What is the ‘Grandma Test’ and how could it help entrepreneurs pitch ideas?

Next time you have a big pitch, run it through the Grandma Test first.

Many working people hope to become entrepreneurs. But there are a number of steps to take before launching a business. One of them is to verify the viability and potential profitability of your project. And for that, the grandma test can be highly useful.

The grandma test is all about keeping things clear and simple. It reminds aspiring entrepreneurs that a good business idea should be easy to explain to anyone, including someone who knows nothing about marketing or entrepreneurship.

What is the Grandma Test and how could it help entrepreneurs pitch ideas?

This test forces budding startup founders to take a step back from their project to get a better overall view of their future business. Setting up a company often requires a substantial investment: you wake up and go to sleep thinking about your business. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get away from it all, even for a weekend or a (short) vacation. In this context, it can be tough to think clearly about your product or service idea.

This is where the grandma test comes into its own. Discussing your business idea with people with zero involvement or understanding of your project can often help you refine your concept and check whether it meets real needs. After all, your grandma, uncle or niece are all potential customers out there in the market. Their opinion can prove essential if you hope to gain a precise understanding of the market you intend to enter. But to get their precious feedback, you need to be able to speak clearly to those around you, avoiding the kind of impenetrable marketing jargon that can feel reassuring among fellow entrepreneurs.

Quite often, a startup founder’s survival reflex is to build up a solid “business” lexicon, enabling them to talk seriously about their project. But this way of speaking, very much in vogue in the business world, has the downside of excluding or alienating anyone who doesn’t master it — at the risk of missing out on valuable suggestions that could help develop or refine a business idea.

While it may be tempting to see the grandma test as the solution to determining the merits of a business idea, this strategy does not exempt anyone from carrying out proper market research and developing a precise business model.

Still, sounding out your nearest and dearest can serve as a kind of crash test to see if a hunch can be turned into a concrete plan of action, but beware of complacency bias. Your granny might tell you that your idea is good just to please you, even if she’s not entirely convinced. So make sure you test out your idea as many people as possible: this will help you to describe your project more clearly, and will enable you to judge your chances of success on the basis of the different opinions you receive.

This story is published via AFP Relaxnews.