Where are the Innovators in Competitive Intelligence?

So, I receive a daily alert on various competitive intelligence topics through Google’s Blog alert service. You probably track any number of topics (including the competition) by the same means (either in news, blog or regular search alerts). I like to track the “chatter” of the competitive intelligence community. I’ll also admit that I’m a little vain. I like to make sure that my blog entries make it into the top 5 each day. It took a while and a lot of consistent work to gain Google credibility, but we’re pretty visible now.

Everyday for the past year, I have received an email with at least 5 competitive intelligence topics which were generated that day. Occasionally, a rare treat will present itself in the form of a bit of information that makes me think. Mostly, I see article after article (day after day) about how the internet makes competitive intelligence possible for companies. Specifically, you should look at your competitor’s website and grab all of the information you can.

There is nothing wrong with this advice. Many competitive intelligence initiatives begin at that very spot. But, I’m a little bit surprised at how consistently some of the simplest techniques appear at the top of the searches each day.

If it isn’t “Watch your competitor’s web page,” it’s “Do a patent search.” Again, good advice, but I’m still surprised at how many people seem to come up with that idea each day and profess the practice as the next big development in competitive intelligence.

And, the whole web analytics field believes that they have reinvented the competitive intelligence field, simply by tracking Alexa traffic ratings. I’ll bet I see a couple of blog posts about that every week.

I sure do wish that the innovators in Competitive Intelligence were publishing more thoughts and creating more dialogue in the blog community. Of course, SCIP does their part to produce articles and thought leadership, but too few practitioners are participating in the blog world.

I will recommend a few of the blogs that I enjoy. Some of them are published more often than others, but they all come from very intelligent people who have a track record of sharing valuable insight.

Jon Lowder (SCIP)

Arthur Weiss (UK)

Adrian Alvarez (Latin America)

Dan McHugh (Seems to have disappeared in the fall, but his stuff was good)

CI Podcast – August J. Jackson

Fuld

EastSight Consulting

I know I’m missing a ton. Hopefully, you’ll help fill in the blanks with your comments. And, I have included some of our competitors. In fact, I am happy to include them. There are some smart people out there and their thoughts should be promoted above the din.

These people are developing new ideas and sharing them with the CI community. These are the people that will move the industry forward. And, I sure do wish that their intelligence, creativity and insight would drown out some of the drivel that currently exists.

Hopefully, my thoughts, expressed on behalf of Primary Intelligence, have provides some level of quality or inspiration. There are so many topics that need to be covered in competitive intelligence. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about key issues and less about the “new technique” of surfing your competitors’ websites.

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?

Using Win Loss to Produce Tactical Competitive Intelligence

During our most recent webinar (hosted on 10/25/2007 and available for download here ), Ron Sathoff and I talked about three of the biggest benefits of Win Loss. One of those points was the level of actionable competitive intelligence that is available through debriefs of your recent sales prospects.

At Primary Intelligence, we emphasize competitive intelligence that will help your sales, marketing and business development organizations create more revenue, strengthen competitive positioning and refine value propositions to be more effective than your competitors.

How do we do this? Primarily, we use Win Loss studies to measure competitive performance during some of the most valuable times; namely, when your company, product and sales performance are being compared with your direct competitors.

Some examples of this type of reporting and analysis include:

Competitive landscape analysis:


The chart above shows the frequency of encounters with specific competitors. In many cases, we’ll identify changing trends in the major players in different industries. We help show when the boutiques and upstarts are gaining traction. We’ll show the competitors that fight the hardest and those that fall by the wayside when you are in the opportunity. Of course, all of these findings can be filtered by vertical, company size, etc…

Competitive Performance Analysis


To increase your effectiveness and win more business, you have to know where you compare on key decision-making criteria versus you strongest competitors. Your prospects watched you perform and compared your capabilities with other companies in the deals. Over time, your strengths rise to the top while your weaknesses become very apparent.

