---
title: "The two maps: who competes for your customers and people"
description: The market map shows who competes with you and how they operate. The talent map shows where the people are and which requirement to relax first.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-11/method-maps-cover-en-2026-10-m.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

[日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/method-maps)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/method-maps)

Method

In this article

1. [The market map: value chain first, companies second](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s1)
2. [The talent map: where the people are, and what to relax first](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s2)
3. [Every later step draws on these two maps](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s3)

1. [Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)
2. [Method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)
3. The two maps

# The two maps: who competes for your customers and people

Draw how the money flows before you list any companies

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)8 min read

Contents3

1. [The market map: value chain first, companies second](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s1)
2. [The talent map: where the people are, and what to relax first](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s2)
3. [Every later step draws on these two maps](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-maps#s3)

Start a competitor study by drawing how money flows.

The usual first step is a list: name the well-known players in the industry, line them up, build a comparison table. I leave the list for later.

## The market map: value chain first, companies second

If you start with a list, your attention lands on the wrong revenue, and that mistake travels all the way to the end. So first I map how money, information and goods move through the industry, and where a regulator steps in at each stage. Then I make a table of revenue items. What is this money for, who pays it, and what do you have to become before you can collect it? That last column is the most useful one. It tells you where the barrier is.

The whole market map runs in five steps. Changing industries means filling in the blanks again. The steps stay the same.

| Step | Why | What I actually do | What comes out |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Value chain | Draw before you list | Regulators' registration lists, the leaders' annual securities reports, analyst reports to cross-check | A value chain and revenue items ranked by size |
| 2. Sort the players | Group by role and business model | Industry association lists, who is hiring, funding news from the last two years | Categories with one or two examples each |
| 3. One company at a time | Describe each on the same dimensions | Access, product, delivery, pricing, risk control, organization, channels | A standard profile, every line sourced |
| 4. Comparison | See the differences at a glance | Source and date in every cell; my own estimates marked | The side-by-side matrix |
| 5. Structural gaps | Find what the rules allow and nobody does well | Read the regulation itself; read the enforcement notices | Openings and risks you can trace to a clause |

### Who earns a place on the map

Before any of this, I write one sentence: what exactly are we competing for this time? Not every industry fights over customers. Some fight over licenses. Some fight over people.

Then companies come in. A company earns a place on the map for one of a few reasons.

| Reason | Why I look at it | What it hands the talent map |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Talent overlap**: it competes with you for the same people | To make yourself stronger | Which companies overlap with you in which functions |
| **Business threat**: it competes with you for the same customers | To see which roles win those customers | Which kinds of roles you need to staff as well |
| **Access control**: it holds a channel, a license or a quota that decides whether you can enter | To know if you can play at all | Who makes the access decision |

A company that fits none of these stays off the map, however famous it is. Otherwise the map turns into an industry encyclopedia. It looks complete and decides nothing.

Once the list is set, I go through each company on the same dimensions. The side-by-side comparison comes last. Every cell carries a source and a date, and any number I worked out myself is marked as an estimate.

Keep that order. If you build the comparison table first and fill in the company research afterward, the table looks fine, but you can't say where any cell came from.

### Where market maps usually go wrong

- Treating a search engine summary as the original source.
- Putting two companies with completely different roles in the same column. They look comparable. They aren't.
- Assuming similar products means the same market. I did this once. I studied a few companies with the same product and the same target customers, and found in the end that they won customers in completely different ways.
- Several competitors sharing one supplier or one license. That means the capability can be rented, and the barrier isn't there.

### A few ways to read it more sharply

- Read contract terms and marketing pages separately. A light sign-up check and strict recovery terms can live in the same company. That's a design choice, and it tells you how they think about risk.
- When competitors share a supplier or a license, search the supplier's own press releases. The barrier is somewhere else, and that's where to look for it.
- Don't force a comparison between companies with different roles. If you couldn't find how a company's mechanism works, mark it separately.
- When two dimensions reach the same conclusion independently, that's the most reliable finding on the map.

A map goes stale. I update prices every quarter, review the list every six months, update right away when a player makes a major move, and redo the whole map once a year.

## The talent map: where the people are, and what to relax first

The talent map picks up where the market map ends. Among the companies on it, which functions overlap with the person you need, where the key people sit, and what the market pays.

