From a Good Sales Call to a Great Sales Call: Book Review

Posted on March 31, 2011 by ellendnaylor

From a Good Sales Call to a Great Sales Call focuses on improving Sales’ post-decision debrief process with prospects, referred to as win loss analysis in the competitive intelligence world. I like how the author, Richard Schroder, adds ‘post-decision debrief’ as the 7th element of the sales process. He insists Sales asks customers for their permission to conduct a post-sales interview during the presentation of your company’s solution rather than waiting until after the buying decision. A professional way to approach your prospect is: “We promote continuous improvement, and whether we win your business or lose it to a competitor, we value your feedback.”

Apparently only 18% of US companies have a formal win loss program. Thus, in most new business situations, sales people don’t have a complete and accurate understanding of why they won or lost sales. If armed with such data, Sales can make behavioral changes to improve close rates by 15%.

According to Anova Consulting Group’s research, the sales process is often a top driver of the purchase decision, whether the business is won or lost.

Key reasons for losses from the sales process include:

**Lack of a customized presentation

**The salesperson doesn’t accurately uncover and understand the prospect’s unique needs, including decision making criteria

**The salesperson and/or team does not thoroughly prepare for prospect meetings and the presentation

Richard believes that sales people should not conduct these win loss interviews since they often take the loss too personally and might try to re-sell the customer on their solution, be aggressive, defensive or dejected, which causes the customer to clam up or just to tell part of the story, the part that doesn’t involve Sales. Prospects can also be uncomfortable talking with the salesperson whose solution they just rejected.

Yet, Richard gives great suggestions to help Sales conduct win loss interviews:

**Do not attempt to gather win loss feedback during the same call when you learn the sales outcome.

**Schedule a phone call or in-person visit with the decision-maker a couple of weeks after the sales decision.

**Take time to prepare the questions you want answered and seek input from your sales organization.

**This debrief questionnaire should include questions around the customer’s decision-making criteria; qualitative questions around your firm’s strengths and weaknesses; benchmarking against competitors; and the sales process (more detail to develop a win loss questionnaire).

**This preparation will get you grounded, and will help you neutralize your emotions around the win or loss and let you focus on how and what you can learn.

**At the end of the win loss interview, ask your customer if you missed anything. In my experience, this is when the floodgates open.

The book is chock full of ways to sell better:

**Build rapport. Learn as much about your prospect(s) as you can through the Internet, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter and industry associations.

**Don’t just plan your presentation: prepare the initial discussion you will have with each prospect. Ask some open ended questions to engage them.

**Develop a second approach to build rapport in case the first approach doesn’t work.

**When in doubt, de-sell. For example, “Perhaps my service doesn’t quite fit your needs.”

**Be consultative: if your product or service is not what the customer is looking for, refer them to someone who can help them.

**Remember people want to buy from experts, not salespeople. Research Research Research!

Appendix B tells Sales Managers how to implement a win loss program. It is practical and well thought-out. Two factors stand out from my experience with developing win loss programs.

1. Does the program have executive level sponsorship and comprehensive buy-in from critical areas of your company?

2. Will the program be well integrated with existing processes already developed at your company?

I have learned the hard way that buy-in is essential at all levels. Some programs never get off the ground due to this lack of communication, sponsorship and integration.

My only criticism is Richard’s strong bias towards using a third party to conduct the win loss analysis. I agree a third party brings less bias to this process, and can offer customers anonymity when reporting back to your company. However, I experienced good results conducting win loss analysis for my company prior to consulting. There are some advantages that internal sources have: they know your company’s products and services better than any third party since this is their full time job. Thus they can probe more deeply in these areas than can a consultant. They also know your company’s culture. Sometimes consulting firms recommend change that won’t work with your company’s culture, even though it’s a great idea.

I recommend this book for those in marketing and sales who want to implement a win loss program. I particularly recommend this book for salespeople who want to be BETTER. It clearly defines the value proposition for conducting win loss analysis, especially for Sales. Don’t be left out!

Filed under: communication, competition, Competitive Intelligence, leadership, LinkedIn, research, Twitter, win loss analysis | Comments Off on From a Good Sales Call to a Great Sales Call: Book Review

How to Encourage Cooperative Communication from Sales

Posted on March 26, 2011 by ellendnaylor

Many in competitive intelligence, marketing, research and product development complain about poor communication from their sales force, who has a direct conduit to your customers—one of the best sources of knowledge about what your company is doing right and wrong as well as ideas for new products, services and tweaks to your existing products that can be revenue generating!