With this type of intelligence, you can pinpoint today’s strengths and tomorrow’s improvements. Make sure that you are able to address perceived areas of deficiencies before the competition can exploit them.

Not only will this information help you sell more effectively, but you can keep tabs on the competition. Over time, you can watch where their strengths and weakness scores move. You can infer the areas that the competition has targeted for improvement and move to counter their gains.

SWOT Tables, Illustrated with Examples


Finally, let’s make the Strengths and Weaknesses section of the SWOT mean something. Direct quotes from your prospects explaining specific strengths and weaknesses put teeth into your recommendations. Sales people usually like this stuff the best because they can read a few sentences and use that information right away.

Boy. Today’s post has really come across as a commercial… more so than usual. But, that’s the way things go some days.. even in Australia. (Gold stars for anyone that posts or replies to me with the source of the “even in Australia” comment.)

Military Intelligence – A Template for Effective Competitive Intelligence

More than 95% of U.S. based businesses indicate that they have dedicated some amount of resources to the gathering of intelligence. This may include market, sales or competitive intelligence, but the goal is usually the same: be better at business than the next guy.

But, few companies would rate themselves as being very effective with the intelligence. And, the funny thing is the discrepancy of the perception between those that gather the intelligence and those that would use it. Executives usually rate themselves as “somewhat effective” or “very effective” as using intelligence while the intelligence professionals generally rate the executives as “not very effective.” Hmmmm. Why so many axes to grind?

Every organization should examine and reexamine its practices to create a continual improvement process. During this process, I would recommend that each organization take a little time to review other organizations that make intelligence a priority.

Now, it would be difficult to peek into other businesses and discover their secrets. You wouldn’t open your doors to this kind of review. Why would anyone else?

But, you can look at an institution that, overall, leads the world in the gathering, analysis and use of intelligence – The military. In fact, you can make the case that the military has the longest running and most successful intelligence system in history. (We won’t talk about policy makers and their use or misuse of intelligence. That’s another story for another day…

Where else are the stakes higher than on the battlefield? In a situation where lives and equipment are constantly at risk, we can learn some very critical things about how the military values its “competitive intelligence”, from gathering through strategic use.

“Most militaries maintain a military intelligence corps with specialized intelligence units for collecting information in specific ways. Militaries also typically have intelligence staff personnel at each echelon down to battalion level. Intelligence officers and enlisted soldiers assigned to military intelligence may be selected for their analytical abilities or scores on intelligence tests. They usually receive formal training in these disciplines.”

“Critical vulnerabilities are…indexed in a way that makes them easily available to advisors and line intelligence personnel who package this information for policy-makers and war-fighters. Vulnerabilities are usually indexed by the nation and military unit, with a list of possible attack methods.”

“Critical threats are usually maintained in a prioritized file, with important enemy capabilities analyzed on a schedule set by an estimate of the enemy's preparation time. For example, nuclear threats between the USSR and the US were analyzed in real time by continuously on-duty staffs. In contrast, analysis of tank or army deployments are usually triggered by accumulations of fuel and munitions, which are monitored on slower, every-few-days cycles. In some cases, automated analysis is performed in real time on automated data traffic.”

“Packaging threats and vulnerabilities for decision makers is a crucial part of military intelligence. A good intelligence officer will stay very close to the policy-maker or war fighter, to anticipate their information requirements, and tailor the information needed. A good intelligence officer will ask a fairly large number of questions in order to help anticipate needs, perhaps even to the point of annoying the principal. For an important policy-maker, the intelligence officer will have a staff to which research projects can be assigned.”

