You want to grow your business! Good advice: think about markets now! Do not wait! Ask yourself the following question that will serve as a guiding thread: What do you know about your future market? And first of all, who will be your competitors? What can you say about them? What did they learn about the market and you did not know yet? How are you going to position yourself with them? With Space Market Observer you can have the best options.
What do you know about current trends in your market? From your prospects? From your prescribers? Above all do not settle for an indirect approach of the type “I was told that”. Go see for yourself! Rub to the realities of the field!
The best market research is you and only you who can realize it! Never forget: in the council, the commercial function does not delegate. It’s always you that you sell! We talk about it in the fourth home of the book.
You must also learn to clearly distinguish between your potential market and your business target. Indeed, the second is always narrower than the first. However, many future candidates for the council tend to blithely confuse the two, which usually causes them to euphoria as misleading as fleeting.
Then, once you have managed to make this distinction, I propose to focus on your business target and to concretely answer the following questions: how many prospects do you have? Is this a qualified sample? What are the main characteristics of your prospects? Do you know their expectations? So many questions that you will have to answer if you wish to successfully develop your future consulting activity!
What do you know about your competitors?
Your main objective is to know who is doing what in your future field of activity. It is for you to identify the main companies operating in this area and to study their service offer.
In order to achieve this, you will build a “competitive intelligence” file. You will first look for brochures and business documents from the main companies operating in your industry. Do not just gather information about who will be your direct competitors. Broaden your investigations and include consulting companies that are more distant geographically or larger!
You will better understand who does what, who proposes what and more, perhaps, how consulting firms present their skills to their clients.
It is always instructive to look at what others are doing and especially how they communicate with their customers.
But how to do it?
You can search for this information by consulting the main directories of the board. In addition, you have every interest in getting closer to the ICC on which you depend. Either she will have a directory of consultants operating in your area, or you can get information on leading consulting firms and their respective areas of specialty.
Choose five or six and go interview them. Prepare a maintenance chart with three major parts. A part about the history of the firm (when was it created? By whom? For what reasons?), A second part about the nature of its activities (offer of services, type of clientele) and a third party where you look for opportunities for partnership between you and this firm. Start from the following principle: not all existing firms are necessarily competitors for you. They can also sometimes be partners.
