Competitive Intelligence before the Competition Arrives

Have you ever seen a grateful sales rep or account manager? Of course, they all smile if you buy something. They can't help it. It's just their nature.

But, what about sales teams from your own company? What can you give them that would put a smile on their face and a bounce in their step? Well, they'll appreciate anything you can do to help them sell more effectively. Give them a sale and you'll have a best friend for life. They might even take you to lunch, but don't count on it.

Unfortunately, you may not be on the front lines. You might not have a rolodex of potential clients. You may be busy with a ton of other stuff. And, if you really wanted to sell, you would have joined the sales or account management teams long ago.

(What to do, what to do, what to do…)

You might consider a Target Prospecting profile from Primary Intelligence. This new intelligence service, introduced this month, has the potential to increase your sales team’s effectiveness exponentially by providing a road map to a sale.

With Primary Intelligence’s Target Prospecting, our clients now have the information they need to understand the opportunity as they enter it, and can address prospects’ unique needs. Specifically, from the prospect interview profiles, our clients learn:

What features/functions are most important in the minds of their prospects

When their prospects will be looking to buy

The nuances of their prospects’ decision making processes

Which competitors their prospects have used, and which ones they are considering

The factors that might lead their prospects to change vendors

The products and services their prospects are looking to implement

Think of the benefits of being able to talk to the client about their needs in their language and understanding most of the necessary maneuvers before the first prospecting contact is made.

This isn’t lead generation. This is Prospect Needs Identification and the ROI has proven to be huge for our clients.

With this information, provided to your company only, your sales reps and account managers will know the lay of the land before the competition decides to engage. How surprised will the competition be when they arrive at the prospect’s doorstep, only to find that your company has set up camp in the living room? While they’re still trying to figure out who to talk to, you’ll be speaking the prospect’s language.

In the words of my 13 year old daughter, “It’s like, so totally rad.”

For more information, or a sample report, check out our website or give me a call. I’ll be happy to answer any questions. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

It's Not About the Price

My wife took me shopping at the mall. As we passed Macy’s, I saw a display of men’s shoes, all very good looking. Later, we were picking up some household items from Wal-Mart and I saw the same styles of shoes sitting on top of boxes in the middle of their aisle and at least 70% less than Macy’s. At that price, only a fool would pay more for (more or less) the same product.

But, I went back and bought the shoes from Macy’s anyway.

Why did I spend the extra money? Because Macy’s provided me with an experience, perception of quality and personal attention that Wal-Mart couldn’t. If it were all about price, I would have made a different decision.

But, it wasn’t.

And it usually isn’t in B2B sales either.

Recently, Primary Intelligence interviewed a lost sales opportunity for one of our clients. They had battled it out with two other providers and in the end, they weren’t selected, but it wasn’t about price.

Primary Intelligence: What were the primary reasons you did not select Rare Gems?*
Prospect: “The program costs were high relative to the other finalists, especially under the subscription model. We looked at both scenarios because we weren’t sure we wanted to keep the subscription model. They were pricier either way, but especially pricier if you looked at the subscription scenario. The other thing was they made a business decision to withdraw from retail participation, and so that was going to be viewed negatively by our client base.”
Primary Intelligence: Would you say that Rare Gems' final price proposal was more than, less than, or about the same as the other short-listed vendors?
Prospect: “More.”
Primary Intelligence: Were you going to choose the lowest-priced vendor no matter what?
Prospect: “No.”
Primary Intelligence: Would you have selected Rare Gems if it had been less expensive?
Prospect: “No. That was not the only factor.”
Primary Intelligence: What could Rare Gems have done differently to win your business?
Prospect: “If you are going out to the marketplace and you are looking for a vendor, moving away from the retail thing—that whole business model—is a difficult approach for our population. They came with a great variety of products, but they were high-end products, which is not always what people are looking for in terms of product. I think there was a gap there that they weren’t filling. Their price was way off as well.”

*Vendor names were changed for confidentiality purposes

To be competitive, you have to understand the value that sells. Price will be a component in the value equation, but it won’t be the only one. And, from our experience, it isn’t even in the top two most of the time.

Don’t believe the price myth. Listen to your wins and losses. Find out what they value and how you can best meet those value needs. If you do, you will win more. Lots more. Otherwise, you’re hoping that your price is attractive enough to lure in the price shoppers and those clients are hard to keep around.