So how do you encourage cooperative communication from Sales?

1. Give to Get

This is a golden rule with any person or group that you deal with, but especially with Sales who has a very short attention span. You need to feed them snippets and golden nuggets which help them sell. I can’t tell you what they are: you have to figure that out since it changes constantly. But responsiveness and a cooperative attitude of giving, along with supplying those nuggets, will convince Sales that you’re worth giving back to.

2. Teach Sales How to Give

As you provide Sales with golden nuggets, teach them how to give. One way I have been successful is by teaching sales people elicitation skills. This means creating a purposeful conversation to get customers to share what they know about the competition, innovation, and improvements to your products and services—including customer service.

Oh, and by the way, elicitation skills help Sales close more deals, sooner, which is the value proposition to Sales. In my sales experience, customers are almost waiting to be asked since it’s human nature to want to teach, share and correct you. However, beware, as your sales force starts asking, your customers will also be asking more about your future products and services. Make sure Sales is armed with the right information to share at the right time!

3. Make it Easy for Sales to Share

This is the downfall of many organizations. They make it hard for Sales to share. What are they already sharing through their sales process that you can access? Can your information sharing be tacked onto what they already do? Can you set up a tips line, so they can just call it in? Text it in? Email it in?

4. Acknowledge Sales Contribution

Go beyond Thank-You. Write up the best sales tips in your company magazine, Intranet site—wherever is most likely to be noticed and read. Get on the agenda for sales force gatherings such as conference calls and meetings where you can share the good news about great tippers that individual sales people have given, and specifically cite how they have helped. Write their boss and/or Sales VP about their contribution.

5. Share Share Share

Go the next step and set up a mechanism to share tippers you hear from one sales person to your sales force. This can be high tech if your company is set up that way, but it doesn’t have to be. Talk to top contributing sales people to get clarification and insight that goes beyond information sharing. Share that insight with your sales force, marketing, product developers and whoever else will benefit from this insight, AND acknowledge that sales person or sales team.

My shameless sales plugs.

1. AMA’s Spring Marketing Workshop (April 6-8): I will be leading a workshop (April 6) which teaches sales elicitation skills among other best practices to improve sales and marketing’s productivity.

2. AIIP’s annual conference (April 6-10): I will be sharing a poster session (April 7) on how I have reinvented myself in my 18 years in business from primary research collector to win loss collection and analysis to workshops such as elicitation which empowers Sales to close more deals and provides companies with needed sales intelligence.

Filed under: AIIP, communication, competition, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, D. Sales Intelligence Articles, Elicitation, product development, research, win loss analysis | Comments Off on How to Encourage Cooperative Communication from Sales

Why Cooperative Intelligence? An Extreme Presentation

Posted on October 23, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Recently, I wrote about the Extreme Presentation format for presenting material to smaller audiences. At the conclusion of that post, I gave an example of how Extreme Presentation looks. Several people have asked me to give another illustration with an example in competitive intelligence or research, since that’s usually what I write about.

Below is a one-page Extreme Presentation that I prepared for SCIP’s 2007 Annual Conference, just after attending Dr. Andrew Abela’s Extreme Presentation workshop. My objective was to define what cooperative intelligence is, how it works, and how you win by using it. You will notice that there are about 5 “charts” contained in this one page, and that it is not flashy.  You can also tell by looking at the page that I will be talking about a process.

I like this communication method for getting the conversation going in smaller meetings as it provides an outline of what I want to cover. As a presenter you really have to know your material since you don’t have a deck of PowerPoint slides to read from. As an attendee, you are more likely to process what’s being communicated and interact since you aren’t being flooded with one slide after the next which puts you into the passive roles observing and watching.

I had prepared a 25 page PowerPoint for this 1 hour talk, and provided this one-page Extreme Presentation as a handout. Attendees could download the deck later. I had about 100 attendees and noticed that very few people left the room even though my talk was the last one of the day.  Use your creativity with Extreme Presentation, and use it at office meetings instead of nothing or lengthy PowerPoints. You will be amazed at how you engage meeting attendees, and get something accomplished versus putting it off yet again!

