How to Achieve a Good Product-Market Fit

So you think you’ve got an idea for an enterprise app that addresses your client’s pain points? But have you determined how bad the problem is for clients to buy your product?  Is it just a mild inconvenience or something that triggers a fit of rage?

To ensure your enterprise app survives and thrives in the marketplace, you need to find the right product-market fit.

Is there a demand for the enterprise app?

When it comes to consumer apps, or even low-cost, low-effort projects like the Flappy Bird, your risks are inherently low. You can go back to the drawing board and start over. There’s an element of flexibility for you and your team.

When enterprise apps fail, however, you can’t mitigate your losses in a jiffy. Starting over requires another round of highly dilutive venture capital, more research, and lots of surveys.  Many companies fail because they haven’t achieved a good product-market fit before getting into app development.

Enterprises move at a snail’s pace, and they hardly, if ever, change their course. This is because every tiny change involves lots of hours and money spent not only on the product, but integrating it into their software ecosystem and training personnel. Getting enterprises to adopt your app is a fool’s errand, unless, they’re actively searching for a solution.

Finding the Right Product-Market Fit

Before you pour manpower, time, and money into your new enterprise app, you have to determine whether you have a market for it. The last thing you want to do is build an appthat nobody asked for.

Although there is very little consensus on how to measure the product-market fit for enterprise apps, experts posit the following three questions as a baseline to help you with research:

1. What is the problem the client faces?
   2. Is the problem large enough for people to search for a solution?
   3. Does the proposed app solve this problem?

If the answer to all these questions is ‘yes,’ you can then start a more thorough, in-depth research.

A good way to start would be to conduct surveys. To get a measure of the product-market fit, you want to find out the percentage of users who would be disappointed if they could no longer use your product. This famous method, hypothesized by Sean Ellis, states that the ideal product-market fit is when you have at least 40% of disappointed users if they could no longer use your product.

Below is a sample of what a product-market survey should look like.

If you’re a new business and don’t have a long list of clients, it can be a bit difficult to get responses to surveys. But even if some people respond with ‘very disappointed’ when they could no longer use your product, you’re getting somewhere.

This is when you should double down and learn everything there is to know about the people who think your product is this useful.

Other questions in your survey should help you understand why they consider your product to be a must-have, the key benefit they will receive from your app, and more. This information can help you improveyour app to make it more useful to the end-user.

Don’t Make These Mistakes When Establishing a Clear Product-Market Fit

There are many horror stories of enterprise apps failing despite extensive user surveys. Sometimes, what the client says isn’t a good indication of whether they are prepared to spend on the app when it is finally released.

Here are a few of the most common mistakes you should try to avoid when before measuring the app’s product-market fit.

1. You haven’t spent enough time talking to the user.

Product owners and internal stakeholders are not the people you should be surveying. Talk to the end-user who will be using the app.

2. The need is there, but it’s not overwhelming enough.

Companies and clients have other priorities that need solving. Your solution is probably too niche. In this case, move on to the next big problem and start over.

3. Your enterprise app looks identical to what is already out there in the market.

If this is the case, your problem just got worse – you’ve got competition. Consider undercutting it to attract new buyers, and you’ve still got a chance here.

Once you’ve understood what it is that you’re selling and who you’re selling to, you’re good to go.

If you’ve got ideas for enterprise apps, NS804 has got the right team to help you develop it. Get in touch with us today to learn more.