At Start Co. we work with startups and small businesses by taking them through an entrepreneurial building process that challenges them to test assumptions and question everything. In these rapidly shifting times all businesses, including ours, are forced to go back to basics. We all must revisit customers and markets, conduct customer discovery and ask our clients (or potential clients) about what they need. So let’s get back to basics:
- Problem: Is the problem you believe you are working to solve as painful or significant to your customers as you believe? Is it relevant now and will it be in the future?
- Solution: Are the features of your solution in line with the problems your customers are seeking to have solved?
- Price: Have you confirmed with your customers (even if they are already paying) that the price is correct? Are you solving a more painful problem now? For how long?
- Go to Market Strategy: Are the marketing and engagement channels you are using the best ones to use in the present day? Are you able to use them in a way that fits into the behavior of your customer so that they are better able to receive your products and services? What last changes will endure to these strategies?
Overnight, COVID-19 has put businesses in challenging circumstances. But with new challenges, come new opportunities. Take this time to dig into your business. Go back to discovery and reconnect with clients. Identify what the new priorities are for your clients, if anything has changed, and what their new behavior is. Take the time today and make 10 quick calls. Based on this feedback, it will give you confidence or make you aware of a previously hidden threat; both are critical before investing time, energy, and money into a new adapted strategy. Think about strategies that can make your business life easier-technology, innovation, processes and systems with scale, creative partnerships, etc.
So while we are all trying to figure out the short term strain as well as the new market in the long run, it’s time to get back to basics.
Take care of yourselves & Never Stop.