A lot of individuals who looking for part-time business as side income facing a problem, no idea how to get started, they usually as for recommendation from their’s friend and family, eventually, this lead them to get a higher chance of failure or even cause them to struggle to sustain the business.
Not only for an individual, small business who plan to transform from their traditional business facing the same issue as well; with proper planning and idea validation process, you’ll get a higher chance to succeed.
For a new business, you need an idea to kick-start, mostly idea will come from what you like, what you know more about and probably can start with your hobby. It will not advise to start something that you not familiar with, the idea given by friend and family might not suitable you because you are not familiar with.
Take an exam
ple. Jane interested to start a business online, her cousin brother are selling motorcycle accessories online and doing well over east Malaysia; Jane are not familiar with motorcycle, not even had license to ride, do you think Jane can take her cousin brother advice and sell motorcycle accessories online in west Malaysia? If she took this idea from her cousin brother, she can do it, but higher chance of failure as she not familiar what the customer need, she can’t give value added to the customer in term of advice and recommendation n as well. In another hand, Jane like to cook, she might able to involve selling cooking equipment, raw material and even able to give customer advice and recommendation how to cook a tasty meal.
Above is a process follow for idea validation, before you make a decision what you want to start, is recomended to follow at least once for above process flow.
IDEATION first
As mention earlier, Ideation start from what you interested or what you know. Making a market research and observation whether is there any market demand, where to source for supplier, once you get to know this detail, you may proceed to next step
Doing IDEA ENHANCEMENT
After getting know what product or service you wish to sell, find out if your product or service do problem solving, how it able to help customer solve their pain point, apart from this, you need to know if your product or service do value added to the customer or not? Follow above example, Jane selling non sticking pan, able to solve customer problem by make customer easy to clean after cook, apart from this, customer just require to use very minimum cooking oil, this not only solve customer problem, it also value added to customer by using minimum cooking oil.
Perform a IDEA FILTERATION
When you had a good product or services, able to help customer solving problem and value added, next you require idea filteration, by knowing the cost of goods, operation cost and return on investment able to justify whether you may proceed with this business. example if the material is very costly, you require very high investment and produce very low margin product, although it able to help a lot people, it is not viable for you to start this business.
Start DEVELOPEMENT
With a good product or service, good sales margin, we may proceed with the development, either import the product, or start develop a prototype, if it is a services, you may start to create the services detail.
Make a MARKET TESTING
it is very important to test the market, by import or produce a limited quantity of stock, try to introduce to your friend and family first.
Since you are in marketing testing stage, try don’t take this opportunities to make money, as long you able to cover your cost, it is fine to offer a very low price to your target customer as marketing testing, apart from this, getting customer feedback is very crucial over this stage, their opinion and feedback will give you a valuable information to further continue developed a better product or services in future. If possible, as for testimonial if customer feel satisfy on your product or service.
LAUNCHING your product or service
After getting good feedback, good testimonial from your market testing audience, start an official launching by selling in proper channel, such as online market place, physical store and etc.
Continues EVALUATION
By getting customer feedback, it give you continues improvement, by getting customer testimonial, it also strengthen your future sales and customer confident toward your product or services.
Well, the process is not difficult right? What next? Action is power, take a piece of paper, start to draft out your idea, and stated a time line for your self to meet those process above. If you wish to attend my digital marketing course, or eUsahawan course, do subscribe my news letter.
Sneak Peek of my Idea validation explanation during eUsahwan course