If you have thoughts on the subject, give me a call at 801.838.9600 x5050 and we’ll chat.

Getting the Most out of Win Loss Analsysis

What is Win Loss Analysis?
A Win Loss Analysis is a systematic analysis of the new business opportunities for which your sales team (or channel partners) has competed. By implementing a Win Loss Analysis program you’ll be able to obtain reliable, actionable and unbiased feedback about how well your sales team performed in recent competitive opportunities. And, you’ll be able to identify much more, including the best practices of your top performers, your competitive positioning within each opportunity, and how well your products and services were received.

What are the benefits of a Win Loss Analysis?
A Win Loss Analysis will reveal the risks and opportunities associated with your sales strategies, your competitors’ strategies and your target markets. You can learn about your marketplace in a way that transcends simply knowing about your own customers. A Win Loss Analysis will also reveal the varied buying habits, challenges and adoption rates of your customers, your competitors’ customers and your mutual prospects.

If you want a clear picture of each individual sales opportunity and the emerging trends across multiple opportunities to help sales professionals win more business, a Win Loss Analysis can do the following:

-Improve individual and company-wide competitive win ratios
-Establish clear Win Loss benchmarks
-Increase sales per employee
-Build successful sales organizations that are always improving
-Discover the reasons for lost opportunities
-Increase your competitive advantage
-Enhance your understanding of competitors

By obtaining reliable and unbiased feedback from your recent sales opportunities, sales representatives can refine their techniques, learn how to effectively target a client’s needs, and make appropriate presentations that put your company and products in the best possible light. A Win Loss Analysis will provide you with empirical, yet pragmatic, information to drive your business, products, and marketing decisions toward an improved competitive advantage, increased revenue growth and greater market share.


Which departments within an organization are impacted by a Win Loss Analysis?
Although many people assume the information from a Win Loss Analysis is only for the sales force, we have found that Win Loss will impact every department in your organization. Additionally, key individuals in your organization such as Sales Representatives, Sales Management, Product Development, Marketing and Executive Management will all be able to leverage the actionable information that is captured in a Win Loss Analysis program to make better decisions.

Sales Representatives will better understand the perception of their prospects and what they were really thinking about the representative’s abilities and effectiveness. Sales representatives will also begin to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, the company’s positioning, their competition and the overall marketplace.

Sales Managers will get data on the key issues that are hampering their over all sales efforts. Hard data on what your competitors are doing right, what you’re doing wrong or not doing, and data on how the market perceives you. This information will help sales managers to refocus, redeploy, and retrain where it’s most important.

Product Development can now begin to understand more about where a solution or product may be lacking against their competitors and what features and functionality are most important to the prospects in the pipeline.

Marketing will receive direct feedback from their audience as to what is working and what isn’t working. They’ll learn which marketing tools have the most impact with whom and which are not worth the investment of time and money.

Executive Management will now get actionable intelligence on every aspect of the entire sales process. They’ll learn about new players in their markets and gain insight into current market trends.

Life on the Prarie - The Best Ranchers Protect the Herd

At the risk of alluding to your client base as cattle, let’s consider the experience of a successful rancher. A small part of his year is spent on increasing the herd (birthing calves). Most of his time is spent nurturing, caring, feeding and protecting the herd from dangers. He builds fences, renders aid, steers the herd to the greenest pastures and fights to keep wolves, poachers and other predators away from his livestock. This herd of cattle is his life. He doesn’t have the luxury of a safety net or fallback plan.



A business has a great deal in common with the rancher. You work hard to bring in a few new accounts every year. But, if you are like most businesses, 75%+ of the value of your business exists in your current accounts.

Your competitors (either other ranchers or wolves) know the value of your accounts and want them for their own. They are fighting hard to get inside your fences. They may even dress up in funny little cow suits so as not to spook the herd and possibly even fool the rancher.

This is the reason why you have to focus a substantial amount of your competitive intelligence on maintaining your accounts.

There are two very important sources of competitive intelligence that need to be mined in the client lifecycle:

1-During the normal course of business (e.g. during the execution of the project or fulfillment of the contract)
2-Post renewal-defection (after the company chooses to renew its engagement or defect to a competitor or otherwise)

Your current client list interacts very frequently with your competition. Even the most satisfied accounts listen to your competitors. Occasionally, they reach out to discover new developments in the marketplace.

