Do you want a bigger slice of the cake?
At a recent family reunion, my cousin Ann, known to those around the table as an “extraordinary last minute,” cut her delicious looking (and tasting) apple pie into equal pieces and served it. Everyone smiled as slices of the freshly warmed fragrant delicacy were handed out, but I think each of us at the table was expecting a slightly larger slice of cake.
The same in business. Everyone wants a bigger slice of the cake!
That is what we call “Market Share”. The pie is the total size of our market that we sell to, and our share is generally expressed as a percentage of our sales compared to the total.
Market Share is one of the battlegrounds that big companies fight for, but most small companies dismiss it as “only important to the big ones.” However, with a little information research, it can be just as important to you. Knowing your approximate market share will allow you to understand the potential for growth and can help you define your marketing strategy.
No matter what you sell, you should be able to figure out the approximate size of your market. Accurate market size figures are available from census reports and industry statistics. Even if little information is available, you can make reasonable estimates and extrapolations based on your knowledge and experience in your geographic or industrial market.
Answer these simple questions: How many widgets (whatever you sell) do you estimate will sell in the market you serve? How many widgets will you sell this year? Divide answer 2 by answer 1 and that percentage is your market share.
If you find that you dominate your market, there may not be much room for growth, which means that in order to grow, you will need to increase your geographic reach or the number of products / services you sell, or they need to discover another avenue to increase demand. in order to drive potential sales. If you have a small stake, there is real potential if you can get noticed, so create a strategy to build a larger customer base.
To keep the peace in a family, you shouldn’t steal a couple of cake forks from your sister-in-law’s plate, but those family or social rules don’t apply to business capture. A new website, a different method of packaging your product or service, an aggressive pricing strategy, and a modified sales presentation are all strategies to gain a larger share of the market, but start by discovering your current share and creating the strategies to improve. .