Question: Market Landscape Briefing and Vertical Validation services Good Leads offers are designed to help clients offer new markets with better intelligence and confidence of their positioning. What kind of discoveries do you typically uncover for your clients in the process of researching a vertical or new category?
Answer: For the Market Landscape Briefing and Vertical Validation services, we typically deal with three type of clients looking to maximize their ROI:

1. Potential business investors who want to know they are making the right investment (backing the right horse).

2. Executive teams including the senior technologist, marketer, and salesperson who want to drive top line growth while minimizing risk.

3. Start-up teams who have had success on a client-by-client basis, and now believe they may have a product or service to take a broader market.

Typical discoveries include:

1.  Sometimes a market opportunity that seems like it should be a really great investment is actually not.

For one client, we had completed a program risk profile and competitive and partner snapshot as part of the MLB.  Based on our research, we recommended to the client that they walk away from an investment that looked as if it should have massive returns. The company agreed and ultimately saved $5 million by not entering what is now a flat market that is over-saturated with players.

2.  The investment in the MLB and VV delivers returns that extend into other aspects of the business.

Demand generation and building of the sales funnel, outbound marketing including telemarketing, sales collateral, white papers, and websites, and the “elevator pitch” and the longer term product strategy all flow seamlessly from the groundwork completed.  The MLB and VV make work with internal teams and outside resources such as ad and branding agencies more cost effective and quicker to execution.

3. The MLB and VV frameworks drive strategic and crucial discussions – and decisions – not just marketing choices.

The framework and facilitation allows executive teams and staff to have discussions that challenge individual assumptions or instinct in a constructive, action-oriented way.  As an example, we frequently have client team members pull us aside and say that what was discussed is something that needed to be discussed, but there just had not been a way to get the topic the attention it needed.  Having these crucial discussions out in the open almost always lead to more team commitment and a better decision for the business.