“Developing a plan of attack is not the responsibility of intelligence, though it helps an analyst to know the capabilities of common types of military units. Generally, policy-makers are presented with a list of threats, and opportunities. They approve some basic action, and then professional military personnel plan the detailed act and carry it out. Once hostilities begin, target selection often moves into the upper end of the military chain of command. Once ready stocks of weapons and fuel are depleted, logistic concerns are often exported to civilian policy-makers.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_intelligence)

The points that catch my attention are:

1. Intelligence professionals are present at each level of the military
2. They receive formal training in intelligence practices
3. Good intelligence officers stay very close to the policy-maker or war-fighter
4. Good intelligence officers ask lots of questions to make sure that the intelligence program is on the right track and can anticipate the leaders’ needs
5. Good intelligence officers package the intelligence in ways that the users can easily consume while still getting the intended “nutritional value”
6. While competitive intelligence personnel are not responsible for policy, direction or decisions, they should try to understand how these decisions are made. This will provide a deeper context to make future intelligence efforts more valuable.

In the next post, we’ll look at the usual structure of intelligence in today’s business.

And, if you have any thoughts, leave me a comment. I dare you.

Effective Competitive Intelligence - Problem 5 - Acceptance

In my last post, I started talking again about effective competitive intelligence. Again, my definition of effectiveness is:

– 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?

So, you (the intelligence professional) have figured out how to develop an intelligence program that provides the right information at the right time. You have listened to intelligence needs, adapted your techniques to generate information that has been requested and you have time on everyone’s calendar to present findings.

So, you have done everything right. Personal and professional success are yours, right? Hopefully so, but, no guarantees.

In a recent poll, Primary Intelligence found that 51% of sales, market or competitive intelligence people said that their executives were either mediocre or poor at using intelligence. At best, they listened to intelligence briefs but rarely incorporated the intelligence into their decision-making processes.

This same topic was addressed in our recent webinar which can be downloaded HERE.

The truth of the matter is that executives may or may not rely on intelligence to make strategic decisions. Very few executives receive formal training on the use of information and too few know how to accurately assess the value of different information sources.

To be clear, I’m not questioning the intelligence of corporate leaders. And, I am also happy to acknowledge the fact that a large percentage of executives are intelligence driven. But, the reality of the situation is that a great number of intelligence professionals work in companies where the value of their efforts will not be fully realized.

So, assess your situation. Figure out where you are. And remember, if nobody will listen, it doesn’t matter how loudly you shout.


If your goal is to make a difference in your company with your efforts, you need to be honest with yourself about your (or your department’s) ability to engage the executive level. If you can’t see that happening in the near future, either find a situation that will allow you to accomplish your goals or readjust your expectations. Anything else is fooling yourself, or drawing a paycheck. (No disgrace in feeding the family). Make sure you learn as much as you can in order to improve the résumé while you’re there.

I am personally associated with a gentleman that moved through three different companies in a 12 month period until he found a situation where he had potential to provide guidance at the executive level. When he was hired at the last company, he was brought on to provide competitive intelligence. Now, he is part of regular strategy meetings. He found a company that was receptive to his efforts and proved the worth of his skills and experience. He went for his goal.

As a last thought, answer this question about your company’s commitment to intelligence: ““If we find intelligence to answer our most pressing questions, are we willing to change?”

Let me know what you think. If you are in a great situation (or otherwise), I would enjoy hearing from you. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Upcoming Webinar – Making Competitive Intelligence Effective

Just wanted to let you know that I will co-host a webinar on September 27 with one of my associates, Mike Brose. The webinar will be conducted at 2PM ET (11AM PT) and is free of charge.

A summary of the webinar 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/976829978

Date: September 27, 2007
Time: 2PM ET, 1PM CT, Noon MT, 11AM PT

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.

The PI Competitive Intelligence Blog Saved You $8,000

Best Practices, LLC recently published a report called, “Building & Sustaining Impactful Competitive Intelligence Organizations.” This report is 132 pages and carries a price tag of $7995. I haven’t read the report. I probably won’t purchase it. But, if anyone has a copy they would loan me for some casual reading, I’d be very appreciative…

The key findings of the report are remarkably similar to information available from Primary Intelligence. For example:

· Best organizational fit: Organizational placement or “fit” of the CI function significantly impacts its ability to influence and engage decision makers. Strategic planning and business development are the locations most often cited by study participants as desirable departmental homes.

