Product Market Fit – Business Skill #2 To Take Your Business To The Next Level

Do you have a product market fit established?

And what does that even mean?

A lot of people start a business and they haven’t figured out the skill of developing a product market fit. (Note: This is one of the 8 key skills needed to be successful in business!)

What they’ve done instead is they’ve sat in their chair, they’ve thought some thoughts that were pretty smart thoughts, but then the real world actually behaves differently than those thoughts they had put together on their own. The world doesn’t go according to their prior planning.

What IS Product Market Fit?

A product market fit is just like it sounds.

• On one side, you have a product.
• On the other side, you have a market.

The better those two mesh together, the better everything else goes.

Oftentimes you have a product that is okay and we have some things about it that we like a lot. But there’s not an actual market out there for it.

Or the market we imagined doesn’t actually want it as much as we thought.

So the ability and the skill to develop product market fit is key.

Product Market Fit Is A PROCESS

This is an ongoing process.

So if you look at the big players in the space, they’re always doing taste tests and focus groups. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have the money or the time or the resources to do that in an official setting typically.

So instead, you have to look to actual customers.

So the best focus group is a group of prospects, anyone actually buys what you had, and of those that did buy, what were the reasons that they bought?

You don’t have to ask them that explicitly, although you can. Oftentimes, just in the experience itself, you will have your answers.

“Well, I pitched this whole group of people everyone said no. What was wrong with my product that didn’t line up? Exactly what was wrong about this target group?”

Oftentimes, we think it’s all just gonna work out magically and fit flush together.

But this is a process of figuring out how to adjust my product. How do I specifically tailor a product and adjust it to a market I’m searching for?

The product itself has to solve the specific needs of THAT specific market.

Be Clear On The Benefits Of Your Product To Your Market

You have to be EXPLICIT about the ways your product benefits your target market.

I think what we underestimate as entrepreneurs is that the other person on the other side, the buyer, haven’t spent much time thinking about our particular solution. They don’t know why they might actually benefit from it.

So if you haven’t done the work to lay it out for them, easy to understand in black and white. Then you’re asking them instead to use critical thinking. You are asking them to try to be creative and deduce and understand that that’s a high cost for them.

It’s easier to say, “No, I’m not interested” and move on to the next thing than to expend that energy.

We have to be explicit about the benefits of our product and the target market has to actually get enough value to be interested in it.

An Irresistible Product Markets Itself

A product that isn’t exciting is almost impossible to market.

You can spend a lot of money spinning your wheels. You won’t get any repeat referral business (if you even get sales at all).

An irresistible product, on the other hand, markets itself.

You only have to spread the word and then the correct target market will be activated by it.

Product Market Fit To Take Your Business To The Next Level

Developing the skills for the sales and marketing of developing a product market fit is a key component to being a successful business owner and one that many owners shy away from.

We’re oftentimes worried about selling and feeling sleazy about that, but there is a customer-oriented way to approach this process that can be learned and you can still feel good about this process.

A business is intent on making money to survive.

If you don’t have product market fit it is only a matter of time before you run out of money and energy to keep trying.

You have to have this together to make the money to succeed.

Good luck. Stay focused.