Understanding customer needs in China's impact community is not easy. First, I am far away from the battle field. Second, professional service is a relatively new concept for people in the community. People either don't know about it or have misunderstanding about the nature and benefit of the work. Therefore, I try to make the most of the resources here at Harvard Kennedy School by interviewing some Chinese students who previously worked at, founded, and/or led a NGO/NPO/social enterprise in China. Here are what I have found:
1. Articulating your problems is not easy.
- I observed that it was hard for some people to articulate their organizations' problems and needs. The most common feedback I have heard was that "we don't know how to do XYZ" or "we don't have enough people". They are the result of problems, not problem themselves. Until knowing the problems can you solve them. Therefore, I conclude that it might require a long period of time to educate customers and have conversations with them to help them understand their problems and needs before developing any solutions.
2. They don't know what they are willing to pay for professional service.
- A derivative of symptom 1 is that customers have not recognized the value of professional service and thus can't project their partnership with BetterPartners, let alone paying for services. Therefore, I conclude that the fixed-fee model in my original financial model should be changed to a more flexible one which is tailored to each customer's annual budget.
3. Customers in the growth stage are more willing to talk.
- Mission-driven ventures in China grow faster than I expected. So they are more willing to engage in conversations in the growth stage as they have more things to think about. Some of their general concerns are entering new market, tapping into a new customer category, and securing more fundings. Therefore, I conclude that targeting this type of customer might generate more business leads.
In addition to interviews, I created an online group (on WeChat) to include some of my close friends who are either the founder or the leader of mission-driven ventures. We started by randomly sharing experience, but I plan to hold regular conference call (on WeChat) with certain topics of organizational management to understand their perspectives and probe their willingness of partnering with a professional service firm like BetterPartners.
Back to my findings. These preliminary conclusions have led me to think again about my assumptions regarding customer and market. First, I might need to lower the market growth rate, especially for initial years. Second, I might need to modify fee model from fixed fee to flexible fee (to be decided). Third, I might need to fine-tune customer profile we target.
Finally, in terms of internal human capital management, I am thinking of building a talent team consisting of both university students and young professionals. In this way, I can have a broader recruitment base and a flexible team structure. However, a diverse recruitment base may increase the cost of talent process of recruitment, development and retention because we need to develop two sets of plan for two different profile types.
It is wonderful to see that you already have done some interviews and have begun to make changes based on what you learned. That is the key to the lean startup approach. You are limited by geography, as you noted, but you are making good use of available resources. I look forward to hearing more about what your WeChat group uncovers. :)
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