Use case

New-market entry research for B2B teams

B2B new-market entry research turns an initial market thesis into testable criteria for companies, people, problems, and evidence. The goal is not to manufacture certainty or replace market sizing. It is to learn which accounts and people fit, what the market is paying attention to, which assumptions hold, and what the team should validate next.

Turn a market thesis into a research brief

The difficult part is not finding a list

When a company enters a new segment, industry, or geography, it usually begins with a hypothesis: these companies should have the problem, these roles should care, and this language should resonate.

A database can turn that hypothesis into rows. It cannot tell the team whether its categories match how the market actually works, which public changes make an account relevant now, who is close to the problem, or why an apparent fit should receive attention.

The research job is to make the market thesis explicit, observe evidence that can challenge it, and convert what the team learns into better company and people criteria. The result is not “the market is validated.” It is a more precise set of opportunities and unanswered questions.

What can public evidence establish?

Public research can help a team observe:

how people in the market describe the problem;
which topics, posts, and voices earn attention;
which companies fit the initial operating criteria;
public hiring, role, leadership, product, or strategic changes;
people whose roles or activity connect them to the thesis;
evidence that contradicts the team's assumptions.

Public evidence cannot establish the entire addressable market, private budgets, internal project status, purchase timing, or a complete buying committee. Those questions require other research, direct conversations, or first-party data.

A five-step method for new-market research

1. Write the market thesis as a set of tests

Start with a statement that can be revised:

We believe companies with these operating conditions experience this problem, that these roles are closest to it, and that these observable events or behaviors make the problem more timely.

Then add:

required company and role criteria;
exclusions;
expected problem language;
events that should raise or lower relevance;
evidence that would prove an assumption wrong;
the first decision the research must support.

Avoid beginning with a large total-addressable-market number and treating every company inside it as equally useful.

2. Read the audience before writing the message

Examine the topics, posts, language, and voices that earn attention from the people you believe matter. Look for recurring problems, disagreements, constraints, and vocabulary.

Separate three things:

Observed: the audience uses or engages with this language;
Inferred: the language may reveal a shared priority or useful way to frame the problem;
Still unconfirmed: attention does not prove willingness to buy, urgency, or agreement.

This stage helps the team replace internal terminology with language the market actually uses. It should also surface cases where the presumed problem receives little attention or appears under a different frame.

3. Turn the thesis into company criteria

Define the observable characteristics that make a company worth researching: operating model, relevant function, geography, market, scale proxy, public footprint, or other context tied to the problem.

Do not confuse a proxy with the underlying reason. Company size or funding stage may make research practical, but the durable criterion is whether the company has the operating condition the thesis requires.

Create three sets:

In-scope: the company clearly meets the current criteria.
Uncertain: one or more facts need validation.
Out-of-scope: a stated exclusion or disconfirming fact applies.

The uncertain set is often the most educational. It shows where the thesis depends on information the team cannot yet observe.

4. Find people and account evidence together

At in-scope companies, identify people whose roles, responsibilities, or recent public activity connect them to the problem. Then inspect company-level changes that might alter timing or context.

Avoid two shortcuts:

a matching title does not prove that a person owns the problem;
a company event does not prove that a purchase is underway.

For every proposed opportunity, preserve the account, person, reason, evidence, unknowns, next move, and research date.

5. Review early opportunities and revise the thesis

Do not wait for a perfect market model. Review a small, varied set of company and people readings. Ask:

Which criteria produced genuinely relevant accounts?
Which criteria admitted noise?
Which terms did the audience use instead of ours?
Which people were closer to the problem than the assumed title?
Which public events changed the priority?
Which questions remained impossible to answer publicly?
What did reviewers accept, reject, or revise?

Update the Persona, company thesis, exclusions, and research focus. New-market entry is a learning loop, not a one-time list order.

A hypothetical new-market example

The following example illustrates the method; it is not a customer result.