A big benefit of your current client base is that they are generally friendly to you and willing to provide quality information about your competitors. Usually, all you have to do is ask. They will talk.

They can tell you new development and tactics. They can tell you how you stack up in many different areas vs. various competitors. They will tell you what you will need to do to maintain competitive advantages in the marketplace against specific companies.

And, you can quantify competitive performance scores in order to perform statistical analysis and predictive analytics. With these tools, you can build very strong fences to keep the herd intact.

Keep riding cowboys (and cowgirls…). If you want some ideas on how to implement Competitive Intelligence among your current accounts, talk to me. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Chess, Argentina and Competitive Intelligence

My friend, Adrian Alvarez (Midas Consulting, Buenos Aires, Argentina) shared some interesting thoughts on the importance of making decisions and taking action, rather than just collecting data and adding it to piles of data. Adrian quotes from an article he found on www.intramanagers.com.

I have made an amateur translation of his article below. Hopefully, he'll forgive me for any errors or liberties I may have taken:

“I read a note about Garry Kasparov (for those too young to remember or not fond of chess, he was the youngest person to win the world-wide championship). There are several parts that make me think that I should learn to play chess and that it is a game especially apt for Competitive Intelligence professionals.

“Here, I will transcribe a few paragraphs, although I recommend that you read the complete note, [if you can read Spanish –Chris]. (Adrian’s comments are in italics):

“The great champion, Lasker, introduced to chess the value of the relative movement: Instead of making the best play, he made the best play against that adversary. I believe that I do not need to say that this is what we must do in Competitive Intelligence.

“According to Kasparov, one of the problems of chess is how to differentiate the valuable from that which does not contribute anything, the false thing from the authentic, what is lifted up and what should be ignored?

“I suppose all analyst of intelligence has had this dilemma sometimes, and might have that problem daily. The dilemma is solved, according to Kasparov, if you consider that the computer only provides information. The second premise is that one must create his/her own formula to accept or to reject information. In this process it is very important to consider our strengths and weaknesses.

“The great danger is that many leaders do not trust that they will find an answer and they do not want to assume the risk of deciding. For this problem we invoke the term "paralysis by analysis" and I must say that it is quite common.

“It is necessary to accept the possibility of committing errors and one must control the fear of being mistaken. I believe that that is a fundamental subject and is the main cause of the paralysis by analysis.

“My prescription in this case is to try to make a small bet and to be increasing it step by step. For example if the launching of a product is risky, send it into a small region and expand the effort if it is successful. This strategy is superior to continuous calculation and analysis. Calculation and investigation can endorse the strategy, but not replace it. I believe that this subject it we could translate for us in which the fundamental part of I circulate of competitive intelligence is the analysis and not it harvesting.

“And, I suppose we should learn to play chess. Who’s wants to play?" - Adrian Alvarez

I agree that the value of competitive intelligence comes from having knowledgeable interpretation of quality data. Don’t spend all of your time harvesting data. Make sure that you spend time thinking about what the data may mean and interpreting.

And, be willing to lean into the wind a bit. Sometimes, you really do have enough data. Sometimes, you really do know enough about the situation. Apply your experience and give someone some direction to move forward. There’s a good chance that you will be mostly right and only a small chance that you will be extremely wrong.

Let me know if you have some different thoughts. I’m interested in your take on the most effective way to practice competitive intelligence. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence – Save Yourself from the Cloak and Dagger

Today, I’m going to stray from the usual Primary Intelligence Competitive Intelligence thoughts to make a point about counterintelligence. Your company has to be prepared for major and minor efforts to infiltrate your confidential and proprietary information.

I’ll start with a story and follow-up comment:

"In the spring of 2005, Guy Enright, an accountant at KPMG Financial Advisory Services Ltd. in Bermuda, got a call from a man identifying himself in a crisp British accent as Nick Hamilton. Hamilton said he needed to see Enright about matters of utmost importance.

"Over the course of two meetings, Hamilton led Enright to believe he was a British intelligence officer, according to a person familiar with the encounters. He told Enright he wanted information about a KPMG project that Hamilton said had national security implications for Britain. Soon, Enright, who was born in Britain, was depositing confidential audit documents in plastic containers at drop-off points designated by Hamilton.

