Six Steps to Building a Successful Product-Market Fit Program

Start Right, Build Right: The Secret is a Simple Plan

As an entrepreneur, you have a lot on your plate. Securing funding, finding workspace, making key hires… and let’s not forget building a brand and finding initial customers.

With so much going on, it is hard to focus on designing and developing a product appropriate for a sizable addressable market.? So, how do you get started?? Turns out, it all starts with a simple plan.

Throughout this newsletter series, we have talked about the importance of working with design partners, finding them by interviewing potential customers, correctly adopting a “what’s in it for me” mindset, and even dealing with common startup dilemmas.

Feedback to these articles has been off the charts. ?Questions have flooded in from all over the world asking about how to deal with a host of truly unique situations. And here is the main takeaway.? All situations are unique. ?So, while entrepreneurs look for an easy to follow, ‘battle-proven’ recipe for success, the reality is that there is no magic bullet. ?All approaches require some fine tuning to suit the unique business situation your company faces.

Harder Than It Looks

So, while doing it right the first time might be harder than it looks, there are guidelines you should follow to stay on track. ?It all begins with a simple plan.

A Simple Plan

As I wrote in an earlier article, acquiring your first customers entails a four step “REAP” process – recruiting and engaging design partners, analyzing their feedback and adapting your product accordingly, and then promoting the final product to the market using validated messaging. ?

Here are guidelines for successfully completing the steps:

1. To recruit partners, you will need to first define your buyer personas. Use a pain sheet to identify your buyers and influencers and assess the value your potential solution will provide them, over above what they are doing today.
2. Once you have identified your buyer personas, create a marketing one-pager that summarizes the problem you address, how your product solves the problem, and then enumerate the benefits to each of the buyer personas… all in a single page.
3. Next, create a short presentation that mirrors your marketing one-pager, capped off by an illustration, a video, or a Figma demo that brings your solution to life, so customers can experience your product as realistically as possible.
4. With these tools in hand, you are ready to test your assumptions by reaching out to potential design partners. At this stage, you target potential customers (as defined in your pain sheet) with emails and social posts using messaging from your marketing one pager.
5. When you receive interest from potential customers, set up a brief meeting and use the presentations and demos to generate excitement and gauge interest. ?
6. When you sense interest, engage the partner using design partner program plan and follow up with a partner engagement document. The former document details the value the partner receives for participating in your program and what you expect in return. The latter document formalizes, in principle, your joint roadmap, including preferential commercial terms for your product, when it is ready.

It is critical to manage customer expectations by maintaining constant contact throughout the process, so don’t skip this last step (as tempting as it may be to do so).

Of course, you will never get it right the first time, so this is an ongoing, iterative process. After every meeting you will learn more about the market, more about customer requirements, and more about potential competitive solutions.? So, it is important to continuously update the documents outlined in this article to keep your team, your partners, and your investors, all on the same page (literally).

Taking One for the Team

If this process seems complicated, you may find it beneficial to work with experts who have done this successfully many times. ?That’s why I'm introducing a special "starter pack" offer that provides the following customized deliverables for your company.

• Two 1-hour consultation sessions
• Pain sheet
• Marketing one pager
• Slide presentation for design partners
• 3 emails to outreach to potential design partners
• Design Partner program timeline
• Design Partner Engagement Document

Qualified organizations can take advantage of this offer until the end of 2023 for US$1995 (normally a $3000 offer). ?If you want to learn more, complete this form.