How Does Your Market Work?

Would you be able to describe how your market functions to someone else?

A friend? A colleague?

Could you tell that person how you learn of opportunties to sell your stuff and how you convert it into a sale for your company? Could you describe the stages in your particular market’s sales funnel?

See if you can answer these questions:

• Who do you need to convince to buy your products?
• Do they hold the purse strings?
• Are they the only person that you need to persuade, or do they have other team members or work-mates that need to be onside too?
• Who decides whether what you are offering fits what is needed?
• How do they express that?
• How well do they know you and your products?

Other questions you must know the answer to:

• Do you have any competitors chasing the same opportunities? (Hint: the answer is yes – even if you have just invented the smartest thing on the planet).
• Do you know who they are, what they offer and for how much?
• Is their product good?

The thing business development and capture professionals must understand is that, to be effective, to be able to plan so business succeeds, it is essential to understand what makes your market tick; how it functions, how it buys – in short, what makes up the sales pipeline. And then you need to have a plan of action to make sure your market buys from you.

How do you cast your net around the opportunities out there and make sure you bring them home to your company? Knowing the stages in your sales pipeline lets you plan to exploit them better and beat your competition.

Because beating the competition to the sale is what it is all about.

Sales.

That is the bottom line.

Without sales you don’t (or your employer doesn’t) have a business and you may as well go home.

You may not even think of yourself as a sales person. You certainly don’t cold call or go knocking on doors selling insurance or brushes.

But your reason for existing – professionally – is to bring in orders and cash.  Your marketplace is almost certainly a little more complicated that a door-to-door insurance business.

You have to work a little smarter to cover the bases you need to win your orders.

Because that is what your competitors are doing.

Have I piqued your interest? I hope so.

Next time, I’ll expand a little on sales funnels or sales pipelines and how knowing it helps your business plan.

To your business capture success,

Steve

P.S.

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