The Key Is To Research

Markets

High growth markets, markets beneficial to your industry and industry trends. Market research is a great way to determine what customers and prospective customers want. By gathering some useable data, you can tailor your products and services to your clients’ needs. Monitoring the marketplace is also a great way to find out the appetite for your product/service.

Prospects

Research their characteristics, qualities, problems and buying habits. Prospect research is crucial to tailoring and delivering a successful pitch regarding your offering and their needs. You can’t engage a prospect to sell a product or service without the appropriate background information, personalisation and knowledge.

Customer Journey

By understanding the customer satisfaction and journey, you stay ahead of the customer and optimise a great customer experience. Researching the customer journey allows you to adjust or remove what isn’t working well and enhance what is working well.

Competitors

Researching your competitor gives you a perspective on why customers choose to buy from you or your competitors and how you can optimise your reach and visibility to stand out. You also want to ensure a differentiator from your competition to entice customers to your service/product. Common selling points to get ahead of your competition include quality products, excellent customer service, competitive prices, fast delivery, and technology to advance the customer experience.

Where can you research?

Podcasts, networking, statistics, case studies, social media, LinkedIn, news, blogs, e-books, surveys, testimonials, competitors, customer surveys, newsletters and government agencies and google reviews, to name a few.

Research has been the backbone of my 20+ year career in business development. The first thing I do every morning and the last thing I do at the end of the day is to spend 15 minutes researching a range of credible platforms to remain informed on what the markets are doing and anticipate changes in the markets. Another option if you don’t have time is to initially research and select relevant information to hit your inbox every morning for a quick read. Being informed of the markets your client operates in is essential.