Play #007 How To Ensure Product Market Fit

Welcome to the Play #007 of the Founders GTM Newsletter. Each week I will bring you one GTM play that is tested through scaling multiple 7-figure B2B businesses that you can put into action to scale your business.

In today's issue, I want to talk about the importance of product-market fit. Product market fit means there is a need for what you are doing as a business in the market. This needs to be proved through a validation process and not just the founder's assumptions. Often founders think they have the best ideas and that means there is a need but that's not always true. Product-market fit is a key component of a thriving business. There are a lot of things that need to be considered in validating your business idea and that's what I will cover today so you have a process to follow.

1. Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

You will need to identify who your business can serve best. Think narrow at first as a lot of founders tend to go too wide thinking they can be everything for everybody. Ask yourself "who would benefit the most from solving the problem we can solve?"You want to consider the market segment, the company size, and what person who cares most about solving the problem. Consider why they would care about what you do and how it impacts them. Before you launch your business or go build a product reach out to these people and ask for feedback. Through this process, you will learn some things you didn't know might validate some of your assumptions.

2. Determine Your Value Proposition

Do your research on competitors in your space and identity areas you are stringer, they are stronger and in unique differentiators. When you are doing your research it is easily helpful to check multiple review sites to hear firsthand customer feedback. You need to deeply understand the core problem you solve to have a strong value proposition. Connect with what it means to solve that problem for the buyer and all of the befits that go along with it. Your value proposition should be easy to understand and concise. 

3. Measure Your Success 

If you have followed the first two steps it's now time to see how the market responds to your idea. This is an irritative process meaning that you may need to tweak your approach and your messaging before you get it right. You need to pick one to two channels to reach out to your ideal customers and see if they are willing to pay for you to solve the problem you can help them with. The channel you will have the most success with is the phone as you can get instant feedback. With email and social you will most often get no feedback and you won't know if your message is off or not. You will want to track everything you do and optimize for success.

See you again next week.

-CM