The Founder Has Left The Building…Part 2
3rd Party Market Research
Now astute readers of my last post will be thinking: an online survey is fine but there still could have been bias on the part of respondents. Another drawback was the lack of a hands-on prototype demo. These two pitfalls eventually prompted me to look for a third party to do more in-depth customer interviews. Unfortunately, this put me back where I was before; looking for an expensive market research firm. This is where my contacts list and a little luck came to the rescue.
I happen to know an independent medical product rep who works in Maine and New Hampshire. She is constantly in doctor’s offices as part of her job selling medical products. She was a natural to do some market research, especially among podiatrists. I approached her and she was excited about taking on the project. There was still going to be a cost to cover her time but much less than hiring a market research firm. I applied for and was awarded an MTI TechStart grant to help defray these expenses. She is now out there doing in-person customer interviews and prototype demos with my initial target customers. I couldn’t have planned it better.
Next Post: The founder himself finally gets out in the trenches of customer development.