The Compartmentalization of Competitive Intelligence in a Company

Over the past couple of weeks, I have spent some time on the phone talking with a number of our current and past clients. What a great experience this has been. I am reminded of the great people that have chosen to work with Primary Intelligence.

The goal of these conversations has been to understand a little bit more about how companies use our intelligence. At Primary Intelligence, we have a strong value proposition and we’re pretty good at communication the message. To us, the true value of what we do is obvious. The list of people in a company that should benefit from our services is well defined. In other words, we’re a simple plug-in solution that solves a set of problems and provides an expected value.

All of which is true to some extent. But, the real fun has been to find out all those little nuances of use, value and such that come into existence within each of our clients’ corporate environments and cultures. We have some very creative clients that are finding bigger and better ways to leverage their intelligence to create more value. We also have a few that are looking forward to a summary of my findings as a “thank you” for their willingness to spend time with me.

Something that is coming out in many of my conversations, however, is the fact that intelligence often has a tendency to be compartmentalized. By this, I mean that there is a tendency for the intelligence to be consumed by a single person or group of people for strategic planning and tactical to-dos, but other departments are often left in the dark regarding the presence of win loss feedback.

Some of the most interesting examples of this compartmentalization occur between sales and marketing. (Can’t we all just get along?) When sales intelligence is purchased by sales, sales operations or sales training, there is often a reluctance to share the data throughout the organization. The intelligence is used by the sales group to accomplish their designs, but marketing, product or corporate executives often do not receive information.

Even more interesting is the reaction from the marketing side. In numerous cases, marketing has told me that they use the win loss data to answer questions about marketing and product. They even put pieces of our intelligence into presentations that are delivered to the executive boardroom. But, when asked about how the sales team uses the intelligence, a long silence happens and then they ask, “What would sales want with this information?”

Personally, I would have thought sales would be eminently interested. But, from some points of view within a company, they can’t see what a sales leader or rep needs to be more successful.

Caveats: We do have plenty of clients that share between sales, marketing, product and others. These phone calls are not a scientific measure. These conversations are as relevant as one-offs on any topic. Some companies use intelligence more effectively than others. Most sales and marketing groups work together to coordinate their intelligence needs. A win loss project doesn’t mean the same thing to every company in every industry.

That said, it is my observation that our clients that create a processes to accept, digest, understand, distribute and act on sales intelligence tend to be leaders in their respective industries. I’m sure that many of these companies have an overall culture that is accustomed to using research, data and intelligence of many types. The fact that they can process our information is the result of a leadership group that expects all leaders to be more fact-based.

What is the takeaway? You might want to look at your company culture and plans for 2008. What types of competitive intelligence are you generating? Does your CI program have ROI potential? How far does it travel and are there any real expectations that the information will be used to make a revenue-enhancing decision (increased sales success, better market positioning, increased competitive strength, faster time to market, etc…)?

What can you do to gain one more champion of your competitive intelligence efforts? Can you reach out to another department and make a friend? Can you find others within your company that are willing to receive your data? How willing are you to listen to other research performed by other departments in your company?

Personally, I believe that the good intelligence should rise above the clutter to the top and it should be used as often as possible, as long as it is relevant, to strengthen the company. Otherwise, the overall value is marginalized.

Progress starts with one person trying to make something a little better. Are you the person to break down some of the compartmentalization of your company?

Three Benefits of Win Loss You Can’t Ignore – Analytics & Strategy (1 of 3)

There are few revenue-generating competitive intelligence tools more valuable than Win Loss. If done correctly, a Win Loss exercise provides insight into competitive strengths/weaknesses, marketplace innovations, loyalty factors and steps to improving win rates. From a tactical standpoint, Win Loss derived intelligence can show steps to increase a company’s competitive positioning right now.

I know that today’s post will be a pretty strong commercial, but Primary Intelligence has developed sophisticated predictive analytics that crate an unparalleled strategic view. Let me show you what I’m talking about.

Below, you will see an example of a Strength/Weakness evaluation based on data from recent sales opportunities, taken from a win loss study of 50-60 opportunities. Half of the data come from new business that was won and the other 50% come from opportunities that were lost to competitors:


The data are sorted from biggest negative competitive gap (weakness) at the top to the biggest positive competitive gap (strength) at the bottom. The scores are based on a 1-10 scale where 1 is Poor and 10 is excellent.

If you were to make strategic changes in your company based on the data in this table, you would probably look at the weaknesses and evaluate the most effective ways to close the competitive gap.

But, would this make a difference? What would happen if you were to increase your performance in Overall Solution Cost or Understanding Needs by ten percent? (A 10% improvement would mean that you increase your score of 8.1 to 9.1) How much would your win rate increase? Would making improvements in your weaknesses correlate with a stronger competitive preference, or would you be pulling the wrong levers and pouring time and money down the drain?

