Reading a Market Visit Properly: A Practical Business Guide

Before travelling, the team should record what it currently believes about the market.

These beliefs might include:

• Customers have a recognised need for the product

• Local buyers value the company’s main point of difference

• The current price will be acceptable

• A distributor can provide access to the target customers

• No major product adaptation will be required

• Buyers are willing to contract with an overseas supplier

• Sales can be completed within a certain period

• The market is large enough to justify local investment

These statements are hypotheses, not conclusions.

Writing them down matters because people naturally reinterpret earlier assumptions after hearing new information. Once the trip is over, it can become difficult to remember what the team originally expected and which findings genuinely changed its view.

For each assumption, decide what evidence would strengthen it and what evidence would weaken it.

Suppose the company believes customers will pay a premium for better quality. Evidence supporting that assumption might include buyers describing measurable costs caused by lower-quality alternatives, confirming a suitable budget and explaining who can approve the purchase.

A polite statement such as “quality is important to us” would be much weaker evidence. Most buyers value quality in principle. The commercial question is whether they value it enough to change supplier, alter their procurement process or pay more.

A market visit should not rely on one type of contact.

Distributors can explain routes to market, customer expectations and competitor behaviour. However, they may also present the market in a way that supports their own role.

Potential customers can explain purchasing priorities, but some may be unusually innovative, unusually dissatisfied with their current supplier or simply willing to meet foreign visitors.

Government agencies and professional advisers can explain the formal business environment, but they may not see the daily difficulties faced by sales teams and operators.

A stronger itinerary includes several perspectives:

• Potential customers from different segments

• Existing customers, where applicable

• Distributors, agents and resellers

• Industry associations

• Regulatory or technical advisers

• Logistics, recruitment or property specialists

• Companies offering complementary services

• Former market participants

• Independent industry experts

• Local employees or operators with direct sector experience

The objective is not to arrange the largest possible number of meetings. It is to create enough variation to identify where views agree and where they conflict.

If five distributors say customers mainly buy on price, but several customers describe service reliability as their main concern, that difference deserves further investigation.

It may mean the distributors are competing in a price-sensitive part of the market. It may mean customers say one thing but purchase on another basis. It may also mean the company has spoken to different customer segments.

The disagreement is not a failure of the research. It is a useful finding.

Local partners and advisers can be extremely helpful in arranging introductions. They often provide access that a visiting company could not secure on its own.

However, an itinerary built entirely by one local organisation may reflect that organisation’s network, priorities and commercial interests.

A prospective distributor is likely to introduce customers who support its view of the market. An investment agency may highlight successful businesses and growth sectors. A service provider may focus on issues that its own services can solve.

This does not make the information unreliable. It means the context must be understood.

Where possible, arrange some meetings independently. Walk through relevant commercial areas. Visit retail locations, industrial sites, trade events or customer facilities. Observe how products are displayed, how services are delivered and which competitors are visible.

The informal parts of a visit can be useful, but observations should be recorded carefully. One shopping centre, business district or industrial park does not represent an entire country.

General questions often produce general answers.

Questions such as “Do you think our product would work here?” or “Is there demand for this service?” invite speculation and politeness.

More useful questions focus on actual behaviour:

• How do you currently solve this problem?

• When did you last change supplier?

• What caused the change?

• Who was involved in the decision?

• How long did approval take?

• What budget was used?

• What alternatives were considered?

• What prevented the purchase from moving faster?

• Which contract terms caused difficulty?

• What happens when the current solution fails?

• Who carries the cost of that failure?

• What would need to be true for you to consider a new supplier?

These questions help the team understand what buyers do, not simply what they say they might do.

When discussing pricing, avoid asking whether a proposed price sounds reasonable. Ask what customers currently pay, how budgets are set, which costs are included and what level of approval is required at different price points.

When assessing a channel partner, ask for details of its existing customer base, sales team, product portfolio, reporting process and recent launches. A claim of having “strong relationships” is less useful than evidence of how those relationships produce sales.

A market visit should leave room for natural conversation, but some questions need to remain consistent.

Without consistency, comparing answers becomes difficult. One colleague may focus on pricing while another asks mainly about product features. At the end of the visit, the team has many notes but little comparable evidence.

Prepare a standard set of core questions for each contact type.

Every potential customer might be asked about:

• The problem being addressed

• The current solution

• The buying process

• The decision-makers

• The budget source

• The expected implementation period

• The main objections to changing supplier

Every potential distributor might be asked about:

• Relevant customer coverage

• Competing products

• Sales resources

• Expected margins

• Inventory requirements

• Marketing responsibilities

• Performance targets

• Exclusivity expectations

• Reporting arrangements

Additional questions can be added based on the conversation. The core questions provide a common structure for later analysis.

After several meetings, impressions can begin to merge.

A useful note-taking format separates four elements:

What was said or observed

Record the factual statement, behaviour or observation as accurately as possible.

What it may mean

Explain the possible commercial significance.

How confident the team is

State whether the conclusion is supported by one conversation, repeated across several meetings or confirmed by independent evidence.

What needs to happen next

Identify a follow-up question, document request, introduction or test.

For example:

Three hospital procurement managers said new suppliers normally require a local support arrangement.

The interpretation might be that a local service partner is commercially important.

The confidence level would be moderate if the three hospitals are similar and low if they represent only a small specialist segment.

The next step might be to confirm whether this is a formal procurement condition, a preference or simply the normal practice of those institutions.

This distinction prevents an observation from becoming a conclusion too quickly.

Good documentation is not administrative work added after the visit. It is part of the research.

Enterprise Singapore’s current requirements for supported in-market business-development activities provide a useful practical standard. They refer to market research reports, progress reports, meeting records, contact details, engagement outcomes, supporting correspondence and measurable milestones such as leads or partnerships.

