How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS business for less than $750 – https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas
Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk to you more about a topic that comes up quite a bit as it pertains to the research that you wanna do to figure out which problems you wanna solve for your B2B SaaS customers. Now, there’s different ways to gather feedback from a target market.
For the most part, those break down into two categories. There’s qualitative and there’s quantitative types of data that you can collect. For the most part, the qualitative data usually takes the form of interviews or conversations for you to learn more from a target market. And there’s different ways to gather that, which I’ll talk about next.
The second or quantitative is usually some form of asynchronous method of capturing information from a similar target market, like surveys, for example. Now, In the beginning, I hugely favor qualitative over quantitative, and I’m gonna explain why. But what I want to inform you of is that most people are often very interested in collecting survey data, and there’s for various reasons for this, I’m sure, but I believe that to be a trap in the beginning because it can severely limit what you can learn, and it could also be misleading, pointing you in the wrong direction.
Here’s why. Because in the beginning, if you don’t know your target market intimately well enough, as in if you haven’t had a decent number of conversations with them in one-on-one capacity, then it’s gonna be really difficult to create an effective survey because you’re not necessarily gonna know which questions are more relevant than others.
As such, this is why I’m a huge favor in, in huge, in favor of the qualitative conversations and capturing that type of data first, because that’s gonna enable you to learn some of the most important and relevant information. And it will also inform your ability to create the best surveys as well. So let’s talk about the different types of qua qualitative information that you can collect when performing this research.
Now, there’s two different methods that this breaks down into as well. Also, There’s one-on-one conversations, really a personalized approach. There’s also different types of group conversations, like focus groups, which you’ve probably heard of before. You may have been part of one on either side as well.
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Also, I’m also not a huge fan of focus groups. I. Also, especially in the beginning, and the reason for that is it’s susceptible to a number of different problems. Two that I can think of right away is what I call group think. That’s where the consensus of the room seems to be heading in a direction, but that other people in the room are more than likely just.
Gravitate or want to kind of go along with the flow in terms of where the room is heading, if a few, and that can be misleading because it could be a few people in the room dominating the conversation and taking it in a direction that other people in the room don’t agree with, but are kind of unwilling to just fight that what seems to be inevitable or just natural so far in the dialogue that’s happening in the room.
Groupthink is a big problem with focus groups. Uh, the other one is the loudest voice, which is related to that, where someone’s being adamant about something or maybe combative, whatever it is. Other folks in the room may not feel comfortable speaking up or fighting that momentum for whatever reason. So, You can get a lot of misleading information.
Now. It sounds great, it sounds efficient, and it sounds like you could kind of do everything all at once. But that’s like, uh, which I’ve said the other day, 10 women making a baby in a month. It’s not really, that might be possible from a theoretical perspective, but in practice it doesn’t work like that.
So instead, hu, I’m a huge advocate for personalized one-on-one conversations, especially in the beginning. Uh, a qualitative nature so that you can figure out what type of information’s most relevant, what questions work best, and how to get the information that’s gonna inform all of your decisions from here.
Do a series of those and then you’ll get better at them along the way. Plus, you’ll learn better information as you get a better understanding and what you should be asking. And where the areas of opportunity are. So that process will naturally become more efficient and more effective. And then from what you learn, investing in that process, that can inform other more efficient methods you might wanna leverage at scale.
And that’s where you can consider some quantitative methods that will have a high impact as well too, like issuing surveys because now you know how to design that survey because you’ve had enough one-on-one conversations to understand the patterns.