Traditional intelligence looks at Strengths and Weaknesses
• Should you “fix” weaknesses or accentuate strengths?
• Strength/Weaknesses don’t always correlate with decision making.
• Where is your opportunity to increase win rates and market share?

Can you rely on today’s strength and weakness assessments to point your company to the strongest positioning tomorrow? Does a measurement of strengths and weaknesses provide the foresight to recommend company-changing shifts? Where is the crystal ball that will show the actual gains that might be made on performance changes in your company, product and sales efforts?

Primary Intelligence does this all the time. To show your company where the real opportunities exist, we:

1. Interview recent wins and losses where your company competed head-to-head with specific competitors.
2. Measure your competitive performance in 20-30 specific decision influencers
3. Determine strengths and weaknesses (Not the gap score in the table below. Positive gaps indicate weaknesses. Negative gaps indicate strengths)
4. Use predictive analytics to determine the influencers that, it improved, would result in the greatest increases in market share. (Impact column, explained below)

Impact identifies your expected improvement in market share. For instance, in the chart above (a real-world example taken from one of our clients), if you were to improve your company’s performance in Product Knowledge by one point (In other words, if you improved the 7.7 rating to an 8.7), you would expect your win rate and market share to increase by the impact score of 5.7% (at the 90% confidence level).

And, Product Knowledge is already a competitive strength. Overall, you outperform the competition by 5% in this area. The key may be to make this competitive advantage more consistent throughout the company.

In other words, there are influencers that would provide 2x, 3x and 4x the results of others if improvement were made in those specific areas. This could result in gains of millions or billions of unexpected dollars, based on some potentially simple improvements in the right areas.

This approach takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. No espionage required. And, yet, the company makes the biggest gains in increasing its client base.

Effective Competitive Intelligence – Don’t Let Indecision Derail You

No matter how you practice competitive intelligence, you have to be concerned with the fact that your CI program must be effective in your business. Much emphasis has been put on various programs in the company and their “effectiveness.” To me “effective” is a relative term. There are so many levels of effectiveness that almost anything can be graded as effective. The real talent and wisdom are manifest in one’s ability to differentiate between lower and higher levels.

So, what are the effectiveness qualifiers for competitive intelligence? I’ll stick with a definition put forth earlier in this same blog (which was also a topic in our recent webinar which can be downloaded HERE). The mission of effective Competitive Intelligence should be to:

– Strengthen your company’s position
• How is our value proposition perceived?
• What is the competition doing?
• Which industry-wide best practices will truly apply?
– Discover new markets
• What is possible with new technologies?
• Where should we steer the company?
– Develop new products/services/solutions
• What problems do our clients experience that we can address?

Indecision
There are so many obstacles to producing effective intelligence. The first of these obstacles is indecision. This indecision devalues intelligence efforts and, in some cases, leads to the dissolution of the actual intelligence efforts.

What is the real problem with indecision? It’s the fact that nobody can agree on what should be studied or what results should come of the efforts. Often, executives will request specific bits of information while other departments create laundry lists of potential topics.



In way too many cases, a strategic plan for intelligence is lacking. Evidence of this environment usually rears its head with the philosophy of “Let’s grab everything we can” and “Once we have the intelligence, we’ll know what to do with it.” The most dangerous symptom is a company that is very reactive in its intelligence efforts. “What just happened?!?! Go find out what [competitor x] is doing!”

The truth of the matter is that this lack of system usually leads to way too much information which can not be prioritized. The abundance of information leads to overload and blindness. The end result is that the intelligence is used less and less until the prevailing feeling is that the intelligence is not useful after all. From this point on, corporate decisions will not be based on the intelligence efforts, but on experience and such.

Without a competitive intelligence strategy that makes effectiveness a strong characteristic of success, the intelligence group is likely to marginalize its own value.

Recommendation
So, the recommendation is that you have to make your company be decisive about its intelligence efforts. Develop a set of effectiveness criteria or use those that I included above. Measure your strategy against its ability to be effective. And, be enough of a salesperson to sell this idea to your management and on up the chain.

Create a habit of decisiveness around your intelligence efforts, strategies and plans. Otherwise, indecision will trivialize your best efforts.

Thoughts? Leave me a comment or we can chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

Using Data to Make Decisions in Marketing

Marketing. An Art? A Science? An amalgam of both. Historically, marketing has been a craft owned by the creative rather than the methodical. And, it is likely that the creative will never leave. But, technology continues to push the envelope on what can be tracked and measured. Each day, demand increases for marketers that can measure their results.