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, research, SCIP | Comments Off on Why Cooperative Intelligence? An Extreme Presentation

Why & How Extreme Presentation Works

Posted on September 30, 2010 by ellendnaylor

My friend, Professor Andrew Abela at Catholic University recently published The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully With Very Few Slides,  which provides a case study example of executing the Extreme Presentation methods he details in his first book, Advanced Presentations Design: Creating Communication That Drives Action. His one-day workshop in 2006 was the best I’ve ever attended at a SCIP annual conference, so in the spirit of cooperative intelligence here are some highlights.

Have you ever heard anyone say, “That was a great presentation: could you have used more slides?” Of course not! Most people use slides to help themselves remember the material they are presenting, but they are not usually created to help you the audience understand the material or be convinced of what the presenter might be selling. This is a blind spot of many presenters and missed opportunity to sell an idea, close the sale or persuade someone or a group to take action! All these slides do is put most viewers into the passive viewing mode, which isn’t usually what you want!

The book focuses on Conference Room style presentation–that is the art of presenting persuasively to small groups. The objective of this venue is often to persuade a small group or a key individual to do or to agree to a specific thing.

To get started think, “What do you want your audience to do as a result of what you’ll be presenting to them?” Next: “Where is your audience right now?” So: “What evidence do you need to provide to your audience to get them to where you want them to be? This is the core of why Extreme Presentation works. You know at the outset where you want this presentation to end: what decision you want your audience to make. You present to your audience using persuasive, calculated steps to get to your endpoint.

Clearly identify what problem your audience has that your presentation will help solve. Research tells us that storytelling works since it’s causal information, not just mere facts, that makes your story more credible. Provide a compelling story about how this problem has been solved or can be solved. Find one or two stories to drive home your most important points.

Here is an example of how Extreme Presentation works with small audiences:

Situation: Most presentations don’t convince the audience and aren’t actionable

Complications: The presentation is agenda oriented, not objective oriented. There are too many slides which don’t encourage audience participation or engagement.

Resolution: 1 – 2 pages tell your story as a handout using your audience’s language + visual process “squint test”. Research shows that people need the right amount of detail and no distractions (no clip art) to promote the healthy discussion that is required to make decisions.

Example: This format encourages your audience to listen, absorb and engage, and leads them to make a decision, which is what you want! This method has been pilot tested extensively for at least 5 years by some big name companies such as ExxonMobil, Kimberly-Clark, Microsoft, eBay, Motorola, Xerox, WW Grainger and HJ Heinz to name a few!

The “squint test” initially confuses people, but it’s valuable for you to give the audience a shape which indicates the content of what you’ll cover such as a bar chart, process chart, organization chart, since you provide a handouts. Here are some templates to help you pass the squint test:

Extreme Presentation website www.ExtremePresentation.com/books/pres; SmartArt in PowerPoint and PowerFrameworks http://www.powerframeworks.com for thousands of templates.

I always like an example of what people are trying to communicate: below is the link to a 1 page handout which visually depicts what I just wrote about. I applaud Dr. Abela! The only thing I would have done differently is rename “extreme presentation”, “persuasive presentation,” since that’s really what it is: PERSUASIVE communication!

Persuasive Presentation Works

Filed under: communication, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, SCIP | 2 Comments »

Be Competitive! 22 Tips to Kick Start Your Marketing

Posted on September 22, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Yesterday I attended this most informative AIIP (Association of Independent Information Professionals) Webinar by Mary Ellen Bates, CEO of Bates Information. I have been in business for 17 years, but lack Mary Ellen’s business acumen and marketing focus. BTW these webinars are an additional benefit that AIIP did not offer when I first joined 5 years ago. How many associations offer more services for their members these days than they did previously? Since all webinars are recorded, AIIP members can listen to them anytime. Join AIIP here.

The tippers Mary Ellen shared are helpful for anyone who runs a business, not just information professionals, researchers or competitive intelligence managers. In the spirit of cooperative intelligence I will share a few of her best marketing practices.

Use the telephone and snail mail more, since email is an overused form of communication these days, and many emails are not opened. Even if you call a former customer and just get their voicemail, hearing your voice versus the digital word is a great reminder.

Review your client list annually and assess the quality of your clients. This process will help you plan for the upcoming year and figure out ways you can help clients improve their competitiveness. An informational interview is a great way to learn about a new industry to ultimately target. Ask good questions about how they make strategic decisions, and don’t promote yourself in these calls.

