# Market opportunity sizing and prioritisation How a workspace sizes market segments with methodology and citations, scores segment fit per competitor, and ranks openings on the Opportunity Graph by the client's leverage. Published: 2026-09-17 ## Sizing is the start, not the point Market sizing is table stakes in a strategy deck and almost never decides anything. The number is too large to act on, the method is buried in a footnote, and the client's real question is not "how big is the market" but "where in it can we win, and against whom". A Haycion workspace does the sizing properly and then keeps going. Segments are sized with a method and citations you can show. Segment fit is scored for the client and for every competitor. And the Opportunity Graph turns all of it into a ranked list of specific openings, each naming the weakness exploited, the strength used, the segment, the persona and the risk. ## Segments with a method The workspace identifies the segments the client sells into, or could, and sizes each one. Every segment carries a market size, a growth rate, the methodology used to estimate it, and citations to the public sources it was drawn from. The segments roll up into a total addressable market, and you can replace any number with the client's own, or a paid report's, and watch the roll-up recalculate. That transparency matters because market sizes are argued about. A number with its method next to it is a number a client can adopt, adjust or reject on the merits, instead of one they nod at and forget. ## Segment fit per competitor Once the segments exist, the workspace scores how well the client and each competitor fit each one. Segment fit reads across the [Strength Matrix](/what-it-does/competitive-benchmarking-strength-matrix): a competitor built for enterprise procurement fits the mid-market operations segment badly, whatever its overall ranking. That scoring is where the market analysis and the competitive analysis meet, and it is what makes an opening visible: a segment that is large, growing, and poorly served by the competitors who are strong everywhere else. ## The Opportunity Graph An opportunity in a workspace is not a bubble with a label. Each entry on the Opportunity Graph names: - **The weakness exploited.** A specific category where a specific competitor scores low. - **The strength used.** The client's category score that applies to it. - **The segment.** Where the buyers who care about that category are, with its size and growth. - **The persona.** Which buyer to lead with, drawn from the baseline's priority-ranked personas. - **The risk.** What would make this opening close: a competitor fix, a shift in the segment, a claim the client cannot yet prove. Openings are ranked by leverage: how much the client's strength applies to the weakness, weighted by the size and fit of the segment. The reasoning is written out, so the ranking is not a picture to admire but an argument to check. One click turns a ranked opening into a playbook; the [next guide](/what-it-does/from-finding-to-playbook) covers what happens then. ## Vendor research from a brief Sometimes the opportunity question runs the other way: not "where can this client win" but "who could win this buyer". For that, a written requirements brief starts a vendor research run. The workspace finds vendors that meet the brief, scores each on weighted criteria you set, and ranks them. Include the client in the run and you get self-benchmarking: how the client would be scored if a buyer with that brief were evaluating the field today, criterion by criterion, with justifications. That run is also the honest way to find out what an AI assistant would say if a buyer asked it the same question. ## What the client receives - Segments sized with market size, growth rate, methodology and citations, rolled up to a TAM. - Segment fit scores for the client and every competitor. - A ranked Opportunity Graph, each entry naming weakness, strength, segment, persona and risk. - A vendor comparison from a requirements brief, with the client benchmarked in the field. - A short list of openings to prioritise, and the reasoning to defend the order. ## How it shows its work Every market size has its method and sources beside it. Every fit score and every opening carries the matrix scores it was built from, and those scores are overridable. Change a competitor's score and the openings that depended on it move. Nothing on the graph is drawn from a general sense of the market; each entry can be traced back to a segment, a score and a citation. The client sees the argument, not just the conclusion. ## What a result looks like A typical run for a mid-market software client sizes four to six segments and produces a graph with eight to twelve openings. The top two or three are usually obvious once they are named: a segment that is growing, that the strongest competitors serve badly, and where the client already scores well on the category that segment cares about. The risk line is the part clients read twice, because it says plainly what could take the opening away and how fast. ## Questions consultants ask ### Where do the market size numbers come from? From public sources found by live web search, with the methodology and the citations shown next to each segment. You can replace a number with the client's own and the roll-up recalculates. ### What is the difference between a segment and an opportunity? A segment is a slice of the market with a size and a growth rate. An opportunity is a specific opening in a segment: a competitor weakness the client's strength can exploit, for a named persona, with a stated risk. ### How is an opportunity ranked? By leverage: how much the client's strength applies to the weakness being exploited, weighted by the size and fit of the segment. The reasoning is written out on each entry. ### Can I run a market scan without a client site? Yes. A written requirements brief starts a vendor research run: the workspace finds the vendors, scores them on weighted criteria, and can include the client in the ranking. ### Does the Opportunity Graph update on its own? It moves when the matrix moves. A competitor's score change, from a rebuild or your override, changes the openings that depend on it. --- Canonical: https://haycion.com/what-it-does/market-opportunity-sizing-and-prioritisation Source: Haycion, https://haycion.com/