Service Development

How to test your services

This project guide helps two Sky’s the Limit members work together through four meetings as they collaborate to test your services.

Meeting 1: Identify you customers

Before this meeting:

• Make sure that you’ve had an intro meeting. If you need help navigating your first meeting, visit this  Guide to Your First Meeting.

• Review: Customer Segmentation

In this meeting:

• Use the Customer Deepdive guide to help you identify your customers. Think through how your service works to solve a problem in their lives. 

• Look for three different groups of customers that could use your service. It may be helpful to think of three existing customers you have or people you know.

After this meeting:

• Sleep on it 😴 - Review the guide and see if you’ve missed anything or if there’s anything you’d like to add.

• Note any agreed-upon next steps

Meeting 2: Test your idea with customers

Before this meeting:

• Review the following:

  • Lean Startup Methodology

  • How to Improve a Service

In this meeting:

• Complete the Testing Your Idea Tool

  • Make your own copy to fill in during this meeting

After this meeting:

• Sleep on it 😴 - Review the Testing Your Idea Tool, and see if you’ve missed anything or if there’s anything you’d like to add.

• Note any agreed-upon next steps.

Meeting 3: Test with actual customers

Before this meeting:

• Review the following:

  • 16 Ways to Sell

In this meeting:

• Identify the three best sales channels to test your service  by selling it to actual customers.

• Make a plan  to gather customer feedback through a survey or review system.

After this meeting:

• Try selling your service through the channels you’ve identified. If those don’t work, try 3 more!

• Follow up with those who bought to get reviews. For those who don’t buy your service, try to find out why they didn’t buy, and what would make them more likely to purchase it.

• Note any agreed-upon next steps.

Meeting 4: Refine and improve

Before this meeting:

• Gather your customer feedback

• Review the following: Improve a Product

In this meeting:

• Group positive feedback into themes. 

• Group negative feedback into themes. 

• Identify the aspects of your idea that are working well as well as areas that need to be improved. 

• Create a plan and timeline for the next test. 

After this meeting:

• Make improvements to your service based on your findings, and repeat the testing process until you have achieved predictable sales results with mostly positive feedback.