"But Nick Hamilton was not an agent of Her Majesty's secret service, and the documents never found their way to the British government..." (Continue Reading the Article)

Den Taylor, Strategic Insights, added his comments to the article:

"As a strategic intelligence professional, I am often asked to provide counter-intelligence counsel to deal with similar circumstances. What is invariably found in such cases is in today's global economy, intelligence gathering by any means is a simple fact of life.

"Unfortunately, many organizations do not convey this to their employees, making them easy prey to the entreaties of individuals utilizing simple forms of pretext. Interestingly, we have found that dealing with this problem is relatively simple.

"We recommend that clients conduct periodic education programs that cover the means by which outsiders gather intelligence. Such programs are often coupled with designating a knowledgeable intelligence person who can provide advice on how best to deal with unsolicited contacts. Although taking this step does not guarantee that valuable internal intelligence is never compromised, it does make the pursuit of such information much more difficult."

As a competitive intelligence professional, have you thought about educating your company on the tactics employed by your competitors? You can start by discussion your standard techniques for data collection and branch out into other possible areas of espionage. Your company’s employees don’t have to be experts on espionage. They just have to be able to sense suspicious activity and notify the right people.

In short:

-Your company has to have a plan to combat espionage and potentially harmful intelligence efforts
-As a market, sales or competitive intelligence professional, you should have input into that plan, if you don’t manage it outright.
-A list of suspicious activities needs to be prepared and distributed
-Your employees need to know how to handle a suspicious call or activity. Do they escalate it to a manager or contact your department?
-Be ready to prosecute. Illegal activity needs to be punished. (Your legal department should get a kick out of this)

If you have ideas or questions, let’s chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

The ROI of Win Loss Analysis (Primary Intelligence Style)

If you found a surefire way to make your company grow, you would have to consider the ROI potential of the program, initiative, solution, right?

Well, I did a little digging today with a couple of clients to find recent ROI success stories. The results were surprising. I’ll share a couple of experiences here:

“We did a round of win loss analysis with Primary Intelligence. The process included interviews with our newly won accounts and lost prospects from the past 6 months. Primary Intelligence provided us with individual opportunity profiles for each sales engagement.

“After we (sales leadership) received the profiles, we identified the 10 biggest losses (based on opportunity size). We reviewed the feedback, needs and perceptions that caused the prospect to choose our competitor. Then, we created a plan to reengage each of those 10 lost prospects. Since this was our first attempt at a formal post-sales reengagement, we didn’t have any expectations of success. We just wanted to see what was possible.

“So far, based on the intelligence we received, we have won 3 of those 10 losses. These were multi-million dollar accounts that potentially stretch out over long-term
contracts.

“This is just one way we are using our Sales Intelligence provided by Primary Intelligence. The ROI potential of this sales intelligence is mind-boggling.”

A second client of Primary Intelligence described their ROI experience in this manner:

“When we perform win loss analysis with Primary Intelligence, we provide PI with a list of our recent wins and losses. These sales opportunities are pulled from our SFA and are based on the best information that our sales reps have.

“Primary Intelligence calls through the list of opportunities, setting up appointments for interviews and weeding out opportunities that don’t qualify for analysis. While engaged in this activity, PI regularly finds a few opportunities that were categorized by our company as losses, but are still in consideration. These opportunities may be lukewarm to very warm, but they are not dead.

“PI immediately calls us to let us know when they have discovered a ‘nugget,’ or a potential opportunity that needs immediate attention. We send that information directly back to the sales rep and our conversion rates in these instances is surprisingly high.

“We more than pay for our entire sales intelligence effort based on these nuggets alone. The strategic and tactical data we use to create new business is actually just frosting on the cake after you consider the revenue that PI creates for us.”

Primary Intelligence provides data and consulting to help companies in over 45 industries create strategic and tactical improvement. Our work extends from the executive boardroom to sales, marketing and product leadership and down to each individual sales rep. We have a methodology to improve the performance of the most key departments in your company.

If you would like to know a little more about these experiences or specific information about the companies that have achieved these results, call me. (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Forward-thinking Competitive Intelligence

I read a blog entry about “reactionary competitive intelligence” that you ought to read. It is simple, but makes a strong point.:

Follow The Leader
Have you worked at a company where a significant share of the business strategy is determined by what competitors are doing?

Have you worked on a product plan that includes features based not necessarily on what your customers have asked for, but based on what your competitors already have?

Have you bought ad space in a magazine because that's where your competitors are advertising as well?

