Upcoming Webinar: Keys to a Win Loss Program that Works

Your company knows that it needs feedback from the market to perform and a Win Loss program makes a lot of sense. Marketing can make adjustments. Sales can target their training. Product Development can build it closer to what the clients expect. Just one question:

What is the most effective way to run a Win Loss campaign to develop all of this information?

The opportunity to increase your sales and marketing success sits right at your doorstep. But, do you have everything you need to achieve the greatest potential? Can you make simple changes that will result in huge increases?

Primary Intelligence invites you to a presentation that will show:

How sales and marketing can work together to build a world-class program

Common obstacles that derail Win Loss initiatives in the early phases

Tactics that increase interview response rates

Real-world stories from successful Win Loss practitioners showing their innovative uses of results

Register Here

Keys to a Win Loss Program that WorksDate: Thursday, January 24, 2008
Time:
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT
1:00 PM – 2:00 CDT
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM MDT
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
Duration: 1 Hour
System Requirements:PC-based attendees: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, VistaMacintosh®-based requirements: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer


Those that will benefit include:

Marketing leaders

Market research managers

Market and Industry analysts

Product development managers

Sales leaders

Corporate leadership positions (CEO, CMO, CSO)

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Purpose of Business – Competitive Intelligence May Be the Key

Lately, I have been reading about business, business development, and the relationship of marketing in the entire mix. So many different thoughts… So many different ideas.

I found one idea while researching the topic, “The Purpose of Business.” Below, I’ll share a little bit with you:

Dr. Peter Drucker: A business enterprise has two basic functions: marketing and innovation

If we want to know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. And the purpose must lie outside the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society, since a business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. The customer is a foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. The customer alone gives employment. And it is to supply the customer that society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise.

Because it is the purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. These are the entrepreneurial functions. Marketing is the distinguishing, the unique function of the business.

ACTION POINT: Find out what needs your customers want fulfilled today. Determine how well your products are meeting the needs of your customers.

If the idea is to create a customer, I don’t want to just stop there. In marketing, I want to create a customer better than anyone else in my space. If there are a certain number of potential customers out there, I want to grab as many as possible. It’s not that I’m greedy. It’s just the nature of business.

And, if (as the article says), there are two basic functions (marketing and innovation). The most important tasks will be focused on marketing and innovating better than anyone else in your industry.

Where does CI fit into understanding the marketing and innovation of your competitors? I’ll give you an example that has provided Primary Intelligence and dozens of our clients with powerful insight into these two areas: Win Loss, Post-implementation and Account Loyalty & Retention.

Win loss
The ultimate study of creating a customer. Win loss is a competitive intelligence effort that focuses specifically on the process of building the customer relationship, conveying value, presenting a solution to a need and comparing your performance in those areas to that of the competition. “Why isn’t the business growing?” “What aren’t we creating customers like we thought we would?” If those answers are important to you, win loss is generally the most effective answer.

Primary Intelligence has a very sophisticated win loss system the rivals the results of just about any in-house program we’ve seen. Yes, I’m bragging. Talk to me and find out why.

Post-implementation
Just after the customer has been created, you should be very close to them to determine: a) how life has changed for them now that they have your product/service/solution in place and b) What are the additional bits of service they wish you provided now that the initial needs have been met.

Don’t think that these conversations should happen only with your own clients. If you know the customers that signed with the competitor, make sure you’re talking to them 60-90 days into their experience. You still own a relationship built during the sales process and that relationship can be leveraged to understand whether the grass really is as green as originally thought. What would your sales guys give to be able to say, “You can choose [competitor x] and they have a good product, but the people we talk to say that [competitor x] consistently falls short in these three areas…

Account Loyalty and Retention
There is no argument that keeping a customer is often more important that creating one. Account loyalty and retention show you how to be more effective at keeping a much higher percentage of clients when it is time to renew. I’ll explain the difference between the two:

Account loyalty studies are conducted during the client life-cycle. This research helps you see where the customer experience has helped your chances of renewing a client and where the gaps may be. These efforts should be taken throughout the client lifecycle, but are traditionally administered a few months before accounts begin their renewal considerations.

Account retention programs are conducted just like win loss studies. However, in this case, the study attempts to answer “Why do our clients renew/defect” rather than “Why do our prospects choose us or the competition?” Primary Intelligence has a powerful set of predictive analytics that can be applied to this type of study; just like our win loss.

Be the Best
In the final tally, you’ll have to ask yourself: “Are you in it to do just well enough or to generate customers better than the other guys?” Be in it to win. It’s much more fun that way.

