Does my solution fix a problem that needs fixing?

I once met someone who had spent more than £10,000 developing their idea without speaking to a prospective customer. Two friends had said it sounded good.

It is easy to see how that happens. Building feels like progress. You can see a website taking shape, demonstrate a feature and imagine people using it.

Speaking to customers introduces uncertainty. They might tell you the problem is unimportant, that their existing approach works well enough or that someone else controls the budget.

Those are useful things to discover before committing more time and money.

Whether you are starting a business or developing a new offer within an established company, the question is the same: does this solve a problem people care enough about to act?

1. Describe the problem before describing your solution

Try explaining the customer’s difficulty without mentioning your product.

Who experiences it? When does it happen? What does it prevent them from doing? What are the consequences?

“Small businesses need a better app” already assumes the answer. “Customer enquiries get lost when several people share responsibility for responding” describes something you can investigate.

Be specific enough to recognise the situation when someone talks about it. If you cannot describe the problem clearly, spend more time understanding it before deciding what to build.

2. Find out how people deal with it today

Your competition includes whatever customers currently do, even if that means spreadsheets, manual work, asking a colleague or living with the inconvenience.

Ask them to walk you through a recent example:

• What happened?

• How did they handle it?

• Who became involved?

• What took the most effort?

• What, if anything, did it cost them?

An awkward process may still be familiar, inexpensive and reliable enough. Your solution needs to offer a reason to change that outweighs the effort of adopting it.

“No one else offers exactly what we do” does not tell you whether customers need it.

3. Speak to people who actually experience the problem

Friends and family can help you think, but their encouragement is not a substitute for evidence from relevant customers.

Choose people whose circumstances match the audience you intend to serve. Include those who may disagree with your assumptions.

Ask about what they have done rather than only what they might do. “Tell me about the last time this happened” is usually more revealing than “Would you use an app that fixed this?”

Give them room to explain before presenting your idea. Once you describe the solution, the conversation can easily turn into polite feedback on your pitch.

Look for patterns across conversations, including differences that suggest you are speaking to several distinct customer groups.

4. Understand who benefits, who pays and who decides

The person who likes your solution may not be able to buy it.

In a business, a team member might welcome a simpler process while their manager needs to justify the cost. Someone else may assess security, procurement or implementation.

Understand what each person needs to know and what could prevent a decision.

Ask how a similar purchase was made previously. Who was involved? What evidence was needed? How long did it take?

This helps you distinguish interest from a realistic opportunity to sell.

5. Test willingness to act

Positive comments are encouraging, but they leave important questions unanswered.

What is the person prepared to do next?

Depending on your offer, a useful test might involve a paid trial, a small initial project or a clear proposal with a price and a decision date. Before a product is ready, you might test part of the service manually, provided you are honest about what you are delivering.

Different commitments tell you different things. Joining a waiting list suggests interest. Paying suggests willingness to spend. Continuing to use and renew tells you more about ongoing value.

Avoid treating any one signal as proof that you have found product-market fit. Build your understanding through what people do as well as what they say.

6. Estimate the market you can realistically reach

A large industry does not automatically give you a large opportunity.

Start with the specific customers you could serve. Consider how many fit the problem, geography, budget and practical requirements of your offer.

Then ask how you would reach them. An audience may exist without being easy or affordable for your business to access.

Build a simple estimate from the bottom up:

• How many relevant customers could you realistically reach?

• What proportion might become paying customers?

• What might each pay over a defined period?

• What would it cost to win and serve them?

Treat those numbers as assumptions to investigate. A calculation can be useful without being a reliable forecast.

The purpose is to understand what would need to be true for the business to work.

7. Explore pricing alongside the value you provide

Competitor prices can give you context, but copying them does not establish the right price for your offer.

Consider the value of solving the problem, the alternatives available and the cost of delivering your service.

If you believe customers will pay a premium, what makes the difference worthwhile to them? If your plan depends on a low price and high volume, how will you reach and support enough customers?

Put a real price into relevant conversations when you are ready to make an offer. Notice whether concerns are about affordability, unclear value, risk or the effort of changing.

Discounting will not necessarily resolve those different concerns.

8. Decide what you need to learn before building more

Research can become endless if you do not connect it to a decision.

Write down your most important assumptions. For each one, identify the evidence you have and the smallest useful test you could run.

For example:

“We believe growing agencies lose billable time because project handovers are unclear.”

You could begin by asking agency owners and project leads to describe recent handovers. If the problem is significant, you could test a small paid service before investing in software.

Agree what would lead you to continue, change direction or stop. Give the test an owner and a review date.

You will not remove all uncertainty. You can make the next commitment better informed.

What if the evidence challenges your idea?

It can be difficult to hear that something you have worked hard on is not solving a pressing problem.

Give yourself room to examine the feedback before defending the solution or abandoning it.

You may have found the wrong customer group. The problem may be real but your approach too difficult to adopt. Or the opportunity may not justify further investment.

Each possibility calls for a different decision.

Changing your mind in response to evidence can protect time and money for something more worthwhile. Work already completed is part of the history, but the decision now concerns what you do next.

Start with the assumption you are least sure about

You do not need a perfect research report before making progress.

Choose the assumption that would most affect your plans if it were wrong. Find a practical way to investigate it, then use what you learn to decide the next step.

The aim is to understand the customer well enough to build something they value and a business that can deliver it.

If you are finding it difficult to separate confidence in your idea from the evidence in front of you, explore how we can work together. I coach and mentor founders as they question assumptions, choose priorities and make decisions about where to invest their effort.

Cheers,

Duncan