Market Position vs Market Share
Market Position vs Market Share
Your Customer & Your Market
Let’s be clear about one thing: you sell to customers and not a market. Knowing "market share" is a useful metric in determining the relative effectiveness of a sales organization or product. It provides a snap-shot of where a vendor stands in comparison to competitors with regards to the universe of a defined range of products or services sold into that marketplace. Market share, simply put, a measurement of past performance. It can be used as a benchmark for the determination of future successes, but it cannot provide reliable input to future needs or trends. While we often talk about what the “market” demands, no such “market” anywhere ever wrote out a check for anything. We all must understand that a "market" is the composite of a group or class of customers having a common description of what they do and a common need for a product/service or type of product/service that helps them do it.
You can’t ask the market what your market position with it is, but you can ask the individual companies comprising the market what your position is with them. Some of this market assessment can be quantitative; that is, individual quantitative responses which can be statistically tabulated into some symbolic mathematical distribution of how the market sees you; X percent said this, Y percent said that, for example. This type of evaluation does have its place when you’re dealing with very large “markets” where “means” (averages) and sigma distributions can provide both center shot and rim shot targets, particularly for “commodity” type products. On the “average,” the market wants . . . But in this scenario, what does this tell you about what your individual prospects and customer will want, and will buy, in the future, from you? In smaller markets, what would the few leading prospects . . . and your key customers. . . like to see from you? What position do you occupy in the minds of the users? The need
Your Customer & Your Market
Let’s be clear about one thing: you sell to customers and not a market. Knowing "market share" is a useful metric in determining the relative effectiveness of a sales organization or product. It provides a snap-shot of where a vendor stands in comparison to competitors with regards to the universe of a defined range of products or services sold into that marketplace. Market share, simply put, a measurement of past performance. It can be used as a benchmark for the determination of future successes, but it cannot provide reliable input to future needs or trends. While we often talk about what the “market” demands, no such “market” anywhere ever wrote out a check for anything. We all must understand that a "market" is the composite of a group or class of customers having a common description of what they do and a common need for a product/service or type of product/service that helps them do it.
You can’t ask the market what your market position with it is, but you can ask the individual companies comprising the market what your position is with them. Some of this market assessment can be quantitative; that is, individual quantitative responses which can be statistically tabulated into some symbolic mathematical distribution of how the market sees you; X percent said this, Y percent said that, for example. This type of evaluation does have its place when you’re dealing with very large “markets” where “means” (averages) and sigma distributions can provide both center shot and rim shot targets, particularly for “commodity” type products. On the “average,” the market wants . . . But in this scenario, what does this tell you about what your individual prospects and customer will want, and will buy, in the future, from you? In smaller markets, what would the few leading prospects . . . and your key customers. . . like to see from you? What position do you occupy in the minds of the users? The need