In this Confidential Brief from The Starr Conspiracy, you will learn how you can check your company's status in the market place, identify the gaps, and use market research to take action for your business.

1. TWEAK YOUR BUSINESS
BASED ON THE MARKET RESEARCH
march_2013
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research

2. MARKET RESEARCH
SHOULD DICTATE HOW
YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS.
No, this is not sacrilege or throwing out all other principles of business. It’s a sound approach.
—Businesses get started usually Relative Market Share
because of some kind of market inquiry. (Cash Generation)
Even if it’s just hearing family members High Low
complain that there should be an easier
way to do (fill in the blank), that’s research.
—How businesses evolve, however,
sometimes excludes market research
STARS QUESTION
TIME TO CHANGE FOCUS.
Market Growth Rate
MARKS
Low
altogether. Leaders start making decisions
(Cash Usage)
based on gut instinct or pressure from —Use research to realign
your business to the realities
stakeholders. In some cases, companies
of the market.
High
have kept supporting a losing product just
because they had invested so much time CASH DOGS
and money into its development. Decisions COWS
become internally focused.
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP MATRIX
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research

3. FIRST, DO A STATUS CHECK.
You need to have an intimate understanding of your status in the market and the factors that impact
your success. These are just a few examples, but make it a habit to find answers to these types of questions:
1 How much market
share do you have? 3 Why are your competitors
beating you? 5 Why is your best offering
performing so well?
2 Where do you stand:
Are you No. 1
or No. 25? 4 Which companies might
leapfrog you in the
next year? 6 Why is your worst one
performing so badly?
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research

4. NEXT, START
SEEING THE GAPS.
­—Are the answers to any of these questions surprising?
—If you’re already on top of your position in the
market, they shouldn’t be, but not everyone is
so lucky. Start looking at where the answers
took a major departure from your previous
SALES
assumptions. You could be losing in one market
and not even have realized why. You could also
have an offering that’s kicking ass but not getting
enough sales support. Those departures are going
to be where you have to prioritize your next moves.
INTRODUCTION GROWTH MATURITY DECLINE
TIME
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research

5. FINALLY, TAKE SOME ACTION —
BUT THE RIGHT ACTION.
—Companies that utilize market research to improve their business
D don’t follow every little suggestion that could come out of analysis.
C There isn’t time or budget to do that. You have to prioritize your
research findings and see how changes to those areas will affect
your business success. For example, if one market is doing very
well because a distributor is always on time and efficient, see how
you can replicate that distributor’s processes across your network.
Changes in processes can improve sales without overhauling your
B LEADING offering. But if it’s time to update or even eliminate an offering, make
PRODUCT A a plan to actively manage that transition.
Don’t stall because you want to keep waiting
and seeing.
PRODUCT SALES PERFORMANCE
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research

6. RESEARCH IS JUST THE
FIRST STEP.
And there are many more areas of marketing that will impact how you run your business.
—What’s important is that gathering information is a continuous
part of your business process. Get a glimpse at how else marketing
can help your business strategy by downloading The Message Manifesto.
THE
MESSAGE
MANIFESTO
Tweak Your Business Based on the Market Research