Research
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 Research

Before building a SaaS/Startup you need to have a problem to solve. It's easier to solve a problem that you personally have but better if you can find a forum, website, blog post, Facebook post/group, of people that have a problem in an area of your expertise.

You don't have to be an expert but it's easier to relate to the customer base if you have some knowledge about the problem.

Here are some resources for researching problems:

👀Websites👀Forums👀Articles👀Playbooks👀Videos👀Twitter Threads
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It's important to note that even if you find a problem to solve you need to make sure that your problem is in a market that has the pain, has the purchasing power, easy to target, and is growing.

Find A Market

Alex Hormozi puts it best when looking to find a market to serve from 100M Offers.

Pricing: Finding The Right Market -- A Starving Crowd

When picking markets look for four indicators (pg 34)

  • 1. Pain (pg 35)
    • They must not want, but desperately need, what I am offering. Pain can be anything that frustrates people about their lives.
    • The degree of the pain will be proportional to the price you will be able to charge
    • When they hear the solution to their pain, and inversely, what their life would like without this pain, they should be drawn to your solution.
    • If you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurate, they will almost always buy what you are offering. A prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution.
  • 2. Purchase Power (pg 35)
    • Your audience needs to be able to afford the service you're charging them for.
    • Make sure your targets have the money, or access to the amount of money, needed to buy your services at the prices you require to make it worth their time.
  • 3. Easy To Target (pg 36)
    • Make life easier by looking for easy-to-target markets
    • Examples of this are avatars that have associations they belong to, mailing lists, social media groups, channels they all watch, etc.
    • If potential targets are gathered somewhere then we can market to them
  • 4. Growing (pg 36)
    • There are three main markets that will always exist: Health, Wealth and Relationships
    • The reason those will always exist is that there is always tremendous pain when you lack them.
    • The goal is to find a smaller subgroup within one of those larger buckets that is growing, has the buying power, and is easy to target (the three other variables)
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      Think about what you're good at in regard to health, wealth, and relationships. then think about who might value your service the most (in the most pain), has the buying power to pay what you want (money), and can be found easily (targeting)

Starving crowd > Offer Strength > Persuasion Skills (pg 38)

  • Even if you have a bad offer and are bad at persuasion, you're going to make money if you're in a great market.
  • If you are in a normal market and have a Grand Slam Offer, you can make tons of money even if you're bad at persuasion.
  • If you're in a normal market and have a normal offer, in order to be massively successful, you would have to be exceptionally good at persuasion.
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Pro Tip: The point of good writing is for the reader to understand. The point of good persuasion is for the prospect to feel understood. (pg 35)

Commit to the niche - Riches are in the niches (pg 38)

  • You must stick with whatever you pick long enough to have trial and error. You will fail far longer if you keep changing who you market to, because you must start over from the beginning each time. So, pick then commit. (pg 38)
  • The more your niche down the more you can charge
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Think About The Customer

  • The ideal customer profile is critically important. Before even finding a problem think about WHO exactly your customer is before going to solve their problem. #[[The Art Of Customer Acquisition]] outlines the steps needed to take when outlining your ICP. This is important to do at the start so you don't waste time later trying to figure out who your ideal customer is.
  • This also makes it easier to find your customers because you'll know exactly who they are, where they hang out, etc
  • You can start by interviewing people with potential problems and get an idea of what jobs they would want your potential product to solve.
    • Ask them these questions
      • How do you make money
      • What are the things about running your business that keep you up at night?
      • What are some things ("jobs") that you are having problems getting done?
      • Under what circumstances do you usually try to do these things?
      • What do you currently use to help you?
      • What other options have you considered?
      • What did you use or reject thse?
      • How would you describe the perfect solution?
      • What are the most important characteristics of this solution?
    • Identify competition and analyze their customers

      • Create a job story

    • A job story is the simplest way to express your job to be done.
    • Use When (Situation), I want to (motivation), So I can (expected outcome)
      • "When" refers to the conditions that cause a customer to hire your product, "I want to" refers to the action your customer wants to take, while "So I can" describes the outcome your customer wants.
    • Here are some examples of potential jobs stories for Cartfuel Customers
      • When I sell a product online, I want to see the sales data in HubSpot, so I can have our sales team reach out to upsell more products.
      • When I sell digital tickets, I want to see the sales data in HubSpot, so I can contact the customers with future events
      • When I sell products online, I want to see the customer sales data in HubSpot, so I can keep track of who bought what product
      • When I sell products with HubSpot, I want to collect payments using Stripe or PayPal, so I can see customer subscriptions and successful payments
      • When I sell products on HubSpot, I want to collect payments using Stripe or PayPal, so I can see customer subscriptions and successful payments in the CRM (External)

      Set a criteria for the type of customer you want to serve by asking these questions

      • Examples
        • What verticals work best for you?
          • Online Service based businesses
        • What size companies are most responsive to your product?
          • 3-10 employees
        • Do your customers tend to cluster in certain locations?
          • UK, US
        • What technologies do your customers use?
          • HubSpot, Spiffypay, Stripe, PayPal,
        • How long have your customers been around?
          • Minimum 3 years
        • What reporting structure and departments does the company have?
          • Flat reporting structure. One head person in charge who is able to make decisions quickly
        • What special conditions are there for your product?
          • Must be an agency or service-based business
          • Must sell digital products or memberships
          • Having a sales team is a plus but not a requirement
          • Has to make $250k+ per year
        • What red flags appear with customers who don't buy your product?
          • Not sure about the red flags atm
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⚠️Solving A Problem