Notes for owners · Business growth
Market intelligence for an SME: what to track and how
What a small business should track about competitors, buyer questions, rules and prices, and how to keep it all in one shared sheet that people actually add to.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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Market intelligence sounds like a research budget. For a small firm it is a shared sheet with a few columns, kept by the people who talk to customers. What a buyer says on Tuesday is then still there when you quote on Friday. Track four things: what rivals offer, what buyers ask you, what rules touch your buyers, and what prices are quoted. Each entry gets a date and a source. Below is a sheet as it might look after a fortnight, then the habits that fill it.
A sheet after two weeks
Imagine, as an invented example, a drip-irrigation dealer in Latur who sells kits and pipes to farmers and supplies two smaller dealers. The sheet has seven columns: date, stream, what happened, source, how sure, so what, and who added it. Here are five rows from it. All are invented.
| Date | Stream | What happened | Source | Sure? | So what |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Feb | Question | Farmer asks who fits the lines and whether the pump must be bought from us | Shop visit | Heard myself | Put "we fit it" on the quote |
| 5 Feb | Offer | Rival in Ausa lists free fitting on a sign board | Photo by nephew | Seen | Check what "free" covers |
| 6 Feb | Rule | Customer says the subsidy form changed this season | One farmer | Rumour | Ask the department office, then tell staff |
| 9 Feb | Price | Two farmers say a rival quoted less for 1-inch pipe | Phone calls | Told by two | Re-check our pipe margin |
| 12 Feb | Question | Third farmer asks about spares after the first season | Phone | Heard myself | Write a spares line |
The "so what" column is the only one that stops the sheet becoming a diary. If nobody can write one, the entry may be noise. Leave it blank for a while before deleting, since two blank entries on the same point often turn out to be a pattern.
Why only four streams
It is easy to drown in market news, so choose streams that change a decision. Rival offers inform what you say on a quotation. Buyer questions inform your scripts and your signboard. Prices inform your quotations. Rules inform whether you should check something before you promise it.
The rules stream needs care. In a farm trade the subsidy and the paperwork around it change, and rules differ by state and body. Treat every rule entry as a flag to check with the department or your adviser, never as settled fact, and do not rewrite your offer from a forwarded message. In a regulated trade such as health, finance or food, the rules stream deserves its own owner.
Anything outside these four, such as national economic news, goes in only if you can name the decision it affects.
How the sheet gets filled without a research team
The Latur sheet filled up because entries were tied to things that already happened.
- A lost quotation gets an entry the same day, in the buyer's own words for why. That is a rich source.
- A surprising question on a call is written down before the next call starts.
- A rival's sign board, page or price list is photographed or saved when seen, with the date, since it will change.
- A forwarded rumour goes in with the word "rumour" in the how-sure column, and a task to check it.
Someone has to own the sheet: one name, whose job is to ask the others "anything for the sheet?" at the end of a busy day. If nobody owns it, it fades.
Keep to public information. Do not pose as a buyer to get a confidential price list, and do not ask customers to share a document their supplier marked confidential.
Reading it
Sit down with the people who add rows and sort by stream. Look for anything that repeats. Three rows saying the same thing are a finding. Write the finding at the top of the sheet with a date and choose one action: a line on the quotation, a page, a script, a visit to the subsidy office. Then watch whether the same remark keeps arriving.
In Latur, the farmers' questions about fitting appeared five times before the dealer noticed that no one on the staff said it first. The rival's free fitting was real, but it covered only the first fifty metres of pipe. The dealer did not match the offer. The quote now said what the dealer's own fitting covered, and the price stayed. Two buyers still left for the rival.
What the sheet cannot do
It cannot tell you what buyers have never said, because it records what people mention, not what they think. It also tilts towards loud customers and towards your own staff's habits. Balance it with an occasional call to a buyer who did not complain.
If you speak to only a few customers a week, the sheet will fill slowly. A notebook beside the phone with the same columns does the same job. Do not buy software for something a notebook does.
Start with five lost quotes
Write the last five reasons buyers gave for saying no into the first rows, add the columns, and share it with the two people who talk to customers most. What the sheet shows about rivals and prices feeds your marketing message, and growth strategy and market intelligence is the service for setting the sheet up. If you have the notes but no way to turn them into decisions, tell us what you need.
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