Business as a Hypothesis - 5th Meetup

We had a very good turn out for the 5th meetup to discuss the book the Lean Startup. We had a new interesting idea that was tried out, where one of the participant takes 5 minutes to talk about something that he/she found interesting and wanted to share with the group. Sverrir took the first stab at it and outlined a check list for making a business case for your product or service. His posting is here on Facebook, for those who don't want to go there and find the post I have reproduced it:
22 Power techniques to show that your product or service has characteristics and benefits to secure a unique position for your product and sell it (From Formula Five)
The core things need to be present (all products and services have these), how can you show that you have strength in each of these attributes?

1. The specific product or service, describe it
2. Any associated service or product
3. Bonuses coming along
4. Pricing
5. Quality
6. How is it used, how easy is it to use it? 
7. Perceived value and status element
8. Your delivery
9. Your deliverability
10. Is it readily available? How is it available, when?
11. Your customer and technical support
12. Your selection 
13. Your convenience 
14. Any warranty 
15. Your policies
16. Terms 
17. Your guarantee or risk revearsal proposition, how do you minimize the risk for the buyer?
18. Your reputation 
19. Reputation of people that own product
20. Joining the club 
21. Ownership
22. Experience
23. (more, not mentioned here?)

Set up your Super Value Proposition (SVP)

1. Find and show the financial value of the element that will positively effect the buyer. - Calculate and show the better value. - If you are giving bonuses, say what they are worth.
2. Free focus factor, if the product has lower cost, calculate when the lower cost has added up so that the product is really free after that point. Tell it. Show it. „Pays itself up/free in ten months.“
3. Instead of value, when pays itself up, show how much extra profit customer will make. Do the math for customers (most won‘t do it themselves).
4. If not cost and money, show how things are quicker, easier, simpler, better environmentally.

The discussion centered around the notes that I had shared from the previous blog post. There was a number of discussion around how validating and hypothesis testing is critical to learn whether what we are trying sell has a customer. There was also a lot of discussion around why traditional businesses do not try this method with their current customers. Overall fun evening and I learnt a lot listening to the group.

Related articles

• How to Create a Profitable Business Idea (entrepreneur.com)
• Lean Startup - A Principled Approach to New Product Development (edocr.com)