“There is such tremendous change in the marketplace that marketing techniques that used to work may not work anymore,” says Roland Rust, chairman of the marketing department at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business at College Park, Md., and author of numerous books on marketing. “Companies are trying a lot of new things and don’t know whether they work. The companies that are getting ahead these days are those that use data to make decisions,”

Prof. Rust adds. Conquering highly profitable markets, or having the right market focus and position, is one of the key building blocks of a high-performance business, says Mr. Merrihue of Accenture. And a high-performance business today demands cost-effective, results-driven marketing” (http://online.wsj.com/ad/accenture/)

The source of this information comes from an advertisement -, but the message, while a touch bombastic, remains the same. Understanding your marketing position and tracking progress against goals has become one of the most important topics in marketing. That is no secret at all. Determining what to measure and how to improve is a large challenge.

I’ll toss out my two cents on how Competitive Intelligence can improve a marketing department’s ability to compete.

If done properly, competitive intelligence should be able to tell you:

Crucial business needs that lead people to consider your product/service/solution

How the competition positions itself against you

The perception of the prospects in regard to your value proposition

The right message at the right time of the evaluation process

Your company’s image compared with that of the competition

What are the most important factors that cause a prospect to use you vs. anyone else.

Competitive Intelligence should feed your marketing department with these types of answers, allowing the most effective messages to be refined. Tracking this information over time will provide the ability to measure improvement and/or keep pace with a changing marketplace.

These ideas are some of the most basic possibilities. If you have other ideas or need suggestions, let’s chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Using PowerPoint to Distribute Competitive Intelligence

Last post, I shared a video showing some of the most common sins of PowerPoint (PPT) usage. I’m guilty of most and will have my license revoked.

Stories of PPT abuse are not hard to find. Your company may be PPT agnostic, but many companies are forming opinions one way or another. Competitive Intelligence is, by definition, a source of information and sharing information is job #1 of PPT.

But, like anything else, you have to know how to use PPT to maximize its effectiveness. One of the weaknesses of PPT is the fact that it tends to simplify concepts much too easily.

Gettysburg Address – PPT Style
How has PPT changed the way we communicate? Imagine a world with almost no pronouns or punctuation. A world where any complex thought must be broken into seven-word chunks, with colorful blobs between them. Wait. You don’t have to imagine it. You are probably exposed to it regularly. You may even speak fluent PPT.

For a funny example, check out the Gettysburg Address, done in PPT. Click on the link below and then click on “Click here to start.”

Gettysburg Address in PPT

IBM and Sun Talk Business
“Lou Gerstner's remarkable turnaround of IBM from near-collapse began with a briefing he asked for on the state of the mainframe business. Mainframes accounted for more than 90% of the company's profits, which were sinking fast when he took over. Gerstner describes this critical meeting in his book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, as follows:

‘At the time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics on transparencies that IBMers called—and no one remembers why—"foils." Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, "Let's just talk about your business." I mention this episode because it had an unintended, but terribly powerful ripple effect.’

Scott McNealy, a self-styled Chairman of Sun Microsystems, famously declared in 1997:

‘We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, "What a huge waste of corporate productivity." So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, "What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work."’

Regardless of whether the ban was real or its contribution to record-breaking profits a hyperbole, there is something to be said for PowerPoint slide shows in the form of an infomercial getting in the way of having an honest discussion of complex issues and detracting from finding out the truth.” - MarketingProfs

Next time you are called upon to share information, consider the benefits of standing in front of a group and talking. What would happen if there were dialogue instead of slides? Would you be seen as more of a consultant, or would your audience be uncomfortable, not knowing how to react?

Just some thoughts. Let me know what you think as well. (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

How NOT to Distribute Competitive Intelligence through PowerPoint

Finally, I’ll post something that you can use. While the lesson is on PowerPoint in general, please keep this handy the next time you are called upon to distribute your findings.

A buddy of mine passed me this video a while back and it has become a standard in our office. Not sure our PPTs are any better, but at least we have context when we laugh at each other’s presentations. Also, Dan McHugh included this in his CI blog a while back. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for my blog…



Now you know.

Star Trek, Competitive Intelligence and Analytics

Whether you are focused on market, sales or competitive intelligence, analytics are becoming more important, and useful, every day. Of course, the analytics tool you use has to be focused on your specific need. I see tools come and go that try to be everything to everyone, which ends up working for nobody.

The concepts of analysis and analytics, however, are sound.

I'll turn the presentation over to Matt Bailey, Founder of SiteLogic, a company that provides consulting and tools to increase website effectiveness. I enjoyed his lesson on how analytics may help save the lives of the "Red Shirts."

