Make the most of your market

Embrace change.

That was the biggest piece of advice Judy Guido, industry consultant and chairwoman of Guido & Associates, offered during her session “Your market — how to read, leverage and monopolize it” during SiteOne’s recent Women in Green Industry event.

“Embrace change. Love change. Be change,” Guido told attendees. “Those who are standing still are not leaders.”

Guido added that leadership and growth in one’s market are also connected to continuing education and encourages everyone to be a “chronic learnaholic.”

In order to read one’s market correctly, Guide said there are five forces on a market that have to be understood. Those forces are:

1. Threat of new entrants
2. Threat of substitutes
3. Bargaining power of buyers
4. Bargaining power of suppliers
5. Rivalry among existing competitors

To combat these forces and to set your business apart from the competition, Guido asked attendees to consider their strategy.

“What’s different about you,” she said. “If you aren’t different, than you’re going to be valued only on price.”

Guido added it’s important to keep in mind that leadership in the market isn’t only about your business — it’s about your customers. By keeping that in mind, you’ll gain a stronger presence.

“It’s not about what we want. So, it’s not always about you,” she said. “It’s about them. Don’t just pretend to walk in their shoes, really be in them.”

Outside of the five main forces on a market, Guido noted that trends and other macro-economic forces such as economic infrastructure and commodities can also play a factor.

After understanding your place in your market, Guido said the next step is building your market map to really take things to the next level. A market map should identify six things. They are:

• Customers
• Channels
• Competitors
• Associations
• Suppliers
• Partners

Identifying your ideal customer can be easy, Guido said. Companies should perform customer profiles and figure out who their core customers are.

“A core customer is the one willing to pay an optimal price,” she said.

In terms of channels, Guido said the two most important channels are sales and communication. Sales is all about how a company is going about selling their business and capitalizing on opportunities. And there should be more than one source.

“Your best sales channel hopefully are your customers,” Guido said. “And then your employees.”

Communication channels are about getting everyone talking about you Guido noted. She suggested all companies spend more time on branding, which boils down simply to name awareness and reputation.

Guido also touched on the importance of associations in helping boost one’s business. She noted there are over 27,000 associations in the U.S. and encouraged attendees to research and join some that fit their business/business model.

Partners, such as attorneys and CPAs, can be an overlooked part of your market map Guido said, but they are important to have relationships with to understand your market.

“Who are the people in our area to help us understand what’s going on in our town and our area to affect what we’re doing,” Guido said of identifying key partners.