Assuming that our competitors know what they're doing is a dangerous game. Assuming your company has the right ingredients and circumstances to match or exceed their success is an equally slippery slope.

Competitive intelligence is critical, and identifying elements of a competitor's business and marketing strategy for further review and testing is a great idea.

But do your own homework. Know your customers, your industry, and your business better than anyone else. Don't just follow the leader. (Matt Heinz, Matt on Marketing)

Does your company culture and leadership support a forward-thinking intelligence strategy? Are you encouraged to scout out a trail to new ground or is your time dominated by reactionary “what just happened” questions?

You can discern your company’s cultural bias easily by answering the following questions for yourself:

-Do competitive surprises throw us into a frenzy or do we hold the course on our own strategy?
-Does our CI strategy remain constant or does it change with the blowing winds of businsess?
-Do we study way to increase business and retain contracts or are we more concerned with knowing trivial facts about the competition?
-Does our company use cutting-edge analytics or do we still make decisions based on gut feeling alone?

If your organization is stable and includes the support of leadership, you are poised to do good work and your efforts will have to match expectations. If not (and if you want to be forward thinking), you are going to have to work very hard to change the current scenario. Otherwise, you risk becoming an order taker with no end in sight. And, those people who bring interesting, but non-impactful, information to the table usually don’t go very far.

And, if that assessment is too harsh, my apologies. But, I have a great deal of respect for those CI professionals that don’t settle for trivialities, but work to find the strategic areas of opportunity for their company. The highest rung on the ladder is reserved for those that have the experience, clout and voice to insist that the intelligence be used in the executive boardroom for decisions.

Let me know what you think. I would like to hear from you (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

What's in a Win?

Yesterday, I was working with Chad Sly, reviewing a proof of concept trial with a client that had purchased win loss analysis from Primary Intelligence.

To be more accurate, they purchased loss analysis. In other words, they weren’t interested in measuring won opportunities; only lost deals.

I can understand that. I can respect that. Your instinct tells you that you are going to learn more from your losses than your wins. You might think that you are in a better position to talk to your wins later and find out the story of what happened. These are true statements.

But, I’d like to toss out a couple of reasons that you ought to apply your same, rigorous study of sales opportunities to your wins, too:

1-Knowing why you lose is interesting. Knowing why you win is just as valuable. If you don’t thoroughly understand your winning value proposition, how can you make the necessary changes in the less certain opportunities?

2-Benchmarking of successful data. If you want to make improvement, you have to understand where you are starting. Get a benchmark of your performance across the board (and not just in losses) or you will have a skewed benchmark that doesn’t really reflect current performance. (BTW, Primary Intelligence believes that measurements in 20-30 individual performance areas make the best sales
reviews)

3-Interpretation of comparative data. If you see that your sales team is weak in certain skills during losses, how will you know if they were strong in those same areas during wins? Or, did they win despite the an across-the-board weakness? You’ll never know unless you discover their performance in both wins and losses.

4-Goodwill with your new customers. Your new clients worked very hard to make the best decision for their company. They appreciate the opportunity to tell you
what went right or wrong and how you can be more effective in like situations.

5-Competitive intelligence from a friendly source. Your new clients are the most likely to provide you with the best actionable competitive intelligence, based on the tactics and messages presented during the recent transaction. You shared time with your competitors. Find out what your prospect/new customer found out during
that time.

I understand that losses look more important. I understand that having the inside scoop on a recent loss is nearly a status symbol. But, don’t forget the wins. They’re what keep you in business.

Let me know what you think. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

Can’t We A Just Get Along? (Sales and Marketing)

I was working with a company yesterday that just doesn’t get it. They have a fairly traditional relationship between sales and marketing. Sales says that the leads that Marketing produces are worthless (and that’s an attempt to keep this blog family-friendly) and Marketing says that Sales doesn’t work the leads and expects too much.

So, in the end, these departments tend to go their own way, complying with corporate strategic initiatives, but leveraging each other’s strengths to produce a result that is greater than the sum of its parts.

How does this relate to competitive intelligence? Sales and Marketing need each other here more than anywhere else. We see examples of success and failure among our client base often at Primary Intelligence.

Where else is the competitive battle fought more passionately than the sales trenches – deal by deal. The right information delivered at the right time, coupled with the skills of an experienced sales representative can mean the difference between a loss and a long-term client with substantial lifetime value and profitability. But, yesterday, the marketing team was “number-crunching weenies that love their reports and miss the boat.”

