Personal Pain Map
Morning Everyone,
A personal pain map is an incredibly useful tool that asks question to create a profile of the customer segment of a product. A personal pain map is more or less an exercise that puts the innovator/manufacturer/designer in the shoes of the customer to better understand the every day life of their customers. The main objective of the pain map exercise is to find the emotional high's and low's of the customer to capitalize on the customers wants and needs.
Stepping back a second, Kris made a comment a few weeks ago regarding my innovation. My goal was to further develop my solar panel innovation and try to position the product in the residential market. My plan was to start as a door-to-door salesman and try to sell my product to financially established home owners. Kris made a really good point, coupled with the same response from my partners on the project, Kris reasoned that the residential market may not be ready for solar panel technology yet.
When I apply the pain-map exercise/methodology to analyze the residential market (specifically 30-45 year old new home owners in Massachusetts) as the market segment for my product, the first thing that comes to mind (and Kris's mind) is money. The goal of designing and implementing a solar system on someones house is to at a MINIMUM, eliminate their electric bill. Best case scenario is the home owner gets a check back from the electric company (PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DOING THIS! HOME OWNERS ALREADY HAVE SOLAR PANELS ON THEIR HOUSE AND GET A CHECK FROM MASS ELECTRIC EVERY MONTH - $4,000 to $8,500 A YEAR!!!).
The part that potentially turns off home owners from the technology is the investment. Typical home owners with a $75-$125/month electric bill require a $26,000-$40,000 system to get the payback results discussed above. The fact is that this sticker shock is going to turn residential home owners away considering the economic struggle that a majority of my target segment is experiencing. With out making this blog even longer, I've used the 7 sources of innovation and the pain map tools to serve as a pivot point on my target customer segment. I'm going to focus on established businesses of all sizes with the logic that these customers will be more likely to see the investment potential and use it propel their business to the next level.
Side Note: Massachusetts has a tax incentive and re-bate system passed just recently by Devaul Patrick. Home owners are putting existing solar panel technology on their homes, systems are $26,500 and after the tax incentives and rebates, is about $6,000. A TON MORE TO COME ON THIS in the future!!!! What event do you think I'm waiting for to jump from the commercial to residential market...?
I'm REALLY trying to go for this business development. Any advice/opinions is greatly appreciated! Break me down any way you can and point out potential failures.
Thanks guys,
-Brendan
posted by BrendanG @ 6:51 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Hi, Brendan, I don't actually know how much more investment a solar system need compare to the normal one, but for me, $26,000-$40,000 really can scare me away. Is that any possible to cooperate with government and let gov share some initial investment with house owners? Or you can tell customers while you sale the product that gov will pay back them $4,000 to $8,500 a year, which means that they can get investment back if they use more than 5 years.
I think you will have to target the financially savvy individual because the may be the only ones to realize and understand that the system could eventually pay for itself, so its basically along the lines of an investments. The only this here is how long that investment will take to pay back and how long the solar panels typically last.
As far as solar panels are concerned, I actually see quite a few down here in FL, mainly the homes with pools. So I think narrowing down a target customer (typically one that consumes more than the average electicity, i.e. poop/AC homes, high end electronic homes, etc). You may also have a season effect in the winter time in Mass. I believe electric bills are typically higher in the summer with pools and AC running (that is definitely the case in FL). So another target customer could be electric panel heating homes. I think if you target the right customers first, then you would position yourself to see the greatest adopt-ability early on in your business venture.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home