At the conclusion of a project that you know you delivered well, discretely ask for a referral. This is also a good time to ask for a LinkedIn recommendation in my opinion if your project deliverable was not top secret.

Connect with all your clients and prospects through social media: not just LinkedIn, but also Twitter, Facebook, industry Nings and blogs. Comment on blogs. Interaction is the key to develop social networks.

Identify client topics of interest and offer products accordingly. You might interview 5 people and write up a white paper that addresses a topic of interest or industry pain points.

A very practical tipper: give yourself one full day to update all your social network, blog, and other membership profiles. Do they jive and connect with each other?

Mary Ellen suggests many ways you can connect in writing whether digitally or in hardcopy: birthday cards, holiday cards, articles, blogs, Tweets, newsletters, thank you notes: be creative! If you use snail mail, it’s more likely to be opened than email.

Personally I like to create unique marketing to clients and prospects: I snail mail New Year’s cards designed by my husband, Rodgers Naylor with one of his original paintings on the front. Some people have kept our cards, and even framed them, over the years. These cards benefit both of our unrelated businesses!

To learn more, I recommend that you buy the recently published second edition of Mary Ellen’s book, Building and Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional.

Filed under: AIIP, communication, Competitive Intelligence, competitiveness, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, research, social networks, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Sales Intelligence from the Competitive Intelligence Expert Panel at SLA 2010

Posted on August 25, 2010 by ellendnaylor

I had the pleasure of moderating the Competitive Intelligence Expert Panel at SLA’s (Special Libraries Association) annual conference in New Orleans. All 3 experts were GREAT! Claudia Clayton has a strong marketing, strategy, and sales background as well as financial services expertise. Jan Herring is one of CI’s pioneers with a strong military intelligence background which he successfully transferred into corporations as he started one of the first CI programs at Motorola in the 1980s. Arik Johnson is a visionary in this field, the consummate consultant, always reaching out for what’s next, and the instigator of Competitive Intelligence Ning with almost 1500 members.

We spent 1 ½ hours taking questions from our live and virtual audiences. In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I will share the panel’s wisdom through my blogs.

There were two related questions around Price to Win (PTW) and the trade offs of conducting win loss analysis using internal people versus outsiders.

Claudia says there are restrictions once the RFP is out, so much of the monitoring and analysis needs to occur in between RFPs. That way when the RFP is issued, your company will have a good idea of how low the competitor has the capability to bid. Jan recommends PTW guru, Michael O’Guin.  Michael wrote a couple of PTW articles for SCIP’s Competitive Intelligence Review in 1996, and presents at APMP (American Proposal Management Professionals) conferences. APMP is the society to join for PTW. The essentials behind PTW are to learn the competitor’s cost structure and the customer’s decision-making criteria. Arik recommended another PTW guru, Jim Mathews currently Director, Competitive Intelligence & PTW at TASC.

Claudia shared 3 ways to conduct win loss analysis:

  1. Use internal sources with/without assistance from a third party in development
  2. Use a third party while revealing your company’s identity
  3. Use a third party without revealing your company’s identity

Claudia prefers the third option to learn more objectively what the buying manager was thinking when s/he awarded the contract. If you chose option 2, sometimes the buying manager will give the ‘party line’ due to their bias around who is asking for the interview. I like option 2 since it is biased: your customers are biased in their decision-making. A skilled interviewer gets past that bias so quickly. I like to include Sales in this process to identify the gaps between Sales and their customers as to the customer’s decision making criteria and values. Sales can share their customer’s personality and motivation so I get the maximum value out of each interview knowing the customer’s preferred communication style.

Some companies split their win loss interviews among internal sources and a third party. The benefit of using internal sources is they know your products, your company’s culture and can keep building a relationship with that customer. All panelists agreed NOT to have Sales conduct win loss interviews since you won’t get an honest representation of what really happened! Jan’s best practice for win loss analysis: your company conducts its own win interviews and a third party conducts loss interviews. I think a third party should do some win interviews to avoid being blindsided by internal expectations.

Most importantly, use the results and take action. It’s remarkable that only 20% of companies even do win loss analysis given its great insight into customers and competitors, and many of these companies do nothing with the findings and analysis!

