How to find better sales markets for your business with “Oceans of Need”?

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Theodore Levitt

If you are like me, you will read this sentence, then wait a couple of seconds and you will read it again. The second time you read you will recognise something. This is not another empty quote that you see in instagram. So what makes it special? The person that said it? I don’t think so. Does it really make sense? Maybe. The more you think about it it really solves a puzzle you are in? Yes!

Most of you know that I love startups. I have been to all stages of multiple startups, started a couple of them myself but most importantly learned by mistakes & have scars to show for it. Well here is one of the biggest mistakes that took me quite a while to really understand and learn from:

“Building a startup on top of a sole idea”

This is a vicious loop where we entrepreneurs convince ourselves that we are solving a need, which merely happens to appeal to ourselves, people around us. We believe it so blindly, we want it to succeed so badly we forget to really ask “What am I solving here?”

Understanding the needs of people (us), really going deep and studying the validity of an idea by data, not with gut feeling is the primary method of finding out the chances of your startup will succeed. How?

Blue Oceans + Jobs-to-be done = Oceans of need

You may be familiar with the Blue Ocean Strategy. A strategy that is based on finding uncompleted market segments (Blue oceans), and avoiding overcrowded ones where there is too much competition. (Red Ocean).

Here is an extensive video explaining the blue oceans strategy:

Secondly, you may have heard about Job-To-Be-Done Framework. In very short it is the framework that insists on finding the real need of your customers and building products on top of those needs.

Here is Prof. Clayton Christensen giving one example on McDonalds Milkshakes which I believe will give you a sneak peek of what this framework is all about:

Having both of these frameworks/ strategies in mind, let’s see how we can synthesize them in what I call “Oceans of need”

Oceans of need

Compare with 50 years ago we have more markets, every market has more segments, every segment has more demand. Although that is the case the needs that create these markets change very slowly. What changes, and being continuously replaced is the technology, or ways of satisfying those needs.Let’s analyse this for a moment:

A Phone story

Need: I want a new phone

Real need: To be able to communicate

Real depth need: To be able to feel in group/ get support / share with others

I want a premium car

Need: I need a car to take me to work

Real need: I want to be able to show that I am living a classy lifestyle, while driving a more comfortable car with all the premium gadgets.

Deep need: Prove social status, feel better about myself, get from a to b

You see if we start disassembling the needs, taking them apart as we go deeper we are able to get a sense of the real needs that creates those markets, and the brands appealing to those needs in the way that the customers need in both physical and psychological level.

Now with this in mind do you this the needs we commented above changed over the years? Or is it really the ways, or the technologies that changed trying to get these needs satisfied?

Oceans:

Oceans, in blue oceans strategy are a metaphors for markets / market segments. Red are overcrowded, blue are ones where there is little or no competition. In Jobs to be done strategy also these are called over-served / over satisfied

In this picture we can get a sense of the areas, just like in blue oceans strategy, where the competition and satisfaction is high( red oceans), and under served , not satisfied markets or segments ( blue oceans)

Let’s revise what we have talked until now and tie it all up.

There are red , over-served markets and segments where clients are happy and competition is high. In this case coming up with a great idea to re-solve an already solved, satisfied need would really take quite a bit energy, time and money. In exchange going for the under served, blue markets and segments would give our ideas a better chance of survival with less time, less money and more energy to be redirected to making our product than dealing with other competitors trying to satisfy the same need.

I can hear you saying “We are not done yet!” Indeed. The big question for us is now that we know in which market / segment to focus on for our startup idea, how do we know if that market exists in the first place?

This is where we entrepreneurs do the most harm to our ideas. Depending on a single thought we had, we though that would change the world, depending on a couple of article written by people we have no idea who, we go ahead and start working on the project, making great plans for the future.

Instead I will give you a better alternative. You think there is a chance for a great idea to flourish in a market that you think is under served? Confirm it. Forget about what you know about the segment, forget about what someone said would work. Open up an excel sheet, name it “Confirm my beliefs” and start collecting information that would confirm your beliefs OTHERWISE. As you go you will see that most of the assumptions you had about your idea, markets, potential clients, even yourself will change , creating a new, data based reality that your can base your idea on.

Doing this is not a self torture (although it may pass for one), this is to give your idea, the best chance to survive finding the real need, real markets and real customer needs.

And don’t forget! The life of an entrepreneur is full of with failures. What will take us to successful startups is the ability to dusting off after a failure, getting again, learn from our mistakes and keep on working on what we believe.

Now go let’s change the world!