How do I do good market research if I want to sell a relatively
complex service to other businesses?

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 24 Aug 2004 07:17 PDT

Thebigdane --

The service itself is unimportant: what's the benefit to the customer?
 How is the customer going to measure your service's productivity in
getting their mission done?  What other products, services or
activities will you be replacing?

The last question is often phrased as: "what are competing products?" 
Entrepreneurs often say, "there are none.  We're unique."  However,
even if you developed the first spreadsheet (Visicalc), the competing
methods of doing calculations were with calculators and/or accounting
spreadsheets -- so you want to consider the "tangential" competition.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 Aug 2004 07:22 PDT

In addition to formulating your message along the lines of
omnivorous-ga's excellent advice, you'll also need to answer the
questions: (1) who do I want to get my message to...?  (2) how do I
find them..?

If you can give us an idea of what your service is about -- and who
you consider your potential customers to be --  it would assist us in
being able to provide a well-focused answer to your question.

All the best...

pafalafa-ga