When To Enter The Market
By Vela Wood
You’ve had an epiphany and scribbled like mad on your journal/newspaper/napkin/hand the next big business idea that is going to turn the world on its ear. We need to take that diamond idea and polish it to show off all its staggeringly beautiful dimensions.
Sometimes entrepreneurs get lucky and are able to jump into the market with their idea and land on treasure on the other end of the rainbow; however, that is the limited exception. The better plan of action is to spend time in the early stages determining if there is a market for your business idea. The key is to objectively determine through targeted research that dollars, time, toil, and effort spent on your business idea are going to find a market. The research you perform on the web, through industry magazines, taking industry players to lunch, visiting the local library, or chamber of commerce, will enable you to focus your product or idea and better understand the market landscape. It will also help you project what the future of that landscape may look like and what part you will play in it.
This fine tuning, or polishing, will help guide your objectives and provide you with tangible benchmarks to assist the early development of your idea. It will help you to determine answers to questions, like:
- What are my idea’s core benefits to customers?
- Who are my competitors, what are they up to, and how is my idea different?
- Who can help/partner/invest in me?
- What are my idea’s weaknesses?
Without evaluating your idea and performing focused research on your market, your diamond idea may very well remain cloudy. Better to spend time and energy doing your homework and grinding out flaws now to truly cement a business idea that will thrive.