And, who can provide marketing with more information about value proposition, messaging, competitive pressures and information specific to different industries or segments? The sales team works in this arena every day. They have their ear to the ground. Sales reps will see trends develop long before marketing hears word one. But, in yesterday’s meeting, sales was “gun-slinging outlaws with more bravado than brains.”

In my experience, the sales and marketing department have to be married (happily) and work together continuously. In some companies, the position of VP Sales and Marketing exists. There are potential problems in combining two roles into one person, but there is less territoriality and conflict.

I recommend that someone from Sales and Marketing stage a love-in, professionally speaking. Create dialogue between the two organizations. Develop committees with leaders and worker bees from each group. Develop communication channels to move information up the chain and around to everyone in both departments.

The benefits will include:

-Stronger market alignment
-Messaging that is much more precise
-Sales reps that are better equipped with competitive intelligence
-A company with pronounced tactical advantages
-Increased sales and higher lifetime client values

I can’t think of any real cons to this arrangement.

If you have ideas on moving Sales and Marketing closer together to leverage strengths and produce synergies, let me know. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Marrying Competitive Intelligence, Business Intelligence and Analytics

Business intelligence companies are starting to how they are relevant to the gathering of competitive intelligence in the organization. Surprisingly, they are demonstrating how to leverage your customers (of all people) to gain the necessary intelligence to compete more effectively.

Jerome Bergerou of AccuraCast says the following:

"In an increasingly competitive world, using your client database smartly, to gain a better understanding of your number one asset – your customers – can make or break the success of your company."

"One of the primary reasons companies do not fully realize the potential competitive advantages they can gain from their own databases is the lack of proper integration of datasets across departments. Even though all the information might reside within the company, it may remain elusive due to a fragmentation of the data across incompatible databases. Regrouping all internal data into a single dataset or a series of interconnected datasets could be the single most useful step a company might take towards providing a solid foundation on which quality business intelligence can be developed."

This article goes on to demonstrate some specific techniques in building a BI repository and system that would be of benefit to most companies. If you are interested in my content, you should probably check them out, too.

I agree whole-heartedly that the quest for competitive intelligence needs to be founded on the most productive sources of information. And, there has to be more to analyzing the data than gut feelings and educated hopes. Analytics are not just important; they are essential to making sense of the information. Otherwise, the intelligence may be skewed by the loudest voice or hidden trends may be ignored.

If you have some ideas on competitive intelligence and analytics, I’d enjoy talking to you (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence Needs a Personal Touch

I am a little hard of hearing today after yelling and cheering at the Utah Jazz/Houston Rockets game. What a great game! The crowd was nuts. The players played hard, and (more importantly for Jazz fans) there will be a game 7 on Saturday night.

You may have already seen this, but check out the Google driving directions from New York to London, UK: (click here)

The fun of it is when you consider that these are driving directions. The best part is looking all the way down the list and finding out that the Google people know that you can’t drive across the Atlantic Ocean. However, they have a practical alternative.

This does have a point.

The Google directions are smart enough to tell you that you’re going to have to swim to cross the ocean. Someone at Google had the notion to take a piece of information that was delivered automatically and insert a custom bit of instruction that is either useful or entertaining, depending on your point of view.

If you provide competitive intelligence in your organization, you have to help advise the users on different points. If you leave everything to the reader of the data, it is possible that they will end up in the wrong place with the wrong tools. Use your experience to understand the context of the data and provide recommendations.

One of the worst things that can happen to intelligence is to orphan a report or brief in a department. In most companies, they will suffer from neglect. Very sad, indeed.

And, I think the Jazz will beat the Rockets in game 7. Goooooo JAZZ!

Let me know what you think (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Effectiveness to Greatness – Making the Leap

I just read an article titled, “Dr. Stephen R. Covey Interview, Going from Effectiveness to Greatness, Featuring Jay Abraham.” This conversation seemed to offer a lot of nuggets in a few pages.

The article is not specifically written for competitive intelligence professionals. In fact, at times, it is geared toward the entrepreneur and small business owner, but I’ll share a couple of excerpts from the article in today’s blog. If you want to read the article in its entirety, click here.