Primary Intelligence resources:

Blog: Creating Effective Intelligence, 4 part series starting here

Blog: The Wrong Way to do CI

Upcoming Webinar: Use Cross-functional Teams to Increase Intelligence Effectiveness (Click here to send an email for more info)

· Customer focus: High performing CI organizations operate within a framework that emphasizes customer focus to shape projects that have maximum impact. Top organizations target and serve critical customer segments that have the greatest impact on the business, personally engage with these customers to understand their business needs, and become instrumental in providing intelligence to inform their customers’ most important decisions. World class CI groups understand the specific needs of each customer and create custom deliverables to meet their individual requirements.

Primary Intelligence resources:

Blog: Why Haven’t I Been the Target of CI?

Blog: It’s Not About the Price

· External customers: External customers are a rich source of competitive intelligence because they talk with competitors and receive competitor product pricing and features information on a continuous basis. Customers also use competitor products and can identify weaknesses in them. However, tapping into this rich resource is a challenge for most CI groups.

Primary Intelligence resources:

Blog: VOC and CI

Blog: CI, Right Under Your Nose

Webinar: Using Your VOC Programs to Generate CI

I’m sure there was a lot of work put into the Best Practices report. Hopefully, those that purchase the report will act on the data and become more effective. But, visit some of our links above to find methods to put these concepts in practice, without having to spend $8,000.

In the meantime, I’m going to rethink this “free blog content” concept. Would my thoughts be taken any more seriously if we charged $5000/year for them? I’ll let you know as soon as we put the e-commerce system in place. ( ^;

Why is Competitive Intelligence Not Effective?

Competitive Intelligence. Everyone is doing it. You should too. (Of course, you already do)

You have a CI department. So do your competitors. So does everyone else. The question really is whether your intelligence efforts are effective at strengthening your competitive position, discovering new markets or developing your product/service/solution.

In short, does your company make changes to increase revenues and profitability based on your intelligence efforts?

Based on our experience, if you are like most companies, the effect of your intelligence efforts are minimized and, often, substantially. Why? There are five primary reasons that intelligence is not leveraged to its maximum potential:

1. Indecision
2. Delays and Timeliness
3. Misunderstanding Other’s Worlds
4. Communication Problems
5. Lack of Acceptance

Most of the time, these reasons apply mostly to the executive level of your company. If the change agents in your company are not committed to using intelligence as a road map or do not find your intelligence relevant, they will continue to make decisions based on intuition and whatever information they find helpful.

Overcoming these challenges takes effort, evangelization and commitment. Habits are not easily replaced.

For more information on increasing the effectiveness of your intelligence efforts, let’s chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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)

Why Haven’t I Been the Target of a Competitive Intelligence Program?

Last month, my wife, kids and I piled into the family suburban. We started from our home in Salt Lake City, pointed the car east and didn’t stop driving until we hit New York City. We’re a road trip family, but I don’t think we’ll need to see I-80 again for a while.

As we traveled, we frequented dozens of hotels, restaurants, tourist traps… I mean, attractions, gas stations and everything else that goes with a long road trip. You really shouldn’t travel 5,000+ miles without stopping to see a lot of places.

Anyway… at the consumer level, my observation overall was that the companies with whom I interacted had no program whatsoever to understand me as a client, let alone gather little bits of competitive intelligence. Maybe they are all making money hand over fist and they don’t see the need, but even with my feeble understanding of the synergy between sales, marketing and competitive intelligence at the consumer level, I saw opportunities for each of these vendors and service providers to pry a little more cash out of my wallet and away from competing establishments.

I’ll provide one quick example: We stayed at many different hotels/motels, often just off of the freeway. After a long day’s drive, we would attack the pack of motels, looking for the right amenities and the best bargain. When I approached the clerk in each motel, the conversation started with availability and quickly turned into a negotiation. If you were watching, you would have thought we were in a middle-eastern bazaar, haggling over the price of a gourd.