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, competitor, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, SLA, win loss analysis | Comments Off on Sales Intelligence from the Competitive Intelligence Expert Panel at SLA 2010

Jan Herring’s Words of Wisdom for Info Pros

Posted on June 18, 2010 by ellendnaylor

I spent most of this week in New Orleans at SLA’s annual conference. I really enjoyed it, and this blog hails competitive intelligence pioneer, Jan Herring. While his communication was geared to information professionals, competitive intelligence professionals take note!

Jan is so supportive of the competitive intelligence profession and I think is a true cooperative intelligence practitioner in that he is so giving. He was the CI division’s breakfast speaker, as well as a panel member on two consecutive panel discussions, Ask The Competitive Intelligence Experts and Competitive Intelligence Transitions for LIS Professionals. Jan is regarded as the father of modern competitive intelligence as he started Motorola’s first formal program, after a distinguished first career with the CIA.

Behind each successful CI process is a corporate library or at least librarian support, as timely, focused secondary research is a valuable component of CI. Bonnie Hohhof of SCIP fame, was the corporate librarian at Motorola that Jan selected to help form the CI team. Jan still quotes Peggy Carr’s 2003 book, “Super Searchers in Competitive Intelligence” as a good resource on how research and CI are tied together.

Jan reviewed the basics of competitive intelligence including the traditional intelligence cycle and the knowledge pyramid to build insightful, actionable intelligence. Intelligence is the right information, delivered and prepared for the people in the company who have the authority to make decisions. In this vein, Jan shared former Motorola CEO Bob Galvin’s parable. Bob had made a bad decision around a market entry. There was one employee who didn’t share some key information, and Bob wondered whose fault it was that the employee hadn’t shared this information. His or the employee’s? Jan asserted that it was the employee’s and honed in on connecting with the right employees around key decisions.

Another gem was, “Get your information and insight into the Heads of decision-makers, not just their Hands.”  A great quote he shared from Robert Steele, “Information costs money. Intelligence makes money.” Jan recommends is that the insight created by intelligence findings and conclusions be measured or valued through ROI. Jan wrote an article on this topic in the Mar/Apr 2007 Competitive Intelligence Magazine published by SCIP.

Jan suggests that you learn to think like your leadership and communicate with them in their words being careful not to insert competitive intelligence verbiage. Know how they are motivated since what makes the management team successful isn’t what makes Info Pros or CI professionals successful. Tim Kindler of Kodak ties his CI deliverables to corporate management’s calendar of needs and events. Respected CI professionals are humble as they set aside their egos and false assumptions, but not too humble so as not to persuasively communicate findings to management.

There are three areas where information pros and CI professionals can improve:

  1. Financial based reporting – work with the finance department to develop and monitor financial benchmarks against your major competitors
  2. Early warning – build innovative secondary source monitoring as a base for your primary researchers to verify findings through people to develop early warning alerts
  3. CI software – develop software applications to support the monitoring, collection, storage and dissemination of information. More refined software is developed all the time such as Link Analysis and Evidence Based Research. A supplier to consider which assesses almost all CI software providers is Eastport Analytics. You can find some individual CI software providers at SCIP’s website.

A final key finding that Jan and Paul Houston uncovered during their research of 20 companies: it’s most important for firms to have a savvy CI manager/director who produces what management wants/needs. You need to do CI on your own leadership to keep a pulse on their ever changing needs.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, competitor, connection, Cooperative Intelligence, leadership, research | 1 Comment »

