send traffic to the page using paid ads.
There are so many inexpensive landing page builders that require little to no coding skills, like Unbounce.com and Leadpages.net. You can quickly build a landing page that describes your idea and link it to a PayPal account to see if anyone will pay you for it. If you don’t know how to build a landing page, you can hire a freelancer on Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, or even Thumbtack.com to help you do it.
3. Presell to a partner.
This is especially great if you are in the B2B space. Find a partner who needs your idea and presell it to them. With the upfront proceeds, you will often have the cash flow that you need to build the idea. That’s a win-win all around!
If you’re just starting out and working to launch a business idea, tune in to ReHustle, my web series in which I document my journey of building businesses. In each episode, I share the exact tips, tools, and resources that I use to build each business!