Never once did the clerk at the desk ask me where else I was considering. Never once, was I asked what was important to my family. Maybe the guest rooms had a comment card for me to fill out, but it was likely hidden behind some brochure.

To its credit, one of the hotel chains (of whom I am a loyalty program member) sent me a couple of emails after my stay asking about my satisfaction. They ought to ask me about my stay at a couple of the competitors’ establishments also. As a traveler, I’m looking for comfort and a decent price. I’ll tell them what the competition is doing if it will help me get a better stay for my family next time.

Maybe, my next gig will be a consultant to consumer-oriented companies. The dollars and margins may be smaller, but the volume can be huge. It would make my day to be influential in the change of an entire industry with a few simple measures.

Primary Intelligence Newsletter - Living Inside the Prospect's Head

The newsletter is out again. We would enjoy feedback. If you want to subscribe, simply use the subscription option on the individual article pages (accessed by clicking on each of the links below)

Cover Story
Experts Corner: Living Inside the Prospect's Head
By Glen Remy, Primary Intelligence Inc.
Memo to sales: Company X is strongly in the market for our product. Their current contract with Competitor Y will expire in four months and they are highly likely to evaluate alternate programs. Their biggest unmet needs are integration with current programs, individual configurability... (For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Competitive Intelligence and Too Much Data!
In a recent study by Advertising Age, middle managers aired their opinions about the effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence and identified specific problems that cause intelligence in general to be ignored. (For more, click here)

The A-List Archive
3rd-party Review of Keane's Sale into Alliance Hospital
Originally Published in December 2004.Alliance Hospital, a small, physician-run facility in Odessa, Texas, needed to replace its inadequate information and billing system. Because the hospital was losing revenue, and because it did not have a large IT staff, Alliance sought a solution that would meet its needs while still being quick and easy to implement.(For more, click here)

Secret of Strategy, Competitive Intelligence Style (Part 2 of 2)

Last post, I provided the first in a 2-part series on strategic thinking and preparation. It is my assertion that Competitive Intelligence is too often used for tactical purposes only (sales and marketing) and is not featured in the boardroom for critical decision-making as often as it should be.

While this may not be the case in your company, you should still evaluate how often executives turn to your competitive intelligence programs. Even better, have the executives had a hand in designing the intelligence initiatives? If your executive team has helped create the intelligence programs, odds are good that they are invested in the program. Otherwise, you risk being relegated to the “nice to have” category; at least, from the strategic level.

And, if your company does not use competitive intelligence for strategic decision-making, what can you do to increase the visibility and usefulness of your intelligence initiatives in the boardroom? My first recommendation is to make sure that you personally are thinking strategically. Evaluate your intelligence programs and determine if your current information meets the strategic needs of the company. If your information is too tactical in nature, at best, it will be interesting but worthless at the highest levels.

Without further ado, I’ll let Mr. Lemberg finish his thoughts on Strategic Thinking:

Secret of Strategy - Part 2
Of course you've heard that when you do what you've always done, you'll likely get what you've always got. In this case that means playing the tactical game: coming up with acceptable--or worse--comfortable options and executing them as time permits. Likely, what you'll get is business as usual, and things will be... well, they'll be fine.

But "fine" may not be what you're after, and you are probably reading a series called "How to Create Strategies That Work" so you can do better--perhaps much better...

And if you are willing to take some time and do your homework: the research, inquiry, analysis, synthesis, and the activation of strategy--you can add dramatically more power to each one of your individual tactics, and potentially revolutionize your entire business.

In the beginning of this series I showed you how to start the process of selecting a market-dominating business and marketing strategy.

