Competitive Intelligence Newsletter – Can Sales People Sell through Change?

This week, we examine the world of sales and the importance of monitoring their performance in the sea of change we call “their world.” Science has shown that many people (sales reps included) have difficulties accepting changes and variation that are common in business life. Primary Intelligence shows a way to head of problems before attitudinal issues hurt the pipeline.

As always, if you would like to a no-cost semi-weekly subscription to the Primary Intelligence Competitive Intelligence Newsletter, send an email to info@primaryintelligence.com with your name and email address. You will receive the next issue.

Cover Story
You Moved My Cheese! How Can I Sell?
By RoxAnne Loosle, Primary Intelligence
A company's desire to reduce sales force turnover and to develop a confident sales force make tracking a company's sales force's attitudes very important. The vocal minority aren't always the best source on which to base sales initiatives or policies...(For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Competitive Intelligence Tip #1 for 2008 - Make Your CI Produce Revenue
Information costs money? Intelligence makes money!” Essentially, any competitive information that a business manager acts on becomes intelligence...(For more, click here)

The A-List Archive
Bloomington Hospital & Healthcare Selects McKesson for Its Information Needs
Originally Published in March 2005.
Bloomington Hospital & Healthcare System's contracts for its health information systems were coming up for renewal, so the organization decided to reevaluate its options. It looked for a solution that could be integrated throughout the entire enterprise...(For more, click here)

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)

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)

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)

Increasing ROI from Competitive Intelligence Efforts

If you have a CI program, take a minute to measure the ROI of your efforts. Instead of simply building a large library of information, ask yourself the following questions:

• Top-line Revenue
– Will this intelligence create new revenue opportunities?
– Will we take away sales from the competition?
– Will our existing accounts stay longer and be more profitable?
• Bottom-line
– Can we be more efficient or learn best practices?
– Are there better ways to manage our processes?
• Application
– How easily will we be able to act on these data?

If you are able to identify areas where you are directly increase top or bottom-line revenue, you are one of the rare success stories in competitive intelligence. If you are like the majority, you may want to consider some of the following tips:

• Reactive CI does not constitute a program. Develop an intelligence program that helps sales, marketing and product development informed of the competition's movements in the most strategic areas. Ignore all of the other noise.
• Information becomes “must have” when executives depend on it to move forward. Understand the willingness of your executives to use intelligence to make decisions. Determine which types of intelligence are best received. Don't spend time developing programs that produce data that won't be used.
• Do not assume that “stacks of information” are better than smaller quantities of targeted intelligence. Busy work does not equal effectiveness.
• Determine WHAT to investigate before starting a search. If you don't have a goal in mind, you will end up on wild goose chases. Everything begins to look appealing if you don't know what you're after.

Use these tips to work with your manager and executives to create a program rather than a competitive intelligence library.

Webinar Wrapup - Does Your Sales Team Have Heart

Yesterday, Adam Dunford (VP Product Development) and I presented an answer to that very question through our webinar. The idea is that the performance of the sales team, how they think and feel about their products, services, and management team clearly impacts their efforts, success, and $$$. It is common sense that if the sales team is demoralized, win rates and pipelines are bound to suffer.


In response to that idea, Primary Intelligence has developed a product called Sales Confidence Index. The following description will help you understand the purpose of this system:

• Consumer Confidence Index - The Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) is defined as the degree of optimism on the state of the economy that consumers are expressing through their activities of savings and spending Economists closely track consumer confidence because consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

• Sales Confidence Index - Companies closely track salesperson confidence because sales team efforts account for the economic activity of the firm. The confidence of the salesperson, loyalty, his or her competitiveness, confidence in the strategic direction, value delivery, and innovativeness measures the sales person’s outlook over the next six months.

If you would like to watch a reply of the webinar, the recorded version is available here. If you’re willing to watch that demo, talk to me about the possibility of the offer extended at the end of the presentation. (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Why Doesn't Competitive Intelligence Flow to Sales?

It has been my observation that most companies perform some type of competitive intelligence. In fact, most have several, if not dozens, of programs. Each research initiative is built to produce information upon which decisions may be based.

It has also been my observation that the production of intelligence is almost always handled by the marketing department, which makes sense. Of course, I am painting in broad strokes, but if you can accept that most analysts, competitive intelligence specialists and market research groups fit under the marketing umbrella, we should all agree on this point.

In fact, in one of our Primary Intelligence internal studies, 89% of companies said that they have a formal competitive intelligence program in place. This is higher than the 78% that have a customer sat program and the 65% that conduct account retention analysis.

But, when we ask the sales reps about the availability and use of competitive intelligence in their jobs, only 56% of sales managers claim competitive intelligence as one of their tools. A higher percentage of sales reps (68%) say that they use competitive intelligence to sell. But, I don’t know the percentage of intelligence that comes from marketing vs. self-generated intelligence. Sales reps and account managers can be very resourceful when it comes to preparing to do their job.

All this seems to beg the question… why isn’t sales organizing competitive intelligence initiatives more often? Why don’t sales managers use competitive intelligence to position more effectively? Why doesn’t the sales department work more closely with marketing?

It is my experience that there is more than one obstacle. But, the most important fact is that the intelligence is delivered in chunks that sales doesn’t want to eat. This fact seems to outweigh the type of intelligence available or any other obstacles that might exist between sales and marketing.

Another important fact to consider is that the competitive intelligence is often commissioned by management and executives, which means that the intelligence is not designed from the outset to satisfy sales nor answer questions relevant to sales.

Both of these problems can be overcome through tighter communication between sales and marketing. Odds are that current intelligence initiatives can be reworked to include a few tidbits for the sales group. Furthermore, marketing can study the current information sources used by sales and mimic those sources to deliver bits and pieces (or full meals) straight to the sales reps.

If the intelligence can make a sales rep 10% more effective (and current evidence suggests that 10% is a conservative figure), how much revenue does your company stand to gain by improving the intelligence communication process? What opportunity is being lost today by not doing so?

Let’s talk about the possibilities and what they mean to you. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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)

Getting the Most out of Win Loss Analsysis

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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)