Niche Experiments

Purpose

A fundamental challenge in selling the value produced by a company is market segmentation.

Scope

Here we define some systematic tests to confirm exactly who to optimize our products, services and market funnel for.

Criteria

We want to choose the party that enables us to deliver the most value. Finding such an ideal nice is riddled with uncertainty, including black swans. All the following conditions must be met.

• Creation of outsized value must be possible.
• There must be a clear path (project) that can be executed with our resources.
• We must be able to use a prototyping approach to create the value.
• The project must be motivating to our team.
• Legal needs must be satisfied. Is there a contract agreeable to all market participants?
• All parties agree to how the value pie is sliced.

The great thing is, our company is built to deal with uncertainty. We do this via prototyping. The analog in sales is to create “niche experiments”. That is, we set up a low cost sales funnel to test if all the above conditions can be satisfied.

Process

• Identify the target market segment (persona). What are their problems and goals. Talk to at least one of them.
• What problem can we solve for them, and what is it worth to them?
• We proceed to unscalably contact one person in this market and validate all assumptions with them.
• Make the sale, and give them a (small) deal to say thanks for their help.

If at any point, the next step can’t be completed, the experiment isn’t finished and the market should not be invested in.