Today, in a meeting with the leadership team of a nonprofit organization, I ran the participants through an exercise to get to product/market fit:
We started out with listing the HAVES of the organization on a whiteboard. The “haves” are all the assets an organization has — anything from their customer relationships to systems and processes they created to the brand.
We then went on to identify their customer’s WANTS. The “wants” are all the things a customer wants or needs to solve her problem.
The “haves” is your product. The “wants” is your market. When the two fit like a snug glove, you have product/market fit.
In our case we quickly identified a key asset which was missing. And by taking a hard look at the wants and understanding the capabilities of the organization, we could create a new and much improved way to solve the customer problem.
What are your HAVES and WANTS? And how do they fit?