Analytics According to Captain Kirk
In my seminars, I enjoy teaching analytics because the fun is in finding effective and memorable methods to help people understand the concepts. One of my favorites is an analysis of the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.

What? You don't know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you're gonna die. That's the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn't seen any definitive proof; it's just what people said. (Remind you of your current web analytics strategy?) So, let's set our phasers on 'stun' and see what we find...

The Basic Stats:
The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%.

Data Segmentation:
However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:

Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)

Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)

Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4

Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.

However, that's only just simple stats reporting - ready for some analysis?

In-depth Analysis
Analysis involves asking questions about the data. Analysis attempts to bring reason and cause to the reported data in order to find why something is happening. With that data, one can improve the situation based on the intelligence gained from the analysis.

Q: What causes a red-shirted crewman to die?

On-board incident - 42.5%

Beaming down to the planet - 57.5%

There were also many fights during the mission; on the Enterprise, on planets, and various space stations. The fights were also divided between alien races or crazed crewmen (usually wearing red shirts).

There were 130 fights over 80 episodes.

18 of the 130 fights resulted in a fatality.

13 of the 18 fatal fights resulted in a red-shirt fatality.

Q: what was the rate of red-shirt casualties?

18 red-shirt fatality episodes:

8 multiple fatality occurrences; involving 34 red-shirted crewmen.

9 single red-shirt fatality situations.

It was found that red-shirted crewmembers tended to die in groups. In 17 red-shirt fatality episodes, 8 were multiple incidents, 9 were single incidents. In a little less than 50% of the fatal red-shirt situations, multiple crewmen were vaporized.

Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?
Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet's surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.

Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.

The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).

Here are the statistics:
Red Shirt Death episodes = 18
Episodes with fights = 55
Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%
Kirk "conquest" episodes = 24
Kirk "conquest" + fights = 16
Kirk "conquest" + red shirt casualty= 4
Red shirt death + fight + Kirk "conquest" = 3

And the data trends
Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%
14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)
Probability of a red-shirt "incident" when Kirk has a "conquest" = 12%

The red-shirt survival rate is slightly higher when Kirk meets women than when a fight breaks out. This trend necessitates the question: How often did Captain Kirk "meet" women? In 30% of the missions.

As the data shows, Captain Kirk "making contact" with alien women has an impact on the crew's survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out. Yet the analysis shows that meeting Kirk meeting women only happens in 30% of the missions.

Conclusion:
We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).

Reporting the Data:
Now, researching the data can be fun and informative. However, that is only half of the battle. The interesting part comes when you have to communicate not only the data, but your conclusions in an effective, persuasive manner. The best analysis won't go far if you can't communicate the conclusions in a manner that people understand.

There are a few options at our disposal. First, the PowerPoint Method.








There are a number of things wrong with the typical method of presenting data. For starters, this presentation could bore even the most hardened Starfleet manager (CEO). The typical corporate PowerPoint slide design is obnoxious and does not leave room for information, the charts are redundant, even unnecessary, and it does not do a good job of communicating the information or the analysis.

In most cases, PowerPoint is NOT the recommended tool for communicating analytics data. It is not the right tool for the job. Communicating analytics data involves providing conclusions based on facts, tests, comparisons, and research. In order to display the necessary data, a better method must be used, and not one that forces redundant bullet point and "snazzy" charts.

Visualizing the Data:There are some necessary elements required in developing a chart for this type data:

A list of the specific episodes

Events that happened in each episode

The number of events that happened in each episode

An easy way to identify data, then compare and contrast actions in all episodes

By seeing all of the available data in one chart, associations, patterns and conclusions can be drawn simply by comparing the relationships as they are presented. This is something that I learned from Edward Tufte - 1. More information is needed to simplify data presentation. 2. Unless all of the data is presented, there is no data integrity.

Information is Primary to Design
This is critical in developing a chart of information - the information is primary. List the necessary data elements first. Then, develop the design around the information, and not the other way around. Otherwise, a beautiful chart will lack the critical information necessary to support your conclusions. The graphing software that I found extremely effective for communicating the episode data for this Star Trek analysis is Microsoft's Office 2007, and in Apple's OS X graphics software.


(click image for full-size version)

I like this chart - eliminating the need for a legend is critical to allowing the information to flow. The data is the same color or object as the information we are trying to convey. Because there is no suitable color for Captain Kirk's affairs, we substituted a very flattering picture. Fights are represented by tiny phasers, which are not the best representation because of the size, but can easily be determined by the process of elimination. This chart allows conclusions and observations that simple charts, numbers, and explanations may never bring to the surface. It allows for easy comparison, both to other shirt colors, and in relation to other episodes. It also looks as though Kirk was a very busy man.

