The reason why your business ideas don’t succeed is because you are selling the wrong product or service.
Rushing to launch a new business idea without interrogating whether there is a market for it or not is one of the main reasons many entrepreneurs don’t succeed, says Anton Ressel, a senior consultant and mentor at Fetola Business Growth Professionals.
“You can waste time, money and effort if you don’t do your homework,” says Ressel.
The solution, according to Ressel, is to validate and test your business idea before going to the market with it. This process includes product testing and sourcing market feedback which will provide valuable insights which, in turn, will help you refine your original idea.
Validation can answer questions for entrepreneurs, like: “Does your product or service add value? If it’s been done before, why did it fail? How can you do better?”
Ressel outlines the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when launching a new business idea:
Mistake 1: You don’t start
Ressel says nobody ever got rich from an idea. “It is the successful implementation of an idea that makes magic happen.”
Mistake 2: You’re not asking the right questions
The following questions can be used to get feedback from a potential customer. It can asked in the form of a survey or even through a competition on social media, says Ressel.
– Does this product or service already exist?
– Who is my target market and where would I find them?
– Who is the competition and what do they offer that I perhaps cannot at this early stage?
– How could I penetrate the market and what sort of funds do I need to successfully do so?
Mistake 3: You’re not developing a prototype
Create a working prototype or MVP (minimum viable product).
Mistake 4: You don’t ask for help
Highly technical products may require expert help. You may need to align with a university or industry body (such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) to properly test your idea, says Ressel.
Other sources of support and assistance, according to Ressel, include: former classmates, interest groups, online interest groups, former teachers or professors.
Mistake 5: You’re not making yourself visible
One of the ways to generate interest in your product or service and even investment, Ressel suggests is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a method of raising capital through the collective effort of friends, family, customers, and individual investors. There are various types of models, the most widely used being equity, donation and rewards based.