What it really answers is one question. When you can't fill the role, which requirement do you relax first?

### Requirements multiply

Every requirement in a hire cuts the candidate pool by some fraction. Stack five of them and a perfectly reasonable job post can describe a person who barely exists in the market.

Five reasonable requirements can describe nobody

Basis: how a candidate pool shrinks as requirements stack up. Structure only, no headcounts

1. 01The industryThe pool starts with everyone who has done this kind of work.
2. 02Plus the functionEach added line cuts the pool by a fraction.
3. 03Plus a languageThe cuts multiply. They don't add.
4. 04Plus years and a titleThe post still reads as perfectly reasonable.
5. 05A person who barely existsWhat the job post now describes.

When you can't fill a role, decide which line to drop first.

Figure 1. Every requirement cuts the candidate pool by a fraction, so five reasonable ones can leave almost nobody in the market.

So for each requirement I write down four things.

| What I write down | The question behind it | Example (illustrative): bilingual IT project manager |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What it actually screens for | Which ability, never mind the title | "Native-level Japanese" was standing in for working through requirements with Japanese clients |
| Where it can bend | What level would still work | Business-level Japanese |
| How long it takes to build after joining | Months or years | Working Japanese keeps improving on the job |
| How many more years it stays useful | What would make it obsolete. Never an age | If the way projects are run changes, the ability needed changes too |

The order for relaxing comes from that. Relax the one that's fastest to build. Protect the one that's slowest to build. Never relax the one that can't be built after joining at all. Behavior can't be taught, and deep domain knowledge takes years. Language, degrees and years of experience are usually the first things you should let go.

I learned this the hard way. I was searching for a bilingual English and Japanese IT project manager, and I insisted on native-level Japanese. Six months went by. Once I dropped that one requirement, I hired someone within a month.

One more thing. Write down what you're not requiring. If you don't, those conditions quietly creep back into the job post.

### The three rings

I sort the companies on the map into three rings by how far they are from the target domain.

| Ring | Who is in it | How to use it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| First | The same field | Where everyone looks first. It runs dry fast |
| Second | An adjacent field | Where the people nobody called are |
| Third | Further out, with requirements relaxed | Only with a development plan attached |

For behavior-driven roles, don't draw the second ring by industry. Draw it by what people do all day. Most headhunters stop calling once the first ring runs dry, so the second ring often holds people nobody has contacted yet.

If the first ring is empty where you planned to open, the choice of location is itself a talent decision.

### When the overlap is too thin

Sometimes the map shows there are only a handful of people in the whole market. That isn't a failure. It's a finding. Pick your response in advance.

| Response | What it means | What has to be true first |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Accept the gap | Hire the closest partial match and fill in | A ramp-up plan, and someone inside who can teach |
| Grow someone internally | Hire on the requirements that bend; build the protected one inside | You've confirmed someone can actually teach it |
| Split the role | Two people cover the requirements between them | You have the headcount |
| Redistribute the duties | Same headcount; move one requirement to an existing role | Rewrite that role's description at the same time |

I ran into this when opening a regional office. There was nobody locally who could lead it. What we did was hire the frontline team first, and look for a leader once the team had real size.

## Every later step draws on these two maps

The market map decides who is in the game. The talent map decides who can join you. Product, sales, organization, reading people and setting pay all take their facts from these two.

I wrote the sharper opinions up separately: [Picking the wrong competitors is worse than having none](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/picking-the-wrong-competitors?hsLang=en) and [A talent map is not a list. Here's the question it answers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/talent-map-is-not-a-list?hsLang=en).

Once the maps are drawn, the next step is reading the people on them: [four layers for people and organizations](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-four-layers?hsLang=en). Or return to the [method overview](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en).

The method, page by page

1. [Overview](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)
2. [The rules](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-principles?hsLang=en)
3. The two maps
4. [Four layers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-four-layers?hsLang=en)
5. [Fit check](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-fit-check?hsLang=en)
6. [Three-track pay](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-pay-tracks?hsLang=en)
7. [Product, sales, org](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-product-sales-org?hsLang=en)
8. [From zero](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-from-zero?hsLang=en)

[← PreviousThe rules](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-principles?hsLang=en)[Next →Four layers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-four-layers?hsLang=en)

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

[Method overview](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en) · [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en)

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