In the first year of the series, red-shirt casualties were lower than other color-shirted crewmembers. The second and especially the third seasons were especially brutal. In the third season, only red-shirted crewmembers died; maybe because the other colors enacted better safety protocols, or maybe because they avoided the bridge when a new planet came into view, for fear of beaming down with Cpt. Kirk.

Summary:
Of the elements that helped to provide this analysis, segmentation was key.

Segmentation of groups allows for comparisons. Comparisons allow you to spot trends that may be different from the rest. Asking questions of the data allows you to dig into specific trends and spot additional factors that affect the original analysis. Unless we dug into Kirk's personal life, we may never have spotted the contrast of Kirk's attraction to alien females as it related to saving red-shirt crewmen's lives.

Remember, when you have to account for lost crewmembers, your report needs to account for the how, the why, and the ability to draw specific conclusions as to how to affect the trends in the future. Depending upon your approach, you could either doom the project, and future red-shirted crewmen, or you could be visiting planets full of peaceful alien women.

Competitive Intelligence Newsletter - Personal Relationships Provide Better Results

Please enjoy this week's edition of the newsletter. We are very happy to bring these thoughts on Sales and Competitive Intelligence to our readers. If you would like to subscribe, simply send me an email (newsletter@primaryintelligence.com) and we'll add you. You will receive a copy of the next edition.

Webinar Technical Difficulties
Yesterday, we attempted to host a webinar about making business change with intelligence. However, our conference call provider experienced a phone outage in the area code we were using for the organizer line. For those that were effected, please accept our apologies. We'll reschedule the webinar soon and send invitations to those that were interested. If any that read this blog are interested in the topic, email me and I'll add you to the list of invitees (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Cover Story
When In Doubt, Choose the Personal Touch for Intelligence
By Lan Bui, Primary Intelligence
If you want to make sure that your intelligence is effective (in other words, that it provides the power to increase market share or create new market opportunities), you need to make the right decision... (For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Competitive Intelligence, Right Under Your Nose
The fact of the matter is that your customers know nearly as much about the competition as they do about you. They evaluated the competition before selecting you as their vendor. They are regularly courted by the competition and many of your best clients also have purchased from your competitors, either in the past or currently... (For more, click here)

The A-List Archive
How Salesforce.com Won a 1,500-Seat CRM Contract with Staples
Originally Published in Feb. 2005.
Based on concerns voiced by sales representatives, executives at Staples decided to reassess the Company's CRM solution and look at possible alternative solutions. Staples began by creating a short list of competitors that included Salesforce.com and Siebel Systems... (For more, click here)

Competitive Intelligence – Ask the CI Expert

Just a quick reminder..

Friday morning, from 10AM until 1PM ET, we invite anyone to chat with resident expert, Adam Dunford, by phone to discuss major intelligence ideas, implementation questions, how to use intelligence most effectively, etc…

There is NO COST for the call...all Adam asks in return is that we limit the conversation to 30 minutes so that we can accommodate as many of you as possible during this 3 hour period.

If you have been thinking about some new directions for your organization in 2007, this is an EXCELLENT opportunity to "kick" around some ideas and to get some feedback on your plans.

Mark your calendar and plan to give Adam a call Friday morning at: 801-838-9600 x5040.

Internet Explorer and gmail users may click HERE to receive an Outlook calander reminder.

Competitive Intelligence and Analysis Paralysis

The repository of all truth and knowledge, Wikipedia, defines Analysis Paralysis as “an informal phrase applied to when the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits. Analysis paralysis applies to any situation where analysis may be applied to help make a decision and may be a dysfunctional element of organizational behavior.”

For the past few posts, I have tried to make a strong case for using competitive, sales and market intelligence at the highest levels of a business to effect change and create a stronger market position. While intelligence is key to making the right moves, every decision-maker has to employ methods of evaluating intelligence and interpreting it based on the entire market picture.

Information is ubiquitous. Analysts tell you their opinion. 3rd-parties produce prodigious amounts of intelligence. Emails, RSS feeds, newsletters, web scrapers, financial reports, word of mouth, and dozens of other sources never stop producing “must-have” information. And, much of this information contradicts (partially or entirely) information from other sources.

So, how do you overcome Paralysis by Analysis? Let’s look at a few points that should help clear the logjam and get the business decision-making process back on track:

1. Define what success looks like for your company. Create initiatives that support the plan.


2. Concentrate on what you really want to know - Are you concerned with increasing market share or do you want to know the competition’s proprietary commission structure? How much will knowing the square footage of your prime competitor’s new warehouse in Des Moines help you attract new business and partners? Figure out what really matters.


3. Ignore intelligence that doesn’t support your initiatives that support success. The rest is distracting fluff at best. We all know that taking your eyes off the road to text-message is a recipe for disaster. Don’t take your eye off the ball, no matter how intriguing a data source may be.


