Everything so far has been done from your desk: the claim, the person, the sentence, the not list. All of it can be wrong in ways that reading will not reveal, and the cheapest way to find out is to talk to five people who run the kind of business the idea is for. Not to sell. To listen. This week is about how to do that without a product and without wasting their time or yours.
Finding five is easier than it sounds. You already know where they gather from the reading in week one: the trade forum, the association directory, the reviews page, the job postings. Pick five whose business looks like the person you wrote in week two. Write to each one, by email or a message through their site, and say something true and short: you are looking at building a tool for shops like theirs that does one thing, quotes while the customer is on the phone, and you would like fifteen minutes to hear how quoting works for them today before you build anything. Most will not answer. Some will, because most people who run a small business are never asked how their work works, and it is a pleasant thing to be asked. Write to fifteen to get five.
The conversation has one rule. Ask about what they do, not about what you plan to build. If you describe the product, they will be polite about it, and polite is worthless. Instead ask how a quote happens now, from the moment the customer asks to the moment it is sent. Ask what happened the last time one went wrong. Ask what they use, what they have tried, what they stopped using and why. Ask what it costs them when a quote is slow, and let them do the arithmetic. Ask what they would pay to fix it only if they raise the subject of paying, and they often will, because a person who has a real problem starts thinking about the price of a fix before you do.
Then listen for a few specific things. Listen for the words they use, because those replace the words in your sentence. Listen for the workaround, the spreadsheet or the sticky note or the nephew who does it on weekends, because the workaround is the product you are competing with, and it is free. Listen for the moment, the part of the story where their voice changes, because that is where the problem actually hurts and it is often not where you assumed. And listen for the shrug. If they describe the problem and then say that is just how it is, you have met the indifference I mentioned in week two, and five shrugs in a row is an answer.
Take notes during, not after. Write down phrases, not summaries. A week later you will not remember whether she said it drives me crazy or it is a little annoying, and the difference between those two is the difference between a business and a hobby.
Five conversations will do one of three things to the idea. They may confirm it, in which case you will come away with better words and a clearer picture of the smallest version, and you should notice that this rarely happens on the first try. They may move it, in which case the problem is real but sits somewhere else than you thought, usually one step earlier or later in the work, and the move is the most valuable thing the week can produce. Or they may end it, and if they do, it ended after five emails and a few hours instead of after a year, and the next idea arrives tomorrow morning.
There is a temptation, after a good conversation, to promise something. Do not. Say thank you, say you will be in touch if you build it, and mean it. The people who gave you fifteen minutes are the first names on the list for week seven, and a promise you cannot keep spends that goodwill before you have anything to offer.
Next week is the question everyone puts off: what it costs. You will find that these five conversations have mostly answered it already, and you were listening for the answer without knowing.
The guide before this one: Decide what you will not build. Next in the series: Put a price on it before it exists. The worksheet for this week: worksheet 5, one page of questions to answer on paper.