Your company’s sales growth and increasing profitability depends on your ability to continue to provide customers with what they want, when they want it, delivered in a way that’s convenient for them. Is your company continuously attracting potential customers, satisfying current customers, and keeping your competitors from stealing your customers away? Missing out on emerging or changing market trends, or not paying attention to emerging competition, can place your business sales in jeopardy. Market information and knowledge can help your business survive over the long haul.  Below is a list of 3 easy ways for you to stay informed about your customers, potential customers and competition. 

1.  Stay in touch with your current customers. Do your current customers need any additional products or services from you?  Have they been happy doing business with you? If your business is small you can interview them directly to find out, over the phone or when you see them in person.  Or, you can send out a mail or e-mail survey, offering a gift (of free products or services from you) to those who respond.  Learn what you can from them in a friendly, conversational tone so as not to burden them with your inquiries.

Listen carefully to their answers, and implement changes in your product and services offerings to address their needs and concerns whenever possible. 

2. Set aside a day every other month to catch up on trends in your industry. Join a trade association or Chamber of Commerce, and talk to other business owners about industry or market trends in general.  Are there any new competitors, technologies, changing demands from customers or upcoming regulations that you should be aware of?  Trade associations exist to support their members, and you’ll find most (though not all) of the members attending meetings to be quite supportive of your business success (some will see you as a competitor).  Ask other members if they know of any companies that are in the same market as you, and then shop with those competitors (or hire someone else to shop with them if you don’t feel comfortable doing competitive research). You can learn more about the competition by shopping with them than you can by reading their ads or brochures.

3. Buy a summary market research report, or a slice of a market research report, from MarketResearch.com.  Off-the-shelf market research reports generally don’t provide customized information for your geographic area or market niche, but they can provide you with vital trends information.  Full market research reports range from $1,000 to $15,000, but you can buy summaries or sections of reports for less than $1,000.  For example, the full “The U.S. Market for Nutritional Supplements” report (published October 2004) costs $3,000, but you can buy the 26-page Chapter 3, “The Market,” which includes “Dollar Sales of Nutritional Supplements: By Product Category,” for $589 (figures are based on compilation of sales data for U.S. supermarkets, drugstores, and mass merchandisers other than WalMart).  Or, you can buy the 25-page “Competitor Profiles” chapter for $370 (includes information on GNC, One-a-Day, NBTY, PuritansPride.com, Wyeth and other nutritional supplements suppliers).  Do a search at Market Research.com for your industry, and look for reports that are flagged “Buy By The Slice.”  You can also buy $399 “MarketLooks,” which are concise 15-30 page summaries of popular full-length market research reports published by Packaged Facts.

If you don’t have the budget or time for surveys, industry association meetings or market research summary reports, spend at least a half a day each month searching the Internet for industry and market trends. Check especially for “Fact Sheets” on industry associations web sites (e.g., the Organic Trade Association, www.ota.org, has an “Organic Facts” section).  If you serve consumers directly, search for consumer or retail trends (make sure the Internet information you rely on is from a reputable source – just about anybody can slap up a web site nowadays!).

Your customers are important – keep in touch with what they need and want, and how they want it delivered.  Customers are the reason your business exists!  Stay informed of your customers’ changing tastes and lifestyles, population shifts, and the competitors who also serve your customers.  If you can quickly identify emerging problems or opportunities, you can change your product mix or adjust operations to insure that your company stays around to serve your customers over the long haul.