Market Strategy Development

Creating a Fact-Based, Achievable Growth Plan

One of the core competencies of GMT is the firm’s ability to assist clients in setting a clear strategic direction—based on facts, not assumptions, about market conditions and competitive threats.

GMT’s market strategy development capabilities have helped a wide range of clients—including consumer products leaders, industrial manufacturers, and wholesale distributors—to identify and capture their most promising opportunities for profitable sales growth.

Quantitative Assessment: The Basis for Strategy
Relative Attractiveness: Weighing the Options
Strategy Definition: Putting the Plan in Place
Planning for Success: The GMT Advantage

Quantitative Assessment: The Basis for Strategy

GMT’s market strategy development process begins with a detailed look at the client’s existing market position—as well as overall market conditions and specific competitive threats.

Through a rigorous process of quantitative assessment, GMT helps clients to answer such critical questions as:

	Where are we winning and losing in different product categories, distribution channels, price points, end-user segments, and geographic regions?
	What are the key growth areas in our markets over the next five years?
	Which of these growth opportunities are we best positioned to capture?
	Are there products, channels, or end-user segments that no longer make sense?
	What are the primary competitive threats to our sales growth?

GMT collects quantitative market information through a variety of means—including primary and secondary research, point-of-sale data, consumer panels, government statistics, internal interviews, and existing internal information.

GMT’s data collection activities are customized to reflect each client’s industry, products and services, business model, and competitive position—as well as to ensure that all relevant information is gathered and considered.

Relative Attractiveness: Weighing the Options

After quantitative data is collected and analyzed, GMT works with clients to assess the relative attractiveness of all their growth opportunities across product groups, price points, distribution channels, and end-users.

Based on such information as market size, competitive share, segment growth rates, and profit margins, the attractiveness of each opportunity is defined—so that it can be weighed against all other market opportunities.

By objectively comparing the relative attractiveness of opportunities, GMT enables clients to make practical, fact-based decisions about which segments to defend, attack, or avoid altogether—so that resources can be invested in the most profitable growth areas.

Strategy Definition: Putting the Plan in Place

When all market opportunities have been compared and screened, GMT works with client teams to define highly detailed plans for capturing the most promising growth segments.

For each opportunity, GMT facilitates the work of client managers as they hold brainstorming sessions to define:

	Innovative products and services that will result in growth in existing segments—or enable the business to penetrate new segments.
	Quality improvement efforts to address market needs or support higher prices
	Cost-reduction initiatives that will positively impact price points and profit margins
	Customer or end-user marketing programs for specific channels or consumer segments

GMT’s interactive market models enable client teams to test the results of these ideas before they are implemented. For example, client managers can analyze the impact of a 20% sales increase within a given price point and distribution channel based on a new product initiative—and anticipate not only the impact on competitors, but also the effect on the organization’s other products and channels.

For each improvement initiative, GMT also helps clients to assess the value proposition offered, the capital investment required, the ease of market entry or expansion, and the new demands placed on manufacturing and distribution capabilities.

As client teams work through all the planned strategic initiatives, they arrive at a realistic, highly achievable growth plan—one that predicts sales growth at a highly specific segment level, quantifies all resource investments, and minimizes financial risk.

Planning for Success: The GMT Advantage

Why do so many strategic plans fall short of their goals? Typically, shortfalls occur because of unanticipated events during the implementation process. These could include cannibalization of existing products, unforeseen competitor advances, new consumer needs or pricing pressures, or poor ownership and understanding of the strategy throughout the business.

To minimize these risks, GMT helps clients to base their strategy on facts, not on assumptions or intuition. This fact-based process develops:

	A clear understanding and strong focus throughout the organization as to the “what” and the “why” of the strategy
	An organization-wide “ownership” of the strategy, coupled with a corresponding level of real commitment and sense of energy in making it happen
	A strong alignment and linkage of people and resources to the key strategic initiatives
	Reinforcing systems that allow the organization to navigate through the changes required to support the new strategy and initiatives

By using this fact-based process before the strategic plan is implemented, GMT has helped dozens of businesses to realize market strategy success—and profitable growth across all their targeted segments.