Step-by-Step Instructions

Welcome to the last exercise of Offer Testing!

Problems it Solves

As the name of this exercise implies, it will help you answer the question...

When are you done offer testing?

The answer is fairly straightforward:

You're ready to Currency Test when you've proven your Offer provides a clear path to Victory.

In your Path to Victory spreadsheet, you captured a number of assumptions which you believed would lead to your Victory. In Offer Testing, your goal is to validate your assumptions surrounding your channel reach, and your offer conversion rate.

You know when you are done Offer Testing when you can pique the interest of enough Early Adopters that it's likely you will achieve your Victory.

You'll worry about revenue validation in Currency Testing: right now, you know you are done when you have proven you can get enough people interested in a solution that you can make your Victory a reality.

In my case, I started by doing some experiments on Facebook to make sure I could achieve my predicted conversion rate of 5%, and then moved on to experiments on my Blog to see if I could indeed get a conversion rate of 4%. I was looking to see if I could achieve a number that would prove I could reach my Early Majority+, or at least one that would be sufficient enough to achieve my Annual Victory Revenue.

There Are No Shortcuts

The most important thing for you to know about this stage is that there are no shortcuts on this process. It will get harder before it gets easier. Currency Testing is difficult, so don't begin until you're confident you Offer Testing will lead to Victory.

It gets harder before it gets easier.

Tip #1: Don't fudge the numbers.

Do not short-cut yourself in Offer Testing. You want to make sure you have a solid grip on reaching your Early Adopters before moving on to Currency Testing.

It will never get easier to find your first customers than it will right now. Even if your product was done and perfect, it won't be any easier to find and attract customers.

Do your Offer Testing right and you can be sure you've found a problem worth solving.

Tip #2: Only validate what you need to.

You only need to validate enough Offers to achieve your Victory. If you are able to reach your Annual Victory Revenue based on the conversion rate of your first and/or second Channel, you do not have to validate the third channel.

For example, I was able to prove I could reach my necessary conversion rates via Facebook and my Blog. I did not need to validate my third Channel because it wasn't necessary to ensure I achieved Victory Revenue, even with my pessimistic Annual Revenue projections.

Having Trouble?

You may find that it is difficult to get the Offer conversion rates you were hoping for. That's okay - that's part of the process.

The FOCUS Framework is design for precisely this purpose: to help you know what to do next even when the cards are not falling as you had hoped.

FOCUS is designed to go both ways: it will tell you what to do when an experiment succeeds, and what to do when it fails.

If you look at the graphic here, you will see the steps you have taken thus far in the "F" and "O" workbooks:

• Idea Generation
• Customer Storming
• SCALE
• 5-Interview Checkpoint
• Interview Analysis
• Offer Experimentation

If you are having trouble with your Offer, you can go back to any of these steps.

Take a step back to move forward.

If you are having trouble getting interest in your Offer, something is not quite right. You might go back to Interview Analysis to see if there was something that you missed during your conversations with customers. If you get different results the second time around, you may end up with a different and more successful set of Offers.

If that doesn't work, perhaps you return to your 5-Interview Checkpoint. Knowing what you know now, were you interviewing the right people? Did you interview them in a way that really got the information you needed to create an attractive Offer?

If that doesn't work, that's fine too. You may go back to your SCALE process. Remember you already lined up a secondary, and tertiary potential Early Adopter segments there. Maybe there is a segment that is more eager to solve a problem.

If that doesn't work, you can brainstorm an entirely different set of customers in Customer Storming.

Or, you can brainstorm an entirely different set of problems to solve in Idea Generation.

Going backwards is okay - it is more than okay: it is how the FOCUS Framework is designed. FOCUS is designed to give you a fallback plan at every step.

Repeating steps is part of the process.

Whatever step you go back to, you know that you will never go forward without validation; without being confident the path you're on is the Path to your Victory.

Document Your Path

You will know you are done with your Offer Testing when you have a documented Path to Victory.

Take out your Path to Victory spreadsheet. Replace any cells with actual data from your experiments and then bold them, so you know what's been validated, and what hasn't.

You now have a validated document to present to your team, your investors, advisers, or any other interested party.

At this point, you are able to say confidently: "Here is the number of people we are able to reach with this offer."

What's Next

Next up, you will validate that a sufficient number of customers who responded to your Offer will give you Currency for it!

Congratulations...it's time to move on to Currency Testing!