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Key Takeaways Market erosion is subtle; just because you’ve achieved product-market fit doesn’t mean you’ll continue to thrive forever. Evaluate your offerings and look at KPIs to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
Keep a pulse on the market and technology trends. It will help you stay ahead, or at least keep pace, with your competition.
Find your niche with your customers: Ask them what pain points haven’t been addressed and see how you can fill those gaps. Start with a pilot program to validate your ideas.
Business is harder and more competitive than ever. No matter your industry or how established you are, you can no longer coast on past success. The modern marketplace demands the ability to react and adapt — which means periodically reviewing your service offering to ensure it continues to meet your customers’ needs.
My company, CorpNet, is a perfect example. We started as an online legal document filing service focused on business formation and compliance, but quickly found ourselves in a crowded market up against established players. We were acquiring customers, but gaining real traction was hard — that is, until the pandemic forced us to step back and reevaluate. We discovered a new direction we could pivot into: Our competitors weren’t offering tax and payroll registration services, a major pain point for small and mid-sized businesses. Once we expanded our service offering, we grew 200% in just 18 months.
Follow these proven steps to evaluate your service offering and determine whether it’s time to pivot or expand.
Evaluating your current offering
Many companies make the critical mistake of assuming that once they’ve achieved product-market fit, they’ll continue to thrive. But market erosion is usually subtle — it doesn’t happen in a month or even a year. It can creep up slowly, then suddenly, often going unnoticed until the competition has already gained the upper hand.
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