Building the market panel of a 3x3

The market panel tells you what the company won't. Filings and job posts say what a company is doing. The market says what it's being forced to do.

It's the third source in the 3x3, after public record and social context. And it's the one sellers skip most often, since it takes looking away from the account to see it clearly.

What the market panel covers

Three kinds of facts belong here.

What competitors are doing. A rival launching a new product, entering a new region, announcing a big hire or winning a marquee customer.

What peers and the industry are doing. A wave of consolidation, a new regulation landing, a common platform being retired, a shift in how customers buy.

Who the buyer listens to. The analysts, operators, podcasters and peers whose posts the leader reads and reacts to.

Each of these shows you pressure from outside. And pressure from outside is often what moves budget.

Start with two competitors

Don't map the whole competitive set. Pick the two companies your target most often loses to or compares itself with. Their own website, press releases and job posts usually make that clear.

Then read what those two did in the last quarter. New product launches. Leadership hires. Acquisitions. Pricing changes. Big partnerships.

If both competitors just did something your target hasn't, that's a gap the target's leadership is almost certainly discussing. You don't have to guess at the conversation. You can see the reason for it.

Read the industry, briefly

The market panel isn't an industry report. You don't need the whole sector. You need the one or two shifts that touch your target directly.

A regional bank facing new data rules. A manufacturer whose biggest customer is moving to new supplier standards. A retailer whose category is consolidating fast.

One fact from this layer is usually enough. It gives your hypothesis a reason beyond the company's own choices.

Follow the voices

This is the part people miss. Look at who the buyer follows and engages with.

A CIO who keeps reacting to posts from one analyst about platform consolidation is telling you how he frames his own problem. A COO who follows three operators writing about automation in finance is showing you what she's reading at night.

I covered why this matters for competitive context in who follows your competitor's page and why it matters. The same logic works with people. What a buyer reads shapes what they believe, and what they believe shapes what they'll buy.

A worked example

Say you're researching a mid-sized specialty insurer. Public record shows a job post for a head of claims technology. Social context shows the new COO posting about cycle times. Now the market panel.

Two close competitors launched digital claims intake in the past few months. One industry voice the COO follows has been writing about straight-through processing. That's the outside pressure.

Stack it into an opener.

Two of your closest competitors launched digital claims intake this year, and the team just posted for a head of claims technology. In your first months as COO, I'd guess the pressure is cutting cycle time before brokers start comparing. Is that right, or is the bigger issue the core system underneath?

Without the market panel, that's a note about a job post. With it, it's a note about why the job post exists.

How to keep it short

Cap it at three facts, like every panel in the 3x3. One competitor move, one industry shift, one voice the buyer follows. Stop there.

Don't write a competitive analysis. Don't spend an hour on it. If you can't find something useful in ten minutes, the market isn't the story for this account, and the other two panels will carry it.

The full method is in research before reach. The market panel is the piece that turns a good guess into a sharp one.