Growing total market share is not only about winning against competitors. It also depends on where the company is positioned: market segments grow or decline over time, and this structural movement – the market winds – can lift or erode total market share regardless of how well the team executes.
A company can gain share in every segment it competes in and still lose total market share when the market shifts toward segments where it is less strongly positioned. Overall market share and sales results alone do not reveal these effects. Market Share and Winds analysis does.
The Market Share Analysis Excel Tool helps distinguish the contribution of market mix effects from changes in competitive performance, providing a clearer understanding of the drivers behind market share changes.
The macro-enabled Excel model facilitates market trend analysis and comparative assessments by keeping all market and company data in a single workbook. Teams can easily select periods and market segments, drill down into the data, automatically calculate tailwinds and headwinds, and visualize results through seven configurable graphs.
These insights help teams challenge assumptions about market share performance, identify growth opportunities, and make better-informed decisions about market segments and investment priorities.
Learn more about the underlying approach in the Market Share and Winds methodology.
The tool is available in three versions:
Price range: €12.00 through €48.00 Exc. VAT
A Market Share and Winds review is not simply an exercise in reporting market share figures. It is an opportunity to examine how much of the company’s performance comes from internal actions and how much comes from external market dynamics.
Participants may discover that share gains are concentrated in declining segments, that growing segments are underserved, or that market conditions influence sales results differently across territories and business units.
The analysis helps teams:
The value is not limited to producing market share figures. It comes from the discussions and decisions that the analysis supports.
See how the Excel workbook helps combine company and market data, calculate tailwinds and headwinds across market segments, and visualize market share dynamics over time.
A central capability of the tool is to help distinguish changes in competitive market share within segments from the effects of changes in market structure.
Metric | What It Represents |
Share Gain/Loss | Change in the company’s market share within an individual segment between the two periods |
Contribution to Tailwinds/Headwinds | The segment’s contribution to the overall market mix effect resulting from changes in market volumes |
Tailwinds and headwinds are calculated by determining what total market share would be if the company had maintained the same share in each segment as in the past period, while market volumes changed to their current levels.
Positive value: A favorable market mix effect supporting total market share.
Negative value: An unfavorable market mix effect reducing total market share.
This reveals whether the company is positioned more strongly in faster-growing segments or in segments experiencing slower growth or decline.
For each segment and the two selected periods, the results table displays:
The table accommodates up to 510 lines of segment metrics, with totals calculated automatically for the selected segments.
When result rows are filtered, totals adjust accordingly. Graphs display only visible lines within the first 19 rows of results.
Two periods can be selected for comparison. Each period is defined using three date slicers (year, quarter and month), allowing flexible comparisons across different time periods.
The three versions differ in their market segmentation capabilities:
In the Two-Segments and Four-Segments versions, users can hide individual segmentation slicers to automatically aggregate the data across the corresponding dimensions.
For example, when market data is organized by regions and product lines, users can analyze market share by region across all product lines, or by product line across all regions, simply by hiding the relevant slicer.
This flexibility allows teams to switch between detailed and consolidated market views without modifying the underlying data, making it easier to explore different perspectives, compare performance, and identify tailwinds and headwinds at different levels of aggregation.
The tool includes seven configurable graphs:
The graphs use two-axis XY bubble charts.
Users can select:
Additional controls allow users to:
These graphs support different analytical perspectives, for example:
A reported market share gain can hide unfavorable dynamics, such as gains concentrated in declining segments while growing segments receive insufficient attention.
Separating competitive performance from market mix effects makes these situations easier to understand and discuss.
The Market Share and Winds methodology provides the concepts and definitions behind this analysis.
Sales performance can be influenced by differences in market growth between segments or territories.
Tailwinds and headwinds calculations help distinguish these external influences from changes in competitive performance, providing useful context when reviewing objectives, performance expectations and incentives.
The Sales Compensation Plan methodology offers a complementary perspective on aligning sales incentives with business objectives.
The analysis may reveal that some segments offer greater growth potential than others, or that the company’s competitive position is stronger where the market is expanding.
These findings can support decisions about market priorities, commercial resources and future investments.
However, market growth alone does not determine where to invest. Competitive attractiveness, profitability, market access and the company’s ability to compete also need to be considered.
The Market Mix and Solution Mix frameworks provide complementary perspectives for investigating market priorities and solution positioning.
Competitor information can provide additional perspectives on market positioning and performance.
When competitor analysis is required, a segmentation slicer can be used to select competitors individually.
However, data quality for the company’s own activities is generally more reliable than competitor estimates. Maintaining separate versions of the workbook for competitor analysis and internal segmentation analysis may therefore be advisable.
The Single-Segment Version filters data along one market segmentation dimension.
It is particularly suited to analyses where market data is organized according to a single segmentation axis, such as geographical areas, product categories or business segments.
The tool allows users to compare market share, market growth and the contribution of tailwinds and headwinds across the selected segments.
The Two-Segments Version adds a second segmentation dimension, for instance regions and P&L.
It is designed for organizations that need to combine two dimensions in their market reviews, such as analyzing product-line performance across geographical regions.
Users can select different segments and examine the results at different levels of detail.
The Four-Segments Version enables analysis across up to four segmentation dimensions, for instance region, countries, P&L and sub-modalities.
It is particularly useful when market reviews involve complex portfolios, multiple geographical levels or different segmentation perspectives.
The additional slicers provide flexibility to investigate detailed segment performance or examine more consolidated views.
A practical market share review can follow these steps:
The workbook structures, calculates and visualizes the information provided.
Market estimates remain the responsibility of the team, and their sources, assumptions and quality should be documented when interpreting the results.
Data is entered through a dedicated tab to prevent accidental modification while exploring results and graphs.
Market and company fields must contain numeric values representing market volumes and company activity. Market share is calculated as the ratio of company volume to market volume.
Data can be progressively added over time, and results are updated using the Refresh All button.
The tool includes checks for missing descriptions or non-numeric values, prompting users to correct errors where necessary.
The results table is generated dynamically according to the selected dates and market segments. When Excel is configured for manual calculations, pressing F9 updates the calculations.
The same workbook can be reused for different analyses or simulations. Saving a separate copy for each situation helps preserve earlier analyses and results.
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Purchase and use of the application are subject to the applicable General Sales Conditions.
