Friday, January 4, 2008

A Fortune 100 Company that Understands Competitive Intelligence

Last October, Mike Brose and I presented a webinar titled “The Sad Story of Competitive Intelligence that Didn’t Make a difference.” In short, we talked about how companies spend money on sales, market or competitive intelligence but fail to leverage that intelligence to make a difference. Then, we showed the recipe to gaining more value. The solution is simple: Involve people that can make a difference and show them how the intelligence drives better decisions. Cross-functional teams of executives and senior managers work best.

(Download the webinar here)
(Related blog postings can be found at: Webinar Wrap-Up: Effective Competitive Intelligence,
How Can You Tell if Competitive Intelligence is Effective?)

Recently, I talked with one of our Fortune 100 clients about their competitive intelligence systems, acceptance and use. Some of the conversation was focused directly on the sales intelligence we provide them. Talking about her organization, my contact stated:

  • The sales managers that understand how to use intelligence have teams that sell more
  • The marketing group uses our intelligence to measure their branding efforts and better understand the client.

  • Those are fairly common bits of feedback.

    But, the thing that made me smile was when she said that the legal department uses the intelligence and performance scores to modify T&C and other legal requirements that are in the sales process.

    When your legal team wants to know:

    A) How they score
    B) Where they stand in relation to specific competitors
    C) Specific information that they can use to make improvements

    … and then monitors their score over time…

    You know that you have an intelligence-focused organization.

    Just for fun, ask yourself the last time someone outside of marketing asked for intelligence that realistically has the ability to increase sales.

    This is just a small bit of the conversation and one example of many of companies using intelligence to beat the competition in the marketplace. If you want to talk about some other ideas, give me a call (Chris, 801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

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