Market Research Lessons from a Crusty Old Printer Analyst

Though I serve today as Executive Director of the Esteemed Coterie of Professionals, for the previous twenty five years I was a printer analyst. I started in 1996, when fax machines were very much still a thing. I wrote about printers every week, thought about them every day, and traveled the world to talk about them.

Yes, printers. How often do you talk about toasters?

That amazingly niche and mundane industry gave me a deep and lasting appreciation for market research and for the competitive intelligence discipline in particular. Market research is one of the most misunderstood functions in business. Focus groups, surveys, competitive tracking, these tend to produce a collection of confusing processes and data that ends up going nowhere. What I learned over twenty five years is that at its heart, market research serves two purposes. Know what your competitors do. Know what they are doing right now.

The Question That Unlocks Everything

When I was a rookie analyst making the rounds at trade shows and manufacturer conferences, I had a mentor of sorts, a fellow industry analyst named John. John was your stereotypical research analyst. Brown suit, leather elbow patches, wire rimmed glasses, a scruffy beard, and an inexhaustible supply of printer jokes.

One day John said to me, in not so many words, that all of market research boils down to answering a single question. Put yourself in the shoes of the company you are studying and answer this: "You will buy my product because I am _____________."

That one question unlocks everything.

A company that answers it with "I am the market leader" will build a product line that covers every buyer from low end to high end. Wherever there is a buyer, that company has something on the shelf. Think Samsung. A company that answers with "I am the best value" makes every pricing and packaging decision through that lens. A company that answers with "I am the most innovative" places its chips into R&D and design. One that answers with "I am the easiest to use" simplifies everything including its product, its onboarding, its support.

By simply envisioning yourself in your competitor's shoes and asking what answer they are giving the marketplace, their entire strategy comes into focus. And once you understand the strategy, all of the tactical decisions, the campaigns, the hires, the partnerships, the pricing — start making sense.

The good news is that you do not need to hire a consultant or purchase a research service to answer that question on behalf of your rivals. Your competitors are already telling you everything you need to know. You simply have to know where to look.

Check the Boards

One of my favorite people from my career was a competitive intelligence analyst for a manufacturer client named Dan. Dan was generous, insightful, and one of the sharpest minds I encountered in twenty five years of this work. He became a mentor to me for over two decades.

When I visited Dan at his office, I noticed something. Whenever he walked the floor among the hundreds of cubicles in his building and spotted anything written on a whiteboard, his reaction to erase it was Pavlovian. The reason, I came to learn, was that one of his most valuable intelligence sources was the act of walking around the campuses of his rivals. He would take brisk walks whenever he was in the neighborhood of a competing company. From the sidewalk, through the glass, he could read whiteboards filled with notes from executive strategy sessions. Future products. Financial data. Organizational priorities. All of it left in plain view.

Whiteboards are less common today, but the boards still exist. They have simply moved online. The blogs your competitors publish, the jobs they post, and the press releases they proudly broadcast are today's version of what Dan read through the window. Companies reveal far more than they intend to, simply by promoting themselves.

A competitor's website is a strategic document. Study their messaging. Who are they speaking to? Who are their clients? Which industries appear in their case studies and client logos? Those logos tell you exactly where they are placing their bets. If healthcare clients are featured prominently, they are making a healthcare bet. That is intelligence.

Their blog is a bellwether of culture and strategy. If the content consistently emphasizes customer service or product quality, that is a strong signal toward how they are answering the blank. If they are writing about innovation and technology, they are telling you where they want to be seen as credible.

Job postings are among the most underutilized sources of free competitive intelligence available. A competitor posting three new sales roles in a market you have not entered is entering that market. A first time VP of Customer Success hire signals either a retention problem or a serious growth phase. A wave of developer and software hires means they are building something they believe will differentiate them. Make it a monthly practice to scan your top three to five competitors on LinkedIn and on their own careers pages. Track what roles appear, how long they stay open, and which ones quietly disappear.

Press releases, mundane and self congratulatory as they tend to be, also give you insight into what a company is proud of and what it is quietly concerned about. A company that consistently brags about customer service response times probably had serious problems in that area not long ago. An executive departure announced with polished language about pursuing new opportunities is worth noting. These signals, read carefully, give you a picture of organizational health that no press release was designed to communicate.

Look Forward, Not Sideways

Here is the most important piece of advice I can offer and it comes from a man who spent a career selling competitive intelligence for a living.

Do not impulsively respond to what you find.

Competitive research is an orientation tool, not an obsession. The leaders I most admire use it to stay informed about the landscape they are operating in and not chase every move a rival makes. As a business leader, your primary obligation is to look forward, not sideways.

When you have a clear understanding of why people buy from you, when you can answer the blank for your own company with conviction, that clarity drives every internal decision you need to make. If people buy from you because of quality, invest everything into getting better at quality. If they buy from you because of value, make every decision through that lens. Your competitors have their own problems. Let them.

So take it from a crusty old printer analyst. The most valuable and most affordable competitive research a CEO can do comes down to two things. First, identify your three to five closest rivals and answer the question on their behalf. Understanding their overarching strategy gives you clarity on every tactical decision they make. Second, check the boards. Walk around, even if that walk is now done entirely from your desk. Read their websites, their blogs, their job postings, and their press releases with the eyes of a competitor, not a consumer.

The intelligence is out there. It always has been.

Be Esteemed.