4. Create a weighting system to deal with the intelligence that remains. Make sure that the critical intelligence supports or protects your success goal. If it doesn’t, categorize it as “interesting, but not essential” and move on.


5. Employ or contract with an analyst to help interpret the intelligence that is considered valuable.


6. Make a decision, move forward and refine your direction – Most of the time, moving in a direction is less harmful than staying put. And, if you are using the right kinds of intelligence, a bad decision will likely stub your toe before you crash into something dangerous.

For more information, I recommend an article by Michael Useem, Wharton School of Business. In his article, he comments, “A less than ideal action stands a chance of success, whereas no action stands no chance.”

Well said.

Good luck sifting and prioritizing. Intelligence is important and essential, but too much of a good thing can create big problems.

As always, if you have thoughts, leave me a post, call (801-838-9600 x5050) or email (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Upcoming Webinar - The Sad Story of Intelligence that Never Made a Difference

Just wanted to let you know that I will co-host a webinar next week with one of my associates, Mike Brose. A summary of the webinar them follows:

While information provides the fuel for strategic direction, how often does yesterday's "can't miss" competitive intelligence initiative get lost in the shuffle of today's realities?

Overall, too many sales, competitive, and market intelligence initiatives are judged ineffective due to the fact that the intelligence is never used to increase sales, gain a competitive advantage, or capitalize on a new market opportunity.


Primary Intelligence would like to invite you to a presentation that will show:

Why competitive intelligence is often under-utilized

How to generate findings that actually makes a difference

How to start with the end in mind

Different methods to ensure that the intelligence will provide a guiding beacon.

Those that will benefit include:

Marketing leaders

Market research managers

Market and Industry analysts

Sales leaders

Corporate leadership positions (CEO, CMO, CSO)

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/162321711

If you have any questions, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

You Couldn’t Make Competitive Intelligence So Irrelevant if You Tried

If your idea of effective competitive intelligence is gathering a bit of information, consolidating that information into a brief doc (perhaps on an attractive company letterhead) and sending that doc off to a distribution list, please stop reading. Go back to your cube, surf some more web sites and live a happy life.

Pardon me if I’m a little grumpy today, but I have just finished reviewing a company’s CI efforts and have added one more company to the pile of “irrelevant competitive intelligence efforts.”

What do I mean by irrelevant? In this case, the marketing department employs a few “analysts” to gather CI on a few competitors, market conditions and industry developments. These people put a little personal spin on the data and then launch their reports and briefs into different corporate branches through email, an intranet and their SFA tool.

(Yes, there is disdain in my description, but it wouldn’t matter if they increased the quality of their personnel or budget to gather more information.)

The problem here is that the CI program is not making any difference at all in their ability to be more competitive. The data that is collected is better than nothing, but even if it is read, nobody acts on it, provides feedback or seems to value it at any important level of the company.

The intelligence has to make a difference somewhere in the company or the program is simply a money sink that exists because “other companies have a CI department.”

I suppose that there are all kinds of people out there, but I, for one, would be bored out of my skull if I didn’t think my efforts were making a positive difference in the company. If I found myself in that situation, I would do everything I could to change the situation. To be clear, this isn’t a matter of personal ego. Instead, I want to leverage our competitive intelligence efforts to create as much benefit as possible.

Enough of the rant. On Friday, I’ll describe an environment that makes exceptional use of Competitive, Market and Sales intelligence.

And if you want to chat about these thoughts, please leave me a post, call me (801-838-9600 x5050) or email me (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Need a CI Consultant to Achieve Business Improvement? Think Primary Intelligence

Yeah. The subject line sounds like a commercial, but that is nearly unavoidable if I want to tell you about specific ways we’re providing high-value services to our clients. Some people over time have seen Primary Intelligence as a solid 3rd-party research group, capable of producing high-quality CI. We love our clients and appreciate their support.

The other group of our clients sees us as a full-service consultancy to effect positive revenue change within their organization. They have grown to appreciate our consultative, hand-on approach at multiple locations within their company. Starting with on-site kickoff meetings, personal consultations with stakeholders to explain and evangelize the endgame and training programs based on world-class competitive intelligence efforts and analytics, our clients are converting information into action plans that produce results. (Man. Even as a marketer, I nearly choked on my hyperbole. But, you have to know about these things. Remember, I’m only telling you these things because you need to know.)

The truth of the matter is that everyone needs some extra help sometime to produce the desired results. We specialize in providing that 3rd-party opinion. Combine our expertise in competitive intelligence with a consultative program that brings strategic changes to life and you have much more than a pretty report that gathers dust on executives' desks.

