How to Build a Strategic Market Framework - The Guide
- Vivek Sharma
- Aug 19
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 9
One of the most valuable skills in business development is the ability to quickly understand any market and build a strategic plan (even if you have no prior experience in that industry). Over the years, I’ve developed a repeatable methodology for mapping trends, categorizing opportunities, and visualizing a marketecture that guides real action.
To demonstrate the power of a structured approach, I decided to challenge myself by developing a fresh strategic plan for the payments industry, an area outside my direct experience in SaaS enterprise.
With decades of business development expertise, I wanted to show that the frameworks I share in my book, The Essential Guide to Strategic Growth, can be applied to any market. This exercise isn’t about domain familiarity; it’s about proving that with the right methodology, you can quickly gain clarity and build actionable strategies in any industry.
Step 1: Rapid Market Research: Identifying Key Trends!
When approaching a new industry, I start with credible, publicly available data. In the case of payments, a quick scan of industry reports and trusted sources revealed several major trends:
The explosive growth of digital wallets and mobile payments
The rise of contactless and real-time payments
The impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
The increasing role of artificial intelligence in personalization
The global shift toward cashless payments
Heightened focus on security and fraud prevention
Step 2: Categorizing the Trends - From Data to Insight
Trends alone aren’t enough. The next step is to group them into actionable categories. For payments, I focused on:
How customers want to pay
How processors personalize the experience
The need for security and data privacy
The integrations required for seamless transactions
This categorization helps clarify where to focus, and where innovation or partnership is most needed
Once the key trends are categorized, the next step is to gather data on their impact. This helps clarify where a company (like this fictional “Acme, Inc.” that I use throughout my book!) should innovate, integrate, or partner to meet industry needs. By researching publicly available data, we can estimate the size and significance of each trend, which guides where to focus for maximum market reach. This groundwork sets the stage for building a market architecture that’s both actionable and aligned with real opportunities.
Step 4: Building the Marketecture and Visualizing the Strategy
The final step is to translate these insights into a clear, visual framework: a marketecture! This chart makes it easy for all stakeholders to see where the biggest opportunities and needs are, and how different trends and categories connect.
See how my example got:
The Power of a Simple, Repeatable Framework
This exercise goes far beyond the payments industry. The same structured methodology (mapping trends, categorizing opportunities, sizing the market, and visualizing the marketecture) applies to any sector, especially in the fast-evolving world of enterprise SaaS.
A winning strategy isn’t reactionary; it’s built on a deep understanding of market trends, the competitive landscape, and customer buying behaviors. By collecting data points for each trend - whether it’s the rise of new consumer segments, the adoption of real-time payments, or the integration of technologies like blockchain and AI - you can accurately gauge both opportunities and challenges.
The real value comes from prioritizing these trends and mapping out high-impact partnerships that align with your product development roadmap. This is the essence of marketecture: a framework that brings clarity, alignment, and actionable direction to your go-to-market strategy.
In enterprise SaaS, where complexity and competition are the norm, this approach transforms market noise into a clear, strategic roadmap for sustainable growth.
