Thus I give you 5 reasons for failure and more importantly, what you can do to avoid it happening to you:
Reason #1: Not really in touch with customers through deep dialogue.
An amazing thing happens when an entrepreneur sees a potential opportunity in the market, or dreams up a new idea for a product/service: they retreat to a cave.
In my experience, this is the worst move an entrepreneur can make because complete understanding of your customer is imperative to your success. Listen -- in my mind entrepreneurs must walk 1,000 miles in the shoes of their customers. Not 10. Not 100. One thousand.
Your customer holds the key to your success deep in their pain, behavior, dreams, values and the jobs they are trying to accomplish.
Your Solution: In 1999, four smart guys wrote a bookcalled ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’. Although the book is a tough read in my opinion, there is one silver bullet piece of wisdom shouting from the pages.
Markets are conversations.
Dialogue is key. And 140 character tweets don’t count. Real dialogue with real customers (via whatever channel is best for them).
Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, co-authors of the book ‘Nail It, Then Scale It’, said it best:
Which would you rather do -- talk to customers now and find out you were wrong or talk to customers a year and thousands of dollars down the road and still find out you were wrong?”
Reason #2: No real differentiation in the market (read: lack of unique value propositions)
Entrepreneur.com just put out a story entitled “Why Everyone Will Have To Become An Entrepreneur”. If this holds true (and I think it will), instead of your competition being 5,000 other Tom, Dick and Harrys, it will soon be 50,000 of these guys.
