1. Understanding your Customer
Product Opportunity Gap

2. How the Customer Explained it and How the Project Leader Understood it
Listen to your customer’s voice

3. How the Programmer Wrote it and How the Consultant Described it
Listen to your customer’s voice

4. How the Customer was billed!!
How the Operations Installed

5. What the Customer REALLY Needed!!!!
Listen to your customer’s voice

6. Opportunity Recognition
A Business idea arises in response to the opportunities in the market:
Meeting the customer’s need and want for products or services
Solving customer’s problem
Creating a want that does not exist

7. How do you do utilize this opportunity?
New market / existing product
New market/ new product
Existing market / existing product
Existing market/ new product
Bringing a new product into a new market
Bringing a new product into an existing market
Bringing a new product into an existing market as a low-cost entrant
Bringing a new product into an existing market as a niche entrant

8. Customer Discovery Customer = Market
Understand who you are selling your product to and why they will buy it.

9. Customer Discovery Do you really know your customer ?
What are the problems that your product solves?
Do customers perceive these problems that as important or “must have?”
Why would someone buy your product /service?
Cheaper
Better
Faster

10. What is the customer buying?
PRICE
HIGH
Ability to
provide
unique
product/
service ??
LOW
LOW
HIGH
Value to customer

11. How good is your market ?
What is your estimate about the size of your market ?
No. of customers , Total size of the market
Average spend per customer
Monthly , Quarterly , Annually
Will you have more and more customers buying from you even in the future?
Economic Conditions , Demographic Changes , Technology Shifts , Regulations – Do they matter?

12. Fundamental and, in fact, fatal error.
Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a proven financial model.

13. Customer Value Statement - Exercise
For [customer] who has [wants, need, opportunities], the [product name] is a [product category] that [compelling reason for customer to buy/key benefit to customer]. This product [unique ways it is better and different from others].