Are you a professional with a new approach to the services you usually provide? Do you know the thrill of being introduced to a groundbreaking, disruptive new service that you, too, can offer your clients? Did you recently complete an introductory collaborative training? If so, you must also be familiar with the urge that many of us small business owners, especially the newly-trained ones, feel: the impulse to jump headfirst into the process of bringing our innovative vision to life. But what if it’s not that easy? What if your clients have never heard of it and don’t want to be guinea pigs? What if the other professionals you know are skeptical? What if the current state of your culture can’t guarantee the feasibility of this amazing idea?

This is why it sometimes makes sense to slow down and consider how to test your new vision. A proof of concept can help determine whether it’s viable in your community.

What Is a Proof of Concept?

If you want your clients and referral partners to buy into, appreciate, and subscribe to your new service, you must first prove that it is truly practical, useful, and commercially feasible. Proving the concept can help you do that.

Can you provide this new service? If so, can your small business perform it effectively, even excellently? Does the solution you want to offer your clients fit your vision statement? Can it fit within each of your staff member’s skill set?

These are big questions. Answer them by proving the concept.

The POC Process

While the proof of concept process is used more often when big business intends to offer a new product, something similar will work when a professional wants to offer a new service, i.e., in our case, a collaborative divorce. POCs usually consist of a five-step process:

1. Demonstrate a need for the service. Who is your target market? What are their pain points? Conduct market research to get answers to these questions, e.g., by interviewing a sample of typical clients. Ask in-depth questions about their frustrations, how they want your service to alleviate their pain, their desired consumer experience, and more. See more on this in my blog, Market Research[JJ1] .
2. Brainstorm the right solution. In our case, we’ve already got it, the collaborative approach to dispute resolution. But we can always tweak it, right? Improve it.
3. Create a prototype. Test it on folks from your sample group. In our case, accomplish this by enlisting with a program like the Tampa Bay Collaborative Pro Bono Project or by offering it for free through a group of collaborative professionals who are willing to participate in your proof of concept prototype.
4. Gather and document feedback. We can do this by conducting exit interviews with our collaborative divorce clients. With a carefully designed debrief, the testimonials  you glean will provide the documented feedback you need, and will enable you to improve the services you and your team plan to offer.
5. Present the POC for approval. While in big business, a new product concept would now be presented to the stakeholders, in our world, this is when you start pitching your new service to your referral partners, your staff, and your consults. Perhaps also to your local bar association or another group of professionals. Your new pitch will present the pain points your innovative service solves and how its features benefit your clients, too.

A POC will help you verify that your proposed services are practical and attractive for your target market and achievable for your office. It will also help you craft the pitch that you will use to offer those services.

For more on how to practice collaboratively and successfully, and on how to profitably market your practice, reach out to me at Joryn@JorynJenkins.com or find me at Your Collaborative Marketing Coach, because your marketing is my marketing! And if you’d like to learn more about how to become a Collaborative Champion or a Legal Influencer, buy my toolkit or attend my training!