Then, look for the tools that will give you the biggest chance of creating a new customer at the expense of the competition.

Thoughts? Let me know. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Using Data to Make Decisions in Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the competition positions itself against you

The perception of the prospects in regard to your value proposition

The right message at the right time of the evaluation process

Your company’s image compared with that of the competition

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

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

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

Star Trek, Competitive Intelligence and Analytics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)

Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)

Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4

Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

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

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

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

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

On-board incident - 42.5%

Beaming down to the planet - 57.5%

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

There were 130 fights over 80 episodes.

18 of the 130 fights resulted in a fatality.

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

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

18 red-shirt fatality episodes:

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

9 single red-shirt fatality situations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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








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

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

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

A list of the specific episodes

Events that happened in each episode

The number of events that happened in each episode

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

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

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


(click image for full-size version)

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

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

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

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

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

Making Competitive Intelligence Effective with Cross-functional Teams (Part 4 of 4)

Finally, the last installment in this rather long thought. Some day, I’ll learn that blogs are about short, concise thoughts. Maybe multi-part installments are better offered in newsletters or other forums. Until then, this is what you get.

On the topic of making Competitive Intelligence effective, I have observed a number of companies over time that have produced extraordinary results through innovative use of the information. It is my experience that these successful companies do the following:

1. Have a commitment to making decisions with intelligence


2. Create a cross-functional team, including leaders from Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Finance and the Executive Board


3. Determine the most effective routes to generating effective competitive intelligence


4. Involve a 3rd-party to provide guidance (This is not a shameless plug. I’ll explain later)


5. Provide a strong voice to evangelize the competitive intelligence


6. Demand accountability of leaders based on their willingness to consider and implement changes based on the intelligence initiatives

In the last few posts, (8/1, 8/6, 8/8) I have talked about the first five points in the bullet list above. I’ll finish up with the sixth point today.

Demand accountability
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about a Culture of Discipline. He says, “A culture of discipline is not just about action. It is about getting the disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who then take disciplined action.

This doesn’t directly speak to accountability, but I believe it is implied. A culture of accountability rests on the shoulders of a culture of discipline.

The expectation has to exist in your organization that intelligent actions will be followed through. High-level authorities in the company should expect reports on intelligence driven initiatives. Middle managers should be willing to report on their teams’ progress. The cross-functional team ought to establish metrics for success. Such metrics might include ROI, market share growth, retained accounts, minimum client profitability, etc… Intelligence can be an integral part of increasing any one of these metrics.

Final thoughts
Before I started this series of thoughts, a little competitive intelligence project seemed so simple. Don’t worry. It still can be. But don’t expect much out of it.

If you are willing to look at the big picture, you’ll see the necessity of incorporating more structure into your competitive intelligence programs.

Author-Christopher Dalley, Primary Intelligence

Making Competitive Intelligence Effective with Cross-functional Teams (Part 3 of 4)

This is the third in a four-part installment of thoughts on making competitive intelligence effective in your organization. Wasn’t sure I had this much information on tap. Then again, I probably don’t have a shortage of words anywhere else in my life. Why should this be any different?

On the topic of making Competitive Intelligence effective, I have observed a number of companies over time that have produced extraordinary results through innovative use of the information. It is my experience that these successful companies do the following:

1. Have a commitment to making decisions with intelligence


2. Create a cross-functional team, including leaders from Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Finance and the Executive Board


3. Determine the most effective routes to generating effective competitive intelligence


4. Involve a 3rd-party to provide guidance (This is not a shameless plug. I’ll explain later)


5. Provide a strong voice to evangelize the competitive intelligence


6. Demand accountability of leaders based on their willingness to consider and implement changes based on the intelligence initiatives

In the last few posts, (8/1, 8/6) I have talked about the first three points in the bullet list above. I’ll talk a little more about the fourth and fifth points today.

Involve a 3rd-party vendor
Eat our own dog food. Drink our own champagne. Breathe our own exhaust. Doesn’t matter how you say it. You live inside your company. Objectivity is very difficult under the best conditions and hardly anyone works under the best conditions.

It is possible to conduct your own intelligence initiative in-house and some types of intelligence (web scraping, financial reports, other factual information) can be done efficiently by your own employees.

But, don’t underestimate the importance of an unbiased voice. This is not a shameless plug for a company like Primary Intelligence. Rather, successful companies I have observed have acknowledged that they have internal biases, agendas, perceptions, etc… and that an objective viewpoint of the marketplace provides value that simply isn’t possible from internal sources.

