Can You Validate Multiple Products At the Same Time in B2B?

After completing a second round of problem interviews with my previous startup, HireVoice, my business partner and I had identified that the core problem for Human Resources (HR) specialists was candidate attraction. In the year to come, our prospects were planning to invest in sourcing, social media recruiting and hiring through their employee network.

We believed we could provide solutions to help attract talent via social networks and employee networks, but we were unable to tell which product would be most valuable. Instead of testing one solution with 12 prospects, we decided to multi-track the solution interviews by testing two products with six prospects each.

In the same amount of time it would have taken us to test one solution, we had enough data to be able to put a product on hold (employee network referrals) and focus on another more promising product — social media recruitment.

The same could have been done with problem interviews. Although it’s important to keep in mind your team’s focus, it is possible to speed up validation by researching multiple prospect groups in parallel (e.g., recruitment agencies vs. HR generalists).

It comes at a cost, but there are benefits to testing different products in parallel.