In order to craft a compelling UVP/Demo, you need to nail your customer’s problem.
The way you do this is not by guessing or pitching your offer at anyone that will listen, but by first spending the requisite time needed to deeply understand your customers and uncover problems worth solving.
We call this finding Customer/Problem Fit.
If you can describe your customer’s problems better than they can, there is an automatic transfer of expertise — your customers start believing that you must also have the right solution for them.
Marketer, Jay Abraham, calls this phenomenon the Strategy of Pre-eminence. You’ve probably experienced this at your doctor’s office. After receiving a successful diagnosis, you probably believed your doctor had figured out your ailment, and you rushed to fill out their prescription — even though your doctor was simply following a systematic process of elimination by unpacking your symptoms using educated guessing.
This is why the problem/solution fit process starts with a deeper dive into understanding your customer's problems using one or more problem discovery sprints.
A problem discovery sprint is run over a 2-week time-box and utilizes one-on-one customer interviews to understand your customer’s current worldview.
Running a problem discovery sprint typically involves three steps:
The goal of problem discovery is uncovering problems worth solving with the status quo (existing alternatives).
You do this, not by pitching your solution, but rather by studying how people are currently getting the job done with existing alternatives. If you can find big-enough inefficiencies or struggles with the current workflow (status quo), that’s where you’ll find opportunities for causing a switch.
By the end of problem discovery, you should be able to clearly articulate (with evidence):