Boost Competitive Intelligence Effectiveness through Databases

Posted on May 7, 2010 by ellendnaylor
Last month I blogged about “5 Tactics to Research Your Marketplace using Competitive Intelligence Skills” originally published by Adam Sutton of MarketingSherpa.  As promised, I am focusing on each tactic. This week’s is #4.
Tactic #4 Build an information database
I look at building two databases: one as a repository of data that you gather on the competitive environment either through daily monitoring or analytical reports which can include material that is externally generated such competitor data, industry reports, relevant articles, regulatory trends, technology trends, distribution channel news, financial reports and relevant economic news as well as internal reports such as competitor profiles, win loss analysis, trade show analysis, product plans, strategic plans, technical assessments, wargame results, scenario planning results…all the material that you need at your finger tips for those quick turnaround projects as well as to detect patterns in the marketplace that make you pause, stand back and say “ah ha, something is up” or “something doesn’t look right”.
When selecting a software solution, you need to keep in mind the technology your company is already using, and piggyback off something that already exists, such as salesforce.com to get the scoop from Sales. Perhaps PR uses software for delivery of the news, which you can extend off of. Perhaps your industry relations folks get financial reports from Thomson, which you can build from. Get a grasp of what’s already out there and build rapport with your IT people since you will need to work closely with them for installation, depending on the size and complexity of your software solution. There are competitive intelligence software providers you might consider: I have a partial list here.
There are a few things I look for when building an information database for competitive intelligence other that installation and cost!
1. How easy is it to browse and find what you’re looking for?
2. How easy is it to update the system and refresh the data? How much time and expense do you need to factor in for updating? Many people underestimate both, so the system becomes outdated quickly and loses credibility with users for obvious reasons.
3. Is there a process to delete data when it becomes outdated?
4. How will the system maintained?
5. What are your security considerations around a software system?
6. Who will you allow to make changes to the system?
7. How will you control the integrity of the data?
8. How will you encourage people to make contributions?
A contact database is the second type of database and is crucial for competitive intelligence personnel and anyone who does research. This database contains contacts both internal and external to your company who are great sources of information about your industry, the marketplace, the competition… Mine is organized by skill set, and how and where I met each person. Perhaps your company’s directory lets you do this: you still need to connect with external contacts continuously to keep from being blindsided.
Quick access to people and information greatly speeds up your research timeline! I also keep track of my projects through my contact database, and specific topics my clients have queried about. That way when I find cool stuff, I can quickly sort those people who are interested in this topic, and communicate with them directly. Clients appreciate this since I don’t send them irrelevant stuff, but rather build on what they’ve asked for in the past. This promotes cooperative intelligence since it’s cooperative communication. I like to use ACT! http://www.act.com/ for my contact database although there are plenty of options: just pick one and learn how to use it!
Social media has opened up ways to connect and be found. I also use Twitter’s Tweetdeck to sort comments by the category where they’re an expert, which I perceive as another form of connection. LinkedIn groups are another great source of connections by subject matter expertise. You can use LinkedIn’s advanced search option.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, research, trade show, Twitter, win loss analysis | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Use Trade Shows as Fact-Finding Missions

Posted on April 29, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Recently, I blogged about “5 Tactics to Research Your Marketplace using Competitive Intelligence Skills” originally published by Adam Sutton of MarketingSherpa. As promised, I am focusing on each tactic. This week’s is #3.

Trade shows are a Mecca for competitive intelligence. Nowhere are there more people who want to share their knowledge and insight with you: industry experts, prospects, competitors, other industry participants such as suppliers and distributors and journalists. This is cooperative intelligence at its finest since everyone is marketing to you whether at formal presentations, exhibitor booths or even informal places like the conference bar or hotel café.

Here are some tippers to help you be more productive at the trade show:

Beforehand: Do your homework and prepare a game plan that includes both formal and informal intelligence gathering opportunities. Study the exhibitor floor plan and all the presentations to decide how best to use your time. Write out the questions you will ask to the various audiences to help you be more articulate.  Keep your action plan rough as you’ll need to be flexible to jump on opportunities as they arise. For example, you might find out about a cocktail party that you didn’t even know existed until you arrived at the conference! You don’t want to miss it since alcohol consumption makes loose lips. Just make sure they aren’t yours and drink very little or none. I learned that lesson in the late 1990s when I was invited to a cocktail party and had to return to the scene the next day. I was lucky that the show was on for that third day. The competitor’s employees were quite attentive as their exhibit area was almost empty except for me. I don’t recommend what I did there, although I made good connections and got great information!

At the Conference: Be observant. Most people think about gathering competitive intelligence from competitors’ exhibit areas and formal presentations. However, I have found the best intelligence is gathered at informal settings such as the conference coffee shops, the conference hotel cafe, the elevator, cocktail parties, the bus ride to the airport, even during the airplane ride–by simply listening.

It’s a great time to practice your elicitation skills. I spend my time sorting out how I will approach each competitor or press personality prior to the show and often have to revise my approach mid-stream since I meet so many people for the first time, cold. If you read body communication you can figure out who is most approachable and how they might be motivated. Who is leaning forward as they talk to the booth visitors? Who is the technical person you see fiddling with cable and the computer at the booth? They probably have technical knowledge and are willing to share.

Be creative: If the booth staff doesn’t seem friendly, just wait, in time they’re likely to be relieved. Perhaps you can ask another booth visitor if you can