You might involve a consultant from the beginning of the process. You might contract with a data collection company to gather the intelligence. But, don’t summarily dismiss the benefits that might be brought to the table by a 3rd-party vendor.

Provide a strong voice
Who will be the leader that will preach the necessary changes in the company? Ideally, that voice will come from the cross-functional group. If it is someone else in the company, invite them to become part of the cross-functional group.

Any number of business publications can provide mountains of information on leadership and change management. I’ll leave it to you to find the right voice.

And, if you want to chat, let’s chat. Post a response, call (801-838-9600 x5050) or send an email (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Making Competitive Intelligence Effective with Cross-functional Teams (Part 2 of 4)

On the topic of making Competitive Intelligence effective, I have observed a number of companies over time that have produced extraordinary results through innovative use of the information. It is my experience that these successful companies do the following:

1. Have a commitment to making decisions with intelligence


2. Create a cross-functional team, including leaders from Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Finance and the Executive Board


3. Determine the most effective routes to generating effective competitive intelligence


4. Involve a 3rd-party to provide guidance (This is not a shameless plug. I’ll explain later)


5. Provide a strong voice to evangelize the competitive intelligence


6. Demand accountability of leaders based on their willingness to consider and implement changes based on the intelligence initiatives

Create a cross-functional team
All too often, research and intelligence is conceived, developed, gathered, ignored and buried in one small corner of one department of a company. The information never gets to see the light of day in areas of the organization that might make very good use of the findings.

In a whitepaper distributed by the Corporate Executive Board (Which I can’t find a link to online anymore. If you would like a copy of the report, email cdalley@primary-intel.com and request the British Telecom case study), one of the most important drivers of success was the fact that British Telecom, the subject of the study) created a Strategic Action Committee comprised of key stakeholders in the company that could work together to act upon the data. Also, a Marketing Strategy and Insight Group, staffed with representatives from Marketing, Product Management, Sales Customer Service, Pricing, Solutions, etc… was responsible for disseminating intelligence to the key internal stakeholders.

Significant strategic business change requires action on the part of most every department in the company. The business change conversation won’t be effective until the every department provides a senior management member to work on this collaborative team.

Determine the most effective routes
The first item of business for the cross-functional team is to decide what needs to be understood. A wish list of intelligence can be created, but eventually, this needs to be pared down to something that can be accomplished and will provide value.

The matrix below may help you categorize your initial intelligence initiatives. Go for the types of intelligence that are easy to generate and that have a high ROI potential, based on the intelligence needs identified by the cross-functional team. (For more thoughts on categorizing ease of gathering intelligence, you may refer to a previous post)




Once you have a group of change agents assembled and an intelligence plan, you are almost ready to move into the field.

In the next posts, I’ll elaborate on the remaining points.

And, if you want to talk, let’s chat. Post a response, call (801-838-9600 x5050) or send an email (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.

Analytics in Competitive Intelligence: Stated Importance vs. Derived Importance

If your company uses market information to make decisions, you are almost certain to be familiar with the “Of these items, how important was…” or “Which of these would you consider to be first, second and third most important?” These questions result in a measurement of stated importance, or those things that are easily identified and verbalized as important.

While these data are easy to generate and generally seem reasonable at face value, there is evidence to show that decisions based solely on stated importance are subject to important limitations. Those areas of your company’s performance that are identified as most important often do not correlate well, if at all, with purchase decisions. Which means that your company can act on those performance areas identified as most important and yet, no measurable improvement be made from those efforts. In most companies, that is defined as poor ROI or “a waste of money.”

For example, through your research, you may identify a performance area with a relatively low performance score and might initially trigger discussion regarding ways to improve the performance. However, you wouldn’t want to do much about it if it had a low correlation to overall increases in market share. For instance, let’s consider this principle in a Win Loss setting. Suppose we had created an interview and included the measurement of professionalism of a sales force against a prospect’s likelihood of choosing a vendor. Whether the performance rating against the competition was positive or negative, it would be difficult for an executive to understand the impact that professionalism actually has on the company’s sales win ratio. It would be impossible to know how much a change in performance would affect that win ratio. If it turns out that the correlation to the sales win rate is high, the decision to put emphasis on increasing professionalism would be very easy and relatively risk-free. If the correlation were low, resources could be assigned to improve other parts of the sales process.

