New Primary Intelligence Corporate Website

This week, I have to give big kudos to our design department, and especially to Mark Larson who had a vision for our company website and usability. While our previous site was very usable and conveyed our value well, it was very product oriented. Sometimes, visitors had to work too hard to figure out how we fit into their world.

Now, the website has been broken down into three major categories:

1. Who we help
2. What we offer
3. Who we are

Under each of these, visitors will find a great deal of information that is focused right on their needs.

1 – Who we help – Here, you will find information for C-Level Executives, Sales Managers, Marketing, Sales Professionals and Market Research professionals.

2 – What we offer – Our intelligence services are easy to access and understand. Here, visitors will find information on our competitive intelligence and sales intelligence services such as Win Loss, Sales Confidence Index, Target Prospecting, Competitive Analysis and Client Retention

3 – Who we are – Provides information about our company and thought leadership. Here, visitors can see our newsletters, blogs, articles, webinars and information about our company.

The whole redesign was accomplished with the goal of helping business professionals find solutions more quickly. We hope you’ll give us a visit and let us know what you think. (http://www.primary-intel.com/)

You can leave a comment to this blog entry or send me an email with your thoughts. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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)

A Secret to Competitive Intelligence Success

I suppose that the crux of the title of this post really comes down to how one defines success in their competitive intelligence efforts. Personally, I think CI has to be more than a library of information. You have to know to improve market share, beat the competition (both in the marketplace and in individual engagements) and discover new markets that are ripe for the picking.

If you have a different definition of success, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

In order to have a chance of achieving my brand of success, you have to have a company that a) embraces improvement and b) can use intelligence to make decisions.

In other words, measure your real decision and difference makers within the company. Can they use information to make decisions? Are they willing to lean on intelligence or does everything come from experience and “the gut?”

If either answer is “no,” you need not read much further. Go back to what you’re doing and hope that your management environment changes for the better soon.

If you are in a company where difference makers value intelligence, you have the opportunity to drive change through your efforts. But, the secret is making sure that you are looking for the intelligence that has the best chance of showing your company where success is.

This information may reside in your current customer base. It may come from information in the public domain. (If you make your living with information available in the public domain, you had better be very good at interpreting and analyzing. If everyone has access to the information, you are the differentiating factor). It really doesn’t matter to me where your information comes from as long as it help your company achieve success.

But, do make sure you’re in a place where your work can be appreciated in the form of leading to business change.

Free Competitive Intelligence? Try Some Win Loss, On the House

To get your sales intelligence started right in 2008, Primary Intelligence is offering a free review of one of your recent sales opportunities. Whether you want to replicate a recent success or find out how “the big one got away,” Win Loss is the perfect feedback mechanism to discover the truth behind prospects and their decision-making process.

You might also want to know what is keeping your mid-market from expanding or understand recent sales efforts in a new market. There are literally dozens of reasons why Win Loss feedback would make sense for your company.

Let me know if you’re interested. I’ll hook you up with an account representative that will help show you whether our services are right for your company and your sales environment. You can reach me (Chris) at cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

And, you never know. You might find that the competitive intelligence we provide through Win Loss might be a whole lot more actionable than some of the “tried and true” secondary sources most people are used to using.

If you are a current Primary Intelligence client, I’m afraid that this offer likely doesn’t apply. For that, you have my apologies. However, talk to your account representative. They’ll try to find a way to take care of you.

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)

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.

A Really Cool Competitive Intelligence Presentation We Made Yesterday…

Yesterday, RoxAnne Loosle (Pronounced Loose-LEE, in case you want to give her a call at 801-838-9600 x5052) presented competitive intelligence findings to one of our clients. In this case, we targeted our intelligence efforts at two specific competitors, gathering data and creating analysis based on recent sales interactions and opportunities (won and lost) by our client.

Due to the confidential nature of our interactions with our clients, I can’t share specific information from the presentation. However, I will share some overall concepts that were brought to light in the presentation that would be considered “hidden gems.”

Our client found that they were leading their competitor consistently in the following areas:

Industry experience (Company Driver)

Technology reputation (Company Driver)

Stability (Company Driver)

References (Sales Team Driver)

Product knowledge (Sales Team Driver)

Areas of weakness were identified as:

Ability to customize (Product Driver)

Purchase cost (Product Driver)

Service cost (Product Driver)

Understanding these performance comparisons is so very important to our clients and their ability to grow market share. Not only were we able to show where the strengths and weaknesses exist today, we also provided specific feedback on those specific points to show why the scores were lower (in comparison with the competitors) and how they could be most effectively brought online.

In addition, we spent time showing our client:

The sales stage where they are eliminated as a vendor in the purchase process when they lose.

A comparison of their overall solution cost compared with the competition

Key marketing activities that influenced the sale

The intelligence we provided has direct relevance to the marketing, sales and product leaders. They left the call, graciously thanking us for the report and 20+ slides of data and recommendation.

It’s fun to share our findings with clients. In some cases, our findings are eye-opening. In others, we affirm information or sentiments based on unrelated efforts. Either way, there is satisfaction in being part of strategic and tactical initiatives that build company momentum.

If you want to chat about these kind of results, reach out. I enjoy a chance to hear from different people. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050) And, if you want to talk to someone that knows what she’s doing, RoxAnne is always happy to talk about the work she can do.