Test your idea questionnaire
- 1. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST 1. What’s your big idea? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What are the features and benefits of your product/ services? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What problem does your product/service solve? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What is the profile of your ideal target customer? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ a. What is the profile of your ideal target user (within the target company)? b. Age, gender, sexual preference marital status etc. c. What are they passionate about? d. Where do they live? Where do they work? e. What types of people, places or things do they like? f. How do they learn and where do they like to go to learn? g. What do they read? When do they read it? Where do they read? h. What shops, Web sites, etc. do they purchase products from? i. What meetings, groups, and classes do they attend? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. How does the user currently solve the problem in question? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 2. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST 6. What is the pain extraction question/value proposition message if you get in front of your ideal customer? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 7. What is the usage model of the product? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8. What are some compelling use cases? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 9. Which market? Which segment? Why? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10. How big is the market? Is it big enough? How do you expand, if not? Should you expand, or should you focus within a niche? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 11. What is your technology? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 12. What is the application of this technology? ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 3. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ Competitive Positioning & Pricing 1. Who is the competition, and how do you differentiate from them? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What are the various classes of products in immediate and related categories? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What, of those, compete directly with you? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Which ones are likely to move into your space? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. How do your product features compare with the competitions? Can you compete on the basis of functionality? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 6. How does your product pricing compare with the competitions? Can you compete on the basis of price? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 4. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST 7. What are customers willing to pay for your solution? 1/10 the key competitor’s price? Same price? 200% the price? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8. What price can you charge based on perceived value? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 9. Can you offer both better performance and lower price? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10. Whom do you need to partner with to offer a full solution? ___________________________________________________________________________________ 11. Can you turn some of the competition to partners/channel relationships, so not to go head-to-head? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ Sales and Marketing 1. What is your value proposition ? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. How do you communicate that value in 20 words or less? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 5. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST 3. What pain extraction questions correspond to that value? In other words, if a sales rep gets a relevant stakeholder on the phone, what should she ask? Or, what should she ask in a succinct email, to gain permission for further engagement? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What are the top target segments (verticals, size, and geography)? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. What is the best way to generate a list of the target accounts within the segments? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 6. What job titles are we after within those accounts? _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ 7. What is the organizational map within the account that maps to the sales cycle? _________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8. What are the names of the stakeholders who correspond with the economic buyer, the technical decision maker, etc.? _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________ 9. What is the pain extraction question/value proposition message if someone with the right job title gets on the phone? __________________________________________________________________________________
- 6. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST __________________________________________________________________________________ 10. What are the criteria for a qualified lead? ____________________________________________________________________________________ 11. What lead generation programs do you plan to pursue? Google PPC advertising? E-mail campaigns? Tradeshows? Other forms of online advertising? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 12. How do you plan to qualify the leads? Telemarketing? Outsourced? In-house? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ Business Development 1. What is the appropriate channel strategy (direct, resellers, system integrators, telesales)? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. Are there channel conflicts? How do you resolve? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What paid proof-of-concept/pilot engagement/evaluation framework will get you to a deal within a short time? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What are the appropriate sales cycle steps, next steps, and duration breakdown? ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 7. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. What is the likelihood of a deal by sales cycle steps? How do you forecast? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 6. What are the must-have key target accounts? Why? What do you need to accomplish in those engagements to be able to achieve high leverage for reference selling, proof-points, and metrics? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 7. Do you have reference accounts? What is the best strategy to leverage the reference accounts and proof points? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8. How do you build new reference accounts? Who is your target? Why? How do you penetrate, sell, and demonstrate ROI? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 9. Are there must-have channel relationships? What do you need to do to appropriately establish and manage them? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10. What kind of channel discount do you need to provide to enlist the channel to perform on your behalf? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 11. What is the competition, and how do you position against them? ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 8. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ 12. What is the business model? On-Demand? Subscription? Advertising – CPM? CPC? CPA? Transaction fee – fixed? Commission? Final value fee?________________________________________________________________________________ ___ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 13. How do you build traffic? What FREE incentive can you offer to bring users en-masse to your site? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 14. What premium service can you offer that users would want to pay for? How much would they pay? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 15. How do you plan to sell ads? Internal ad sales force? Ad networks? Which ones? What kind of ad rates can you command? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 16. What ad management system will you use if you do it internally? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 17. Are you going to advertise online to recruit customers? Google/Yahoo! PPC? On blogs and other sites? Which sites? Using which ad networks? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 18. What are your search engine marketing/search engine optimization strategies? What keywords are you trying to own/position around? How expensive are they? ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 9. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ 19. For your category, what are the most influential blogs? How will you get them to talk about you? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 20. What are the top mainstream media properties that you need to get written up in? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 21. Whom do you need to partner with to offer a full solution/whole product? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 22. Whom do you partner with to generate traffic? Under what terms? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 23. Do you have a widget strategy for Facebook, iPhone, Hi5, MySpace, etc. to generate traffic and visibility? ___________________________________________________________________________________ CORPORATE 1. What is the product roadmap for the company? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What is the unifying theme that positions the company and leverages its strengths (technology, product, channel, current customers, references, etc.)?
- 10. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 3. Is there a platform strategy? A point-product strategy?A solution strategy? What holds all these together? How do you position to make it into an integrated big story? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What products/pieces need to be repositioned/repackaged to align with the corporate strategy? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. What is the full story? Is it a powerful, differentiated story that can go beyond a point-product/one-trick pony to become a category leader? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 6. What is the category? Do you define a new category, or position within an existing one? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 7. What technology/product/channel/media elements need to be introduced/influenced to make it into a larger story? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8. What broad scale industry trends can you impact based on your offering, and how do you position to align with such trends? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 9. What is your funding strategy? How do you position, package, and sell?
- 11. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10. What is your exit strategy? How do you position, package, and sell? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ EXECUTION ROADMAP 1. What is your next major milestone? (Product launch, funding round, exit)? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What derivative milestones/related projects do you need to accomplish to be able to stay on track and execute on the strategy? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What is the project-resource-timeline map tracking to the next milestone? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 13. What is the messaging matrix? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 14. What is the PR strategy? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________
- 12. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST 15. Do you have the resources to staff all the projects that lead up to the milestones? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 16. Who will manage lead sourcing/lead generation/lead qualification? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 17. Who will manage the PR process, pitches, follow-ups, etc.? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 18. Who will write the collateral? (Web site, sales pitches, data sheets) ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 19. Who will design and produce the Web site? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 20. What is the key additional hires/timeframe? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 21. Does everything align with your operating plan/budget? What tradeoffs do you need to make? What are the prioritization algorithms? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________