In professional services firms, it’s not uncommon for new services to pop up over night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your subject matter experts spot an opportunity in the market. Maybe, they worked on an assignment or two that got them really excited. And before you know it… boom! There\u2019s a new service that you and your team are (t)asked to bring to market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while I’m all for the enthusiasm, it is important that you help your subject matter experts take a step back, before marketing their solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is, if you want to prevent disappointments along the way…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before you start any marketing efforts, you’ll need to validate the market<\/strong> for the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Harvard Business Review<\/a>, “market validation is the process of determining if there\u2019s a need for your [solution] in your target market.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s how you do that in 3 (+ 1) steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 0 – Check for validation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When your colleagues show up at your desk, excited to conquer the market, affirm their enthusiasm; “It’s great to see you’re excited about this solution!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Please tell me a bit more. So I can help you turn it into a business success.” And then ask business questions to figure out if the market is validated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you understand more about the demand for the solution, you can decide to move on. And actually validate the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 1 – Set hypotheses & research goals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n First, you’re setting one or more hypotheses to test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example: “We believe there is sufficient demand for [our solution] in [our market]. And we should be able to land at least 1 assignment each quarter, resulting in X revenue.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, you determine your research goals, i.e. the missing bits you want to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quick tip: You can definitely present your hypotheses to GenAI and ask it to come up with research objectives and methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 2 – Market research<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, you can move on to the research phase. Here…<\/p>\n\n\n\n You perform market validation research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You analyse your competitors’ offerings, read industry reports from trusted sources, listen carefully to keynotes during events, analyse industry specific data sets, explore your personal networks, monitor Google Trends<\/a>, and check Keyword Planner<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You send out client surveys or incorporate the questions you want answered into existing ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your subject matter experts conduct client interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 3 – Test<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time you could test the waters of the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe the solution isn’t 100% perfect yet. This doesn’t have to stop you in validating demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could run a so called ‘fake door test’. You create a landing page for your solution as if it was already perfect. You run a series of ads to get your target audience on the page, where you persuade them to express an interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they do, you know there’s an appetite for what you’re about to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope this helps!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Spark was published as MBD Boost #032<\/strong> on March 25, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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