The first four steps are:
• Set your vision
• Gather environmental and competitive intelligence
• Take stock of your organization's strengths and weaknesses
• Answer the Global Strategy Question

I covered those in The Secrets of Strategy, Part 1. In this article I'm going to cover the next four steps:

• Establish decisive objectives
• Rate and rank your "SWOTs"
• Match your internal and external factors to identify strategic alternatives
• Select the highest-impact strategies for implementation

Establish Decisive Objectives
Strategy is contextual. This means you should not make any kind of strategic decision--choosing strategy A over Strategy B, for instance--without first setting a context with Decisive Objectives.

The word decisive is from the Latin decidere, which means to cut off. Decisive objectives are the goals that cut off irrelevant business opportunities and distracting details. They define the boundaries of your company's efforts and direction, and establish the measures by which you will gauge your success.

This step is to select company-defining goals, the attainment of which will mean your vision has started to become a reality. These objectives or goals should relate to the following:

• In what markets will you do business?
• What market share will you have? Will you be a marginal player with a small percentage, a big player with a significant portion of the market, or will you dominate your market and crush all competition?
• Where will you operate geographically? This question ties back to the issue of market share; you might dominate the market locally but be a small player nationally.
• How much revenue and profit will you earn? Larger revenue goals will have different strategic needs.
• What impact will your business have on your industry, your community, your world?
• How will you exit your business? Will you run the business and eventually pass it on to family members? Will you sell it privately? Will you go public?

These are examples of the kinds of goals which shape your company. The decisive objectives create the context for the strategy alternatives you generate.

Rate and rank your "SWOTs"

Previously, you analyzed your external environment and internal strengths and weaknesses. Now rate and rank the most important factors.

Evaluate each external factor: is it an opportunity to be taken advantage of, a threat to be defended against, or is simply something neutral you can safely ignore? Do the same for your internal factors: are they strengths to capitalize upon, weaknesses which much be bolstered or outsourced, or neutral conditions?

Using your Decisive Objectives as a guide, select amongst the potential opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses, those factors you consider critical to the success of your business. (Ignore the neutral factors.)

Group the critical factors into internal and external. Rate each internal factor from .01 to .99 based on its perceived importance to your business. The total should add up to 1.0. Do the same for the external factors.

Select the top five to ten internal factors and external factors for matching.

Match your internal and external factors to identify strategic alternatives

Matching combines each internal factor with an external factor, generating a potentially relevant strategy. A software manufacturer might match an internal strength such as flexibility with an external opportunity of a new law in a related industry, yielding a strategic alternative to reconfigure the software and provide solutions to the new legal requirements.

Or, a duck farmer might match his internal strength of breeding expertise with an external opportunity demanding low-fat, high-protein foods to yield a strategy selling low- fat duck.
Strengths are matched with opportunities to create SO strategies. These are generally your strongest, highest leverage options. Strengths match with threats to create ST strategies. These use your natural assets to minimize external threats to existing revenue streams and your current competitive position. But since the best defense is often a strong offense, you may find yourself reverting to an SO strategy-- typically a better alternative.

WO strategies use external opportunities to reduce the impact of internal weaknesses. Of course, you may simply choose to put your resources into areas of strength and outsource weak factors.

WT strategies are the weakest of all: defensive approaches designed to minimize internal weaknesses or external threats. Sometimes necessary to protect weakening revenue streams, there are often other, more powerful approaches that take better advantage of company strengths.

This process is often called SWOT, named for the four types of internal and external factors. I prefer to call it SOT, since the most powerful options will not pay much attention to weaknesses. In our business philosophy you will gain more ground more quickly by amplifying and exploiting your strengths and outsourcing--or ignoring--the areas in which you are weak.

Select specific strategies for implementation

At this point many people choose to intuitively select which strategies to pursue. Others may prefer to bring rigor to the ranking process. This final step combines your various subjective analyses into a defined framework, giving each strategy a strategic impact score.

Compare your new strategic alternatives to your list of critical factors to find those factors affected by each strategy. For each match, rank the attractiveness of the strategy relative to the factor from 1-4 (1--not attractive, 2--somewhat attractive, 3--reasonably attractive, 4--highly attractive) and multiply it by the factor's rating (.01 - .99). Sum all the scores for that strategy into a total "strategic impact score."

