Why Your Business Need Market Oriented Approach

Each year over one million businesses starts in USA alone, that is 2739 businesses each day, roughly 114 each hour and this exclude online start-ups ⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾, crazy right!! (not to mention that there were 125 million SME’s around the World in 2010 across 132 economies⁽³⁾).

Now imagine competing with these businesses, don’t forget that small and medium businesses are mostly imitative than innovative that means more options (each hour) for your target customer to choose from, so let me ask you one simple but really tough question How you are going to compete with that?!

Consider this carefully

1.      114 businesses each hour
2.      That means more competition each hour.
3.      That means more choice for your customers each hour.
4.      That means more similar businesses (products/services), and most of these businesses(products/services) are little or more market oriented compared to your business hence customers prefer them and that results in more loss, more lower profits, more customers jump shipping so on and so forth.
5.      More effort than the previous day.

All these points means two things for your business.
1. You have to beat the competitors to survive and thrive.
2. You have to satisfy your target customers by delivering what they prefer, want, need because they have ton's of options to choose from.

And to achieve that you need Market Oriented Business, that's the only way, the only one way!!

One Way!

For small medium enterprises there is only one way to survive and thrive, to compete, that is to become market oriented, and that is to consider what customer want, prefer, like, desire and how best to deliver as per those wants, preferences compared to your competitors (that increases 114 each hour).

And if you neglect it, remember that your customers have a lot many other options and there are a lot many (constantly increasing) who would offer as per demands, needs, wants of their customers better than others (and you) leaving you with nothing but a business that would be just “another business” among thousands with no growth, shrinking profits, dwindling market share.

It’s all about survival of the fittest, there is no other way, no other option, I mean, just think about it, honestly ?!
  

So if your business is not fit enough in terms of its customer orientation and competitor orientation then you can imagine what could happen!

In this post I am going to provide you guys a framework that would help your business to become more market oriented, more competitive with improved performance in terms of income generation, customer satisfaction, market share expansion so on and so forth.

Remember that this framework is a very basic one, therefore you have to add different things as per context, situation, type of your business to make it more effective and efficient.

Market Orientation Framework

Now let’s explain briefly each step of this framework, intelligence or right information about customers and competitors is essential for any business to become market oriented, to compete, to deliver on customers’ expectations. 

 

CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE

Now when it comes to customer intelligence one should research, investigate, survey target market in terms of, for instance “What is affecting customer preferences, needs, wants so on and so forth”.

 

COMPETITORS INTELLIGENCE

Likewise in terms of competitors’ intelligence one should investigate for instance “How are they (competitors) affecting your customers’ preferences, needs, wants etc”.

 

DISSEMINATION

Once you have reliable, relevant, comprehensive intelligence (data) then you should disseminate that intel to different relevant departments, functions of your business, make sure you deliver right intel to right department/place/person.

Highlight and categorize the critical intel, highlight the developing or dynamic intel so on and so forth so that it becomes easy for digestion, consideration and decision making.

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Similarly make sure to have reliable answers to questions like

How would each department respond to the received intel ?
How would that response result in effective & efficient utilization of the given intel ?

What options do they have ?

On what grounds certain options have been considered?

 

RESPONSE

Here you have to consider questions like

What are the feasible options? 

Feasible options like in terms of financing, human resource, required skill, equipment, required time and overall effort etc.

How would you know that these options would work (assessment)?

Is the assessment approach/system reliable? Is it sharp enough to deliver timely results so on and so forth.

What are the contingency options?

What makes them contingency options? How do they cover the potential risks,faults or how do they deliver in case of failure of the initial options? etc.

 

ASSESS

Once various measures are adopted, it’s time to assess by recollecting intel and assessing if things are going the right way, as expected, otherwise tweak your approach, make necessary changes and reassess, keep doing that until the achievement of the intended results.

That's it, over to you guys!

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References

1.        Heidi M. Neck, Andrew L. Zacharakis, William D. Bygrave, and Paul D. Reynolds, Global Entreprenurship Monitor: National Entrepreneurship Assessment-United States of America, 2002 Executive Report.

2.        Small Business by the Numbers (Washington DC: Small Business Administration, 2004).

3.      http://www.ifc.org/msmecountryindicators