Deliverables for consulting solutions include:
1. One or two-day onsite workshops
2. Remote maintenance workshops
3. A block of time that can be used to consult with PI’s consultants
4. Identification and assessment of sales opportunities, competitive opportunities and customer opportunities (workshop content)
5. Work sessions on real-world opportunities
6. Mapping sales intelligence and competitive intelligence to sales processes and methodologies
7. Enhancements to current sales processes and methodologies
8. Sales and/or Management plan development
9. Sales plan/Management plan roll-out
10. Sales plan/Management plan monitoring

Customer Benefits
Primary Intelligence’s customers can expect the following benefits from PI’s consulting solutions:
1. Specific improvements to current sales processes and methodologies
2. Greater ROI on current research initiatives
3. Greater adoption of competitive intelligence and sales intelligence initiatives within organization
4. Enhance your organization’s competitive advantages in your target markets
5. Improve sales performance and effectiveness of sales channels
6. Ensure win ratio improvements and enhance revenue growth
7. Greater visibility of key competitive and sales intelligence initiatives

If you need a little extra information on the topic, give me a call. I’m not sales. I can tell it like it is. (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

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)

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 from Clients – What Should I Ask?

If you want to win more business, you have to take it from the competition. I know that’s obvious, but generating competitive intelligence that actually helps you compete more effectively is a surprising low priority of too many companies.

But, if your CI program is based on increasing market share, competing more effectively and leading your industry, you are going to have to find the most effective areas of CI. Last week, I posted my thoughts on generating CI from your Voice of the Customer programs.

Today, I’ll provide some ideas of different types of questions that might be asked in each stage of the prospect/client relationship. The following table provides a summary of question topics that might fit your situation.

If you don’t already perform all of these VOC programs, don’t worry. You can move many of the questions around to fit into your existing programs. Or, you might want to craft a new intelligence initiative to answer a group of questions.

And, be careful to make sure that you can ask these types of questions to all of your clients and prospects. Some industries are more sensitive than others.

Either way, you will harvest information that should provide you with competitive advantages in the near future.

This is the kind of work that we do at Primary Intelligence every day. It is our goal to make our Competitive Intelligence clients look like the hero.

And, if you need some help trying to figure out what works for you, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence and TOO MUCH DATA!

Ron Sathoff (an associate of mine at Primary Intelligence) brought me the results of a study from Advertising Age. The most interesting chart was called, "What Middle Managers Say About Obtaining Necessary Data" and the responses to the survey were generated from 1,009 US and UK respondents in January 2007.

(Source: Advertising Age, Digital Marketing & Media Fast Pack, Published April 23, 2007, Copyright 2007 Crain Communications Inc.)

If you are a competitive intelligence professional, you have to focus on improving the:

-relevancy of your data
-distribution methods of your data

If you consider that 59% say they can’t find existing information, 45% say that they don’t know what the rest of the company is doing and 40% of the respondents say that other parts of the company won’t share info, you have 144% of the people that are experiencing a problem.

Well, that’s not quite right (and you can see the my statistics training didn’t really stick), but it sure seems odd to me that this many managers are not able to find the information necessary to do their jobs better.

So how does a company overcome these obstacles and distribute information more effectively?

1- Someone in the organization has to understand and coordinate the primary
intelligence-gathering campaigns. Depending on the size of the organization,
this may be a difficult task, but a Director of CI should be able to compile and
update a basic list

2- This list needs to be distributed to different levels of management.
People in the organization need to know what is available.

3- If you have a “librarian” that catalogues the data, it is not enough
to “store” it in convenient places. Reports need to be advertised. Data needs to
be presented. Even an internal company newsletter to managers and execs would
help to serve the purpose. But, nobody can hide behind the excuse, “That report
has been posted to the intranet for months. They should have known.” You have to
innovate to distribute intelligence effectively

4- Road shows – Take data on the road. Summarize reports. Go to
scheduled meetings, whether the meeting is down the hall or down the interstate.

5- Build trust with rogue departments that don’t want to share data.
Find out why they want to hold it so close to the vest and work your way into
their trust

6- Recommend consultants to help departments build in the resident
intelligence. Some data recipients like to read reports and distill the results
into their own recommendations. The majority prefers to get the summary, next
steps and action plan. If this is in your comfort zone, go for it. If not, get
outside expertise.

This is the information age. Companies run on intelligence. They run efficiently and better than the competition when they run on the right data at the right time.

If you are an order taker, stop. You still have to listen, but you have to do more than run projects on an as-needed basis. Take responsibility for your company’s intelligence and make it work for more people.

If you have thoughts, questions or suggestions, contact me (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence, Right Under Your Nose

How often do you talk to your customers? If you add up the touches made by sales, account management, marketing and other client-facing services in your company, you might find that each of your customers is talking to you very regularly.