Lastly, select your go-forward strategies based on the highest strategic impact scores.

This is a demanding process with many steps, but it is well worth the effort. The strategies you create will take greatest of advantage of your strengths and opportunities, while protecting your company most effectively against threats and weaknesses. They will provide your company with leverage to make the most of your assets, your competitive position and your markets, all while insuring your strategies are consistent with your company's vision and goals.

Important notice for strategy-minded entrepreneurs:
Strategy creation is a long road to hoe, and goes much more smoothly when you know what questions to ask and in what sequence. To make it easier for you and your senior team, I've created the Growth Strategy Roadmap.

This program of flowcharts, questions, checklists, and detailed processes takes you through the entire progression of evaluating your external and internal environments, and provides all the steps and forms necessary to generate matched options, and rate, rank and select a high-leverage, high-growth strategy.

© Copyright 2004 Quantum Growth Coaching. All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul Lemberg's clients call him "the unreasonable business coach" because he insists they pursue goals and take actions far outside their comfort zone to make more money than they previously thought possible. To get business coaching, tips, tools and strategies like these, visit http://www.paullemberg.com/execoach.html.

Competitive Intelligence - Working Data for Sales Teams

Some say that knowledge is power. We at Primary Intelligence believe that the right kind of knowledge is exponentially powerful.

An example of our intelligence and feedback we provide is listed below. In this example, our client is Tenscon, a software solutions provider. Now, we have changed the names to maintain confidentiality, but our customer list includes companies such as Microsoft, Avaya, Symantec and EDS are the kinds that tend to do very good work with us.

The table below shows "Tenscon's" competitive advantage against 4 competitors (Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality, but the results are real).

The results show some competitive advantages in the company and sales, but the product has some significant weaknesses against Sistemic and Howein Partners:

Overall, Tenscon had generally higher performance ratings than the competition, especially in the company and service drivers. However, several ratings for the sales team were lower than those of the competition as a whole, indicating that some improvement in these areas may be needed.

An analysis of the responses from clients yields the following key findings concerning Tenscon’s performance:

-Tenscon was seen as a strong and solid company, but was not generally seen as an innovator. As a senior vice president from Dillent explained, “I don’t think they showed as much innovation in their solution. I think they took a much more conservative approach, a much more introverted approach rather than an innovative approach.” The CIO from ABC Aerolineas echoed this sentiment by saying, “We have some applications that we expected to be technologically advanced, but what they offered us was delayed during the delivery process. By this I mean that some applications were not as innovative as we expected them to be.”

-Some clients were concerned that Tenscon was not offering a unified solution, but rather a set of pre-packaged offerings. For instance, a respondent from ABC Aerolineas said that the initial Tenscon team did “have a real understanding of our model, and they just trying to sell us stand-alone systems. This was the idea. The idea was a cost-effective strategy, and people from Tenscon did not understand our model, our strategy, the market, or our needs. They just about systems and stand-alone processes.” A representative from Flentic Crendall explained, “One of
complexities of [Tenscon] is it is five separate businesses that have been swept into one company. It’s trying get them to work as one company with one approach. don’t think that there was a perfect solution.”

-While a majority (66 percent) of clients believed that Tenscon put the right people in front of them, there were some concerns that decision makers were not involved in the negotiation process. A vice president at JNPD expressed this sentiment, saying, “As some of these things escalate, or we run across impasses, there might be opportunities in the future that if we were
able to talk directly to the true decision makers, then it might expedite the process.” A senior vice president from Fiserv also said, “It took a while to get the right representatives from the healthcare side and from the financial side [of Tenscon] to be on our team.”