For each meeting, record:

• The organisation and participants

• Their roles and relevance

• The purpose of the meeting

• The main points discussed

• Evidence supporting or challenging the company’s assumptions

• Questions that remain unanswered

• Commitments made by either side

• Documents or information requested

• The agreed next action

• The person responsible

• The expected completion date

Write the record shortly after the meeting. Notes completed several days later are often shaped by later conversations and general impressions.

Where several team members attend, compare notes. People frequently hear the same conversation differently, particularly when commercial enthusiasm is high.

A strong or confident statement can dominate the team’s interpretation of a visit.

A senior executive may say the product is exactly what the market needs. A distributor may claim it can deliver national coverage. A potential customer may express strong interest in a trial.

These comments matter, but they are not sufficient on their own.

The team should look for patterns across meetings:

• Which problems were mentioned repeatedly?

• Which assumptions were consistently challenged?

• Which customer segments showed the clearest need?

• Which parts of the value proposition caused confusion?

• Which purchasing barriers appeared more than once?

• Which competitors were named without prompting?

• Which channel expectations were consistent?

• Where did answers differ significantly?

Repeated evidence deserves more weight than an isolated comment, especially when it comes from contacts with different interests.

It is also important to look for missing evidence. If every meeting was arranged through one distributor, the team may have learned a great deal about that distributor’s network and very little about the wider market.

International business meetings are often courteous. Hosts may be interested in learning about a new company, maintaining a useful relationship or helping a mutual contact.

A warm meeting should not automatically be interpreted as commercial demand.

Useful distinctions include:

• Interest is not intent

• Intent is not budget

• Budget is not approval

• Approval is not a signed contract

• A signed contract is not repeatable demand

• An introduction is not a partnership

• A pilot is not a scalable business model

The team should identify what the other party has actually committed to doing.

Did the customer agree to share technical requirements? Did it name the budget owner? Did it schedule a follow-up with procurement? Did the distributor provide customer references? Did either party agree to a defined trial?

Specific action is a stronger signal than positive language.

Silence also needs careful interpretation. A slow response after the visit may reflect low interest, but it may also result from internal approvals, holidays, hierarchy, competing priorities or an unclear request from the visiting company.

Follow-up should make the next step simple and specific.

A market visit has important limitations.

It cannot establish the full size of the market

A small number of meetings cannot show how many potential customers exist or how demand is distributed across regions and segments.

Market size still requires secondary data, customer counts, spending estimates and clearly stated assumptions.

It cannot prove repeatable demand

Several interested buyers may show that an opportunity exists. They do not prove that the company can find and convert similar buyers consistently.

Repeatability requires a larger sales pipeline and evidence collected over time.

It cannot confirm final pricing

Customers may discuss acceptable price ranges, but real willingness to pay often becomes clear only during formal procurement or contract negotiation.

The total price may also be affected by taxes, logistics, partner margins, local support and payment terms.

It cannot fully test a partner

A potential distributor can make a strong impression during a meeting. Its true performance depends on sustained sales activity, reporting, market coverage and management attention.

References, due diligence, agreed milestones and an initial non-exclusive period may provide better evidence.

It cannot replace regulatory advice

Meetings may identify potential legal or licensing issues, but informal comments should not be treated as formal regulatory confirmation.

The company should verify material requirements with the relevant authorities and qualified advisers.

It cannot show how execution will work over time

A visit is temporary. It does not fully reveal the experience of recruiting staff, managing partners, collecting payments, servicing customers or operating through changes in demand.

That knowledge develops through continued market activity.

Several biases can distort the reading of a market visit.

Selection bias occurs when the people who agree to meet are not representative of the wider market. They may be more internationally minded, more dissatisfied with current suppliers or more interested in new technology.

Confirmation bias occurs when the team gives more weight to information that supports its original plan.

Courtesy bias occurs when contacts avoid direct criticism or express interest to maintain a positive relationship.

Recency bias occurs when the final meetings have more influence simply because they are easier to remember.

Sponsor bias occurs when the organisation arranging the trip shapes the evidence through its choice of contacts.

These risks cannot be removed completely. They can be reduced by using varied sources, asking consistent questions, recording conflicting views and reviewing the findings after the excitement of the visit has passed.

The value of a market visit declines when notes remain scattered across notebooks, email messages and individual memories.

Hold a structured review as soon as possible after returning.

For each original assumption, classify the result as:

• Supported

• Partly supported

• Challenged

• Unresolved

Then record the evidence behind the classification.

The team should also agree on:

• What it now knows

• What it believes but has not confirmed

• What remains unknown

• Which assumptions carry the greatest financial risk

• Which questions can be answered without another visit

• Which tests should be run next

• Whether the proposed market-entry plan should continue, change or stop

The next step should usually be a focused commercial test rather than another broad research exercise.

This might involve submitting a paid proposal, running a limited pilot, testing a distributor for a defined period, obtaining a formal regulatory opinion or interviewing a larger group of customers from one target segment.

A successful market visit is not one with a full calendar, impressive hosts or many exchanged business cards.

It is one that improves the quality of the company’s decisions.

The visit should clarify which assumptions were sound, which were weak and which questions matter most. It should identify specific actions, owners and deadlines. It should also make uncertainty more visible rather than hiding it beneath general enthusiasm.

Direct market exposure is valuable because it adds context to reports and data. It allows a company to hear the language customers use, observe commercial behaviour and understand how relationships operate.

But a visit remains a sample taken at one point in time.

Read it as evidence, not as a verdict. Combine it with market data, commercial testing, regulatory verification and disciplined follow-up.

The objective is not to return certain.

It is to return better informed.

This article provides general business information and does not constitute legal, regulatory or professional advice.