Initial thesis: a software company believes regional logistics providers face a coordination problem as they add locations. It assumes operations executives own the problem and expansion hiring makes the timing relevant.

Observed audience evidence: public discussions use “handoffs” and “exception management” more often than the company's internal phrase. Several practitioners engage with material about visibility across locations, while generic automation language earns little useful attention.

Observed company evidence: one fit-matched company is hiring regional operations managers and describes a multi-location standardization initiative. Another larger company fits the firmographics but has publicly centralized the relevant workflow under a long-standing internal system.

Inferred: the first account deserves deeper research, and the message should use the market's language. The second account may be a poor fit despite its size. Regional operations and process-improvement roles may be more useful starting points than the assumed executive title alone.

Still unconfirmed: neither company's budget, internal project ownership, vendor evaluation, nor purchase timing is public.

Next move: revise the Persona and exclusions, research the first account's relevant people, and use conversations to test whether “handoffs” describes the costly part of the problem.

The output is a sharper thesis and a smaller, better-explained research set—not a claim that the market has been proven.

Three connected research surfaces

Lumnis approaches new-market entry through three readings.

Audience Research: learn the language and attention

Audience Research examines the topics, posts, language, and voices that earn attention from a defined audience. Use it to test whether your framing resembles the market's conversation and to discover questions worth investigating.

People Intelligence: find people who meet the thesis

Describe the people and companies you care about in a Persona. People Search can apply role and company requirements alongside public evidence such as recent activity, hiring context, company events, and competitor-related attention.

Account Intelligence: deepen the company reading

When a specific company matters, begin with its domain and a research focus. Build a dated account view, inspect what appears to be changing, and identify people who may be relevant to a possible purchase.

Together, these surfaces move from market language to people discovery to company depth. They do not provide a full market-size forecast or guarantee market validation.

An evidence model for every early opportunity

Use the same four-part structure while the market thesis is still changing:

Observed: the source shows a dated public fact or activity.
Inferred: the observation may support or weaken a stated market criterion.
Still unconfirmed: public evidence cannot confirm the private plan, budget, authority, or timing.
Next move: a proportionate action that tests the assumption.

This makes reviewer disagreement useful. If a salesperson rejects an opportunity, the team can tell whether the identity match, evidence, criterion, or interpretation was wrong.

When Lumnis is a fit for new-market entry

Lumnis is a useful fit when:

the team has a concrete market hypothesis it can express as people and company criteria;
the target market leaves enough public evidence to support research;
account-specific context matters to the sale;
manual research is limiting the number of accounts the team can examine;
a person will review early results and refine the thesis.

Lumnis is less useful when:

the team needs a statistically defensible market-size forecast;
the market leaves almost no public trace;
the company has not decided which problem it wants to test;
the goal is to purchase the largest possible contact list;
no one can review uncertain evidence or learn from early results.

New-market entry questions

How should a B2B company research a new market?

Begin with a testable market thesis, read the audience's language, translate the thesis into company and people criteria, research a varied set of early opportunities, and revise the criteria from evidence and reviewer feedback. Keep public observations separate from assumptions about private demand.

How do you move from a market thesis to target accounts?

Express the thesis as observable operating conditions, required characteristics, relevant changes, and exclusions. Use those rules to build in-scope, uncertain, and out-of-scope account sets. Deepen the reading only for companies whose evidence justifies it.

Can public signals validate a new market?

They can support or challenge specific assumptions about language, fit, attention, and observable change. They cannot by themselves prove market size, budget availability, purchase timing, or commercial viability. Direct customer conversations and first-party results remain necessary.

Should a team start with companies or people?

Start with the decision. If the market is defined by an operating company condition, establish the account criteria first and then map relevant people. If the market is organized around a distinctive professional community or role, audience and people research may reveal the company pattern. Lumnis connects both readings.

Turn your thesis into testable research

Define the market, inspect its language, find the companies and people that fit, and keep every conclusion tied to evidence your team can review.

Explore Audience Research