Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Guide To Customer Development
Guide To Customer Development
Guide To Customer Development
Entrepreneur’s Guide to
Customer Development
A “cheat sheet” to The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
Problem- Product-
Solution Fit Market Fit
Scale
Organization
Scale Operations
Positioning
Notes: Your positioning varies by audience. In the
In a Nutshell: Positioning is the act of Your differentiator is not your example from the Market Type discussion,
placing your product within a market compelling reason to buy, but the “Facebook for Seniors” is bad positioning for
landscape, in your audience’s mind. benefit the differentiator provides, you customer, but perhaps very appropriate
likely is. So, for example, if you are the first for investors, partners, and some media and
to offer a sales force automation tool in a analysts. This leads us to issue a note of cau-
In Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm, SaaS business model, your customers don’t tion when briefing media (PR) and analysts
product positioning includes the following buy because you are SaaS, though this is (AR) too early: wrong positioning
insights: knowing who your customers are your primary differentiator. They buy because (and untimely PR) can kill your
and their needs; the name of your product of the benefits that SaaS provides outweigh company. If you are branded by
and its product type or category; what the the benefits that an in-source solution pro- media and analysts in a way that confuses
key benefit of the product is to your customer vides: IT costs are lower; deployment costs customers or lumps you with existing prod-
(the compelling reason to buy); the “state of are lower; remote access is easier; integration ucts incorrectly, you may never be able to
being” without your product; and how your with the web is easier; web interface lowers undo the damage.
product differs or “changes the game.” training costs, etc.
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STEP 2
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