---
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-2026-10/method-maps-cover-en-2026-10.png
---

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

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[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)

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

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

![The two maps: who competes for your customers and people: Draw how the money flows before you list any companies](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/covers-2026-10/method-maps-cover-en-2026-10.png?width=1200&height=630&name=method-maps-cover-en-2026-10.png)

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.

Only then do companies come in. A company earns a place on the map for one of a few reasons:

- It competes with you for the same people. That's talent overlap. You study it to make yourself stronger.
- It competes with you for the same customers. That's a business threat. You study it to weaken a rival.
- It holds a channel, a license or a quota that decides whether you can enter at all. That's access control.

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.

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.

Once the list is set, I go through each company on the same dimensions: how it gets access, product, delivery time, pricing, risk control, organization, channels. 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.

## 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.

So for each requirement I write down four things. What it actually screens for. Where it can bend. How long it takes to build after someone joins. How many more years the skill will stay useful.

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. The first ring is the same field. The second ring is an adjacent field. The third ring is further out and needs a development plan.

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.

### 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: accept the gap, grow someone internally, split the role, or redistribute the duties without adding headcount.

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)

---

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

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Nobu Sato

Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

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