Hopefully, you have a central management group that has established some formal information gathering processes. Very common programs would include Customer Satisfaction, Account Loyalty, Win-back, Win Loss, Client Retention and Defection. Usually, these programs fall under the heading of "Voice of the Customer" (VOC).

So, you have two types of contact:
1-Informal, everyday conversations
2-Formal programs to gather Voice of the Customer Data

The fact of the matter is that your customers know nearly as much about the competition as they do about you. They evaluated the competition before selecting you as their vendor. They are regularly courted by the competition and many of your best clients also have purchased from your competitors, either in the past or currently.

Take a minute to see if your VOC program is generating competitive intelligence. In my experience, most customer sat and loyalty interviews focus on the client's experience with their present vendor. Go one step further and:

1-Ask your clients who they perceive as your biggest threats
2-Find out what they are hearing about the competitors' recent initiatives and offers
3-Understand how you stack up in various performance areas

The information will not only be enlightening, but will show your company what is happening in the market place in real time. Your company will benefit in the following ways:

1-Sales will know what is being said about your company by the competitors. They will have more intelligence to sell more effectively and counter negative messages
2-Marketing will know what the prospects and clients value in the marketplace (not just from you) and will be able to establish messaging that drive home the most important value propositions
3-Product Development will know the advances being made by the competition and will understand how well these innovations may be received by the marketplace.
4-Executives will have the right Competitive Intelligence to make strategic decisions.

And, to think... all of this information resides within your current customer base.

Next week, I will co-host a webinar with Ron Sathoff. The presentation will be made on Thursday, April 19 at 2 PM ET (11 AM PT). You can register by clicking here. Consider yourself invited.

And, Current Analysis (a company that I respect) has some information on creating CI from VOC. It is good to see shared thinking between two companies.

If you want to talk specifically about these ideas, call me (801-838-9600 x5050) or send me a note (cdalley@primary-intel.com). I would like to hear your ideas, too.

Making Competitive Intelligence Louder than the Corporate Noise

At Primary Intelligence, we just finished working with a company that had very mature competitive intelligence processes in place. The processes provided information that should have helped maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Overall, the builders of the CI program put a lot of work into creating and refining processes that collected the right information.

And, their department just lost most of its funding. New initiatives won’t be added and it will be difficult to preserve much of the status quo. Smart people will soon be working with other companies.

Why?

Because, the CI department never really figured out how to make the results meaningful to the executives. Decisions were rarely influenced (let alone, based on) the results of their efforts.

And, that’s all she wrote. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there…

This is not a one-time occurrence. And, it is a way of life that is not limited to the Competitive Intelligence, Marketing Research or Marketing departments of the world. In fact, important people in mission-critical roles are dismissed regularly if the perception is that they are not producing results.

What is the take home lesson?

Be seen. Be heard. Be effective and make your presence known. Specifically, in relation to Competitive Intelligence:

1- Push information into the executive boardrooms as often as possible
2- Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask about the current questions that need to be answered for the company leadership
3- Study the way key decision-makers in the company find and read information. Do they prefer raw data, spreadsheets and crude analysis or will they only consume small, polished briefs, one chunk at a time
4- Be a consultant. Present intelligence options and drive the topic of competitive intelligence methods as an agenda item.
5- Be prepared to show case studies of related efforts showing ROI potential in competitive intelligence.

After all this, be prepared to do it over and over. If you want to stay above the noise in the corporation, you have to be a little better organized, targeted and unified than everything else. Otherwise, you will just be static.

Inteligencia Competitiva

Yesterday, I received a very kind note from a gentleman (and Competitive Intelligence Professional) named Adrian Alvarez. His company, Midas Consulting , provides consultative services in Latin America.

I read his latest blog entry and found his observations to be insightful. If you don’t read Spanish, I’ll take the liberty of (very briefly) summarizing Mr. Alvarez’ message:

Adrian ponders the fact that Guillefmo Cañas has beaten Federer twice in their last two meetings. He suggests two reasons for Cañas’ success:

1- Based on quotes from Federer, his intelligence on Cañas game may be out of date. I would appear that Federer was surprised when he was not able to exploit Cañas’ game during the last two matches.
2- Cañas’ desire to win may have been underestimated.

These points are brought to business by demonstrating:

1- Companies need to update their intelligence regularly. Old (bad) data may be worse than no data.
2- Don’t underestimate the lengths that smaller, more hungry companies may go to in order to take your customers and market share.

Adrian says that he posts once a week. Join me in returning to his blog regularly to review his insights. And, if you read other Intelligence blogs and think I should know about them, email me.