There is much evidence to indicate that responses on importance scales can be affected by other factors that distort the accuracy of the response, for example the need to please, social demands, cognitive dissonance, and generic importance, among others. In the entertainment industry, for example, television viewers using such scales will continually rate the value of news and information above sex or escapism. However, would anyone wish to predict, based upon these data, whether the ratings of the program Seinfeld will be lower than those of The PBS News Hour? Thus, there is a much deeper level of insight to be gained from deriving the information from the respondents’ answers rather than taking them at face value.

The quadrant below shows how actual data from our win loss studies has plotted on stated importance and derived importance:

Legend
• Stated importance is plotted on the Y-axis; it represents the average importance rating given by respondents for each influencer’s characteristic or attribute.
• Derived importance is plotted on the X-axis; it is obtained by assessing the company’s performance in each influencer and determining (through proprietary modeling techniques) the impact that each influencer had on the sales outcome. The higher the derived importance, the more impact that influencer has on the overall sales win ratio.

• Upper left quadrant—“Declared important”: This quadrant consists of items that are stated to be important, but which ultimately have little correlation to a respondent’s decision-making process.
• Upper right quadrant—“Key influencers”: This quadrant reflects attributes that the respondent both states as being important and which prove to be highly influential at a derived level.
• Lower right quadrant—“Hidden opportunities”: This quadrant consists of attributes that the respondent cannot readily identify at a stated level, but which do impact overall satisfaction at a derived level.
• Lower left quadrant—“Limited impact”: Attributes in this quadrant have both low stated importance and little influence on overall satisfaction.

Now, one caveat is in order here. Some performance areas may be ranked high in stated importance, but will be low in derived importance. This doesn’t mean that a company can cut back efforts in the areas of stated importance. They still have an effect on the sales process. When an attribute has a high stated importance, the data are saying that this is a performance area that can’t be neglected without adversely altering the win loss ratio, but significant improvement may not provide actual gains in the win loss ratio.

In the end, using the most sophisticated analytics tools to determine the key influencers will eventually provide the greatest strategic decision-making ability for your company. In so many cases, this approach has improved company performance so much more than “gut feeling,” reactive competitive intelligence programs, and stated importance measurements.

This is where Primary Intelligence makes its living; providing powerful predictive analytics to our clients in order to grow their market share. Perhaps, we should discuss how this might work for you. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Chess, Argentina and Competitive Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Competitive Intelligence Needs a Personal Touch

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

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

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

This does have a point.

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

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

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

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

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

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)

A Compliment from a Client on our Competitive Intelligence Services

Today, I'm going to beg your forgiveness, but we received a compliment from one of our clients and it really means a lot to me that they would send an unsolicited comment about Primary Intelligence's services.

"We use several sources of information to identify trends in our target market, including government-collected statistics, and reports from industry analysts and news services. However, the data that provides us the richest insight into the needs of our market is the Win Loss data from Primary Intelligence. It tells us everything -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- something our customers and prospects won't always tell us directly first hand, which is exactly what we need to run our day to day business as well as develop future strategy."

While this seems like a shameless plug, we are very proud to be a leading provider of intelligence to "a satisfied Fortune 500 customer." (Contact and company names withheld to maintain confidentiality agreements) It isn't every day that someone tells you that you are doing something right.

When you look at your competitive intelligence initiatives, consider discussing your plans with Primary Intelligence. We can help you build your processes. We can fulfill your service needs. We can help you make use of the results.

Let me know how we can be of service (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence in the 21st Century – Moving Past the SWOT with Predictive Analytics

In my last post, I said that a SWOT analysis leaves a strategic decision-maker with a problem. You may be able to identify some competitive weaknesses (compared with a specific competitor or in the marketplace in general), but you don’t have any way of gauging what would happen to your market share if the weaknesses were improved.

And, you can’t tell whether continuing to improve the strengths would provide a bigger competitive benefit to your company’s efforts.

So, if a competitive intelligence professional spends all of their time studying the market and the end results is a list of strengths and weaknesses (with no predictive analytics or direction), how much value does that person provide?

I guess that I should be clear that a SWOT analysis is not useless. There is tactical value in a SWOT. You can figure out what to say today with a SWOT, but you can’t make strategic decisions based on a SWOT. There is still too much guesswork.

So what? Replace the SWOT with Impact-based Competitive Intelligence. For instance, Primary Intelligence does this all the time. To determine competitive strengths and weaknesses, we:

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

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

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

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

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

Now, this approach does not satisfy all Competitive Intelligence needs, but it sure does take the OPPORTUNITY column of the SWOT table to a completely different level.

I am happy to talk about this approach with you. Let me know what you think about how this would fit your organization. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)