Describe Your Customers

Team Challenge

Who are your customers? Do you plan to sell to individuals or will you sell to a business or government? Where are these customers and how many of them are there? What do you know about what motivates them and fulfills their needs> Questions like these are central to understanding your market. You challenge is to convince the reader of your business plan that you know a LOT about your buyers.

Resources

Explore global social and economic relationships and world development issues using the Google Gapminder Tool. Using county population figures and the Gapminder, can you estimate the needs, priorities and buying power of potential customers in various regions? You can make your own interactive graphic tool with Google's "Motion Chart" - just ask and we'll teach you how. Also, learn to create your own Excel charts! These are powerful ways to visualize your data.

Process

BASIC LEVEL The "Market Analysis" section of your final solution could be two to five pages, depending on how much detail you choose to provide. Answer these questions:

What do you know about your customers? Who are they? Individuals? Businesses? Government Agencies?
Where are your customers located (think country, climate, geography)? Are they located in cities, or in rural areas?
What do they do for a living (or what kind of company are they)?

GRAB YOUR POINTS!

1. Log into eFolio. Place your work into your team's "GBP & TIP Challenges" folder. Title your entry with [Your Name]-[Challenge title]-[Process Level] (e.g. David Gibson-Title-BASIC) so that we can credit you for your work!

2. Evaluate the Challenge.

GOING BEYOND To go beyond the rest of the crowd, add your team's answers to these questions:

Why is your product attractive to your customers?
How are they currently solving their problems? Why is your product better than what they already have? For example, if you built a solar powered water heater, how will it be better than current models?
Within the market you are pursuing, what specifically do your customers want and how does your product deliver this?

GRAB YOUR POINTS!

2. Evaluate the Challenge

GOING CRAZY Want to "nail this one?" Here are some more questions to answer, and your team can make up its own new questions that nobody else will think of!

Estimate the size of your market. How many customers do you think you have? Write an equation based on whatever assumptions you’ve made to come up with an estimated number of customers. (Ex. 100 people per city X 10 cities X 3 countries = 3,000 customers – your equation should be more detailed).

Use team roles in each task! (Remember, we're going to bug you about this until you are sick of us saying it, but it works - especially just deciding on who is taking the lead on a section and who is going to edit, comment and find new resources after the first draft is done!)

Task Leader, (Research Team Leader, Team Leader)
Documenter (writing, editing, putting things together, linking to standards)
Resources Person (finds and gets stuff)
Evaluator and team reflection role (process monitor role)

GRAB YOUR POINTS!

2. Evaluate the Challenge