No amount of market research can guarantee you will be able to sell your product or service. Business plans devote chapters to sales projections and this can mean nothing. It is much easier to add a couple zeros to sales estimates on a spreadsheet than to add new clients to your roster.
The Biggest Indicator
The very best indicator of your future success is whether you have actual sold your services to anybody yet.
The Second Biggest Indicator
Did you keep your first client for a while and have you closed a few more?
Wind In The Sails
A common problem with start-ups is that they spend too much time in the planning stages. Remember that the true experts are the only ones that can put the finishing touches to your sales model and service offering. The true experts are already out there waiting and ready to vote on your start-up idea with their money. The cheapest marketing test of all time is a pay per click ad sending traffic to a landing page selling your product or service. Use this test platform to tweak your message and pricing until you can close “any sale” and you are off to the races.
The Dark Hallway
A recent study showed that successful entrepreneurs will take off down the dark hallway of risk and opportunity with no knowledge of where they might end up. The movement down that hallway exposes many doors of opportunity. These doors were often not even in the original business proposals and entirely unplanned. So if you are the kind of person that needs to know every possible outcome, plan for every possible failure, then chances are you will not be successful. Remember that risk and opportunity always come together.