In summary, Dr. Covey takes his principles of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and promotes a way of thinking and being that moves from effectiveness to greatness. For example:

JAY ABRAHAM: Define Greatness in the organization
DR. COVEY: Well, I would say that a great organization would be one that has sustainable impact on all of its stakeholders for good. That includes the whole supply chain, obviously the customers… And the culture would be extremely empowered to use a lot of initiative in making great things happen. And also, I think another characteristic would be that the people are constantly growing and improving their skills, their knowledge base, and their capacities to become even greater in the future. I think one of the biggest problems is sustainability -- that many people are like cotton candy. It tastes good, and then within a short period of time it just is worthless, essentially, and nothing happens. But to make it sustainable, to me, is one of the great keys.

JAY ABRAHAM: What changes or shifts would you recommend they make to convert their enterprise from tactical, reactive, episodic, to strategic, enduring, and basically a geometric growth machine?
DR. COVEY: I would say a couple of things. One would be I would make sure that I surround myself with people who are different than me -- who think differently, who challenge -- so that you can get the spirit of synergy in producing a strategic plan that everyone gets emotionally connected to. And I would try to get them very involved in this development of this strategic plan so that they really have a clear sense of what the most important goals are, and also what the values are. Because if you have commonality on the values which never change, then you apply those values in getting synergy and developing strategic goals and plans to achieve those goals. Then you’ve tapped into as much wisdom as possible.

JAY ABRAHAM: you talk a lot about the difference between proactivity and reactivity. Can you share…proactive things that great leaders do continuously, predictably, that average, ordinary business owners don’t seem to understand?
DR. COVEY: Well, I would say one proactive thing is that they decide what their mission is, and what their values are in the context of a larger vision. And I think that most reactive people tend to just kind of live out old programs that have been given to them by other people and by other models that they’ve had. I think another thing is that they start investing in people and in the building of high-trust relationships, where the reactive people kind of hope that trust will result. They don’t proactively nourish the relationship.

Another one is they really get invested in the growth and development of people – for instance, the very thing we’re doing here. If they’re learning things from this, they would want to immediately share this with the people around them that might have an interest so that they create a kind of a learning ethic -- not just a hard work ethic, but a learning ethic-- so that people say, “Boy, he’s really interested in my growth and development, and in my career.

I think another one is they set up empowerment agreements with people so that they don’t have to hover over, check up, follow through, and kind of micro-manage people according to the way they normally would clone someone. But they realize that every personality is different, will often take a different tack. But as long as there is a common agreement on the overall strategic purpose and goals, that’s the important thing. And therefore, you allow other people to express themselves.

Reactive people tend to be firefighters that are impulsively running to and fro and trying to solve problems. They almost get addicted to urgency, rather than being addicted to focusing on that which is important, the Pareto Principle, where 80% of the results come from the 20% of the key activities that produce those results. And I think that what I call “Quadrant Two” -- that which is important but not urgent -- is the basic thrust of proactive people…

Most people are drowned by the urgent, and the important often gets neglected because the urgent acts on you. It’s right in front of you. It’s pressing. It’s like a ringing phone. And they get so addicted to it they almost feel guilty if they focus on long term, strategic thinking and listening in depth to other people because they’re frantic. They’re just driven by action and by constantly wanting to make things happen. They don’t take time to reflect, and to gain a deeper understanding of what the real needs are, and to also deeply understand another person and to find out what their voice is... what is unique about that person…that they have certain talents and passion. They don’t do that. They talk more than they listen. They should realize they have two ears and one mouth, and use them accordingly.

(copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved, www.abraham.com)

I know that this post contains a large chunk of information that might not seem applicable at first, but take a look at your position.

-Are you providing information, services or solutions that will make your company more competitive from the strategic and tactical levels?
-Does your department (and those with whom you interact) position itself to be effective (at the least) and potentially great? Does your organization support this type of thinking and growth?
-Are you drowned by the urgent without having time to work on the important?
-Do you have balance in your life that allows you to be great in the most important things?

Print this document. Mark it up with your notes. And, if you are a self-improvement geek, date your notes. Then, next time you read it and mark it up some more, compare the parts that were important during the first read to those that impress you the second time around. You might learn something about the changing priorities and perspectives in your life.

Anyway, I’ll return to the Competitive Intelligence topic in the next post. Thanks for today’s indulgence.

And, if you find a nugget of info that means something to you, place a comment or contact me (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)