-Understanding the clients’ needs and business requirements was a theme throughout the interviews, and an area where respondents believed Tenscon could improve. Tenscon’s ratings in this area were slightly lower than the average for other bidding companies, indicating an area of advantage for Tenscon’s competitors. As the CIO of Coles Meyer explained, “Sometimes I was worried [that they gave] affirmative answers without really understanding what the issues were. At
times I felt they didn’t understand how big and complicated the work was going to be. ‘Let’s make the sale and then afterwards worry about how we are going to deliver it.’ There was a lack of business and delivery knowledge with the up front sales team. With other vendors we don’t experience that.”

If you have any ideas of how to make these data come to life in your organization, drop me a line. (801.838.9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

SellingPower Gets It, Too

I was very pleased today to see that SellingPower (the leading source of sales management information) gave Primary Intelligence top billing in its Sales Management Newsletter (Keeping Tabs On the Competition). Heather Baldwin, Contributing Editor, attended our webinar in April and provided a very thorough summary of our philosophy to create impactful competitive intelligence from your most productive information channels; your clients.

Our new website homepage attempts to drive the same message home. In the diagram just below the header, Primary Intelligence attempts to demonstrate all of the areas where sales intelligence can be a) generated and b) put to use to create additional competitive advantage. Of course, we have an intelligence product for each step. If you want to find out more, please visit. Let me know how you like the visual representation.

Most importantly, I still think that most companies can increase their Competitive Intelligence quantity and quality by focusing on the reasons why people buy from their company and the competitors. This intelligence should be gathered after the first sale and also, after each additional renewal, upgrade, additional sale or lost sale in any of those events.

Specifically, take a look at your customer sat, account loyalty, win/loss and other client-studies. What would happen if you added a question or two? For example:

- Which other vendors provide services like ours?
- What are some of their key selling points?
- Where do you feel that we are superior to [vendors]
- What have innovations have [vendors] included that we should think about?

Of course, you have to assess your current study, client base and other factors. You don’t want to start your clients thinking too hard about your competitors. But, don’t think for a minute that even your most loyal clients don’t know anything about your competitors. And, if they’re loyal to you, they’ll most likely share information with you, too.

Let me know what you’re thinking about this stuff. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Dan McHugh – A Pretty Smart Guy who likes Competitive Intelligence

I was flattered this week to find a kind mention about Primary Intelligence in an associate’s blog. Mr. McHugh enjoyed some of my thoughts about attaching ROI and results to your competitive intelligence efforts. (click HERE to visit Dan's blog)

Dan McHugh started his blog a couple of weeks ago. In his first post, he provided a preview of what to expect from his writings:

What to expect:

• Advice and insights for “Lone Wolf” CI practitioners as well as those setting up thier own CI/Market Intelligence practices.
• Thoughts on the use and misuse of CI by Technology companies.
• CI in Asia Pacific and some of the unique pitfalls and benefits.
• A bit of irreverence and the continuing battle between sales and marketing.

What not to expect:

• Commentary on the competitors I focus on for my day-to-day job. Not that I don’t like being opinionated regarding them, but rather, I want this blog to be about the art of CI. I also greatly admire the work that many of my brethren do, regardless of the company they work for.

In my opinion, this type of information would be of benefit to any practitioner of Competitive Intelligence. Best wishes to Dan in building a readership. So far, his content is worthy of my time.

I don’t know how to personally contact Dan, but I believe that he is the Senior Manager, Competitive Intelligence – APAC at Oracle. Hopefully, I’ll have lunch with him someday.

If you enjoy reading blogs and articles on market, competitive and sales intelligence, do the author a favor and leave a comment. Agree with the article. Offer a contradictory opinion. Promote your own work and point of view. Half of the fun of blogging is receiving feedback and knowing that you have created a dialogue rather than a monologue.

And, just when you thought statistics were boring…
One last thing from Dan’s blog. Today, he posted the following:

Aaron Koblin looks at 15,000 flights that flew in and out of the USA over a period of 24 hours. You would think that would be pretty much the end of the story. Click to see just how exciting statistics can get!

I’m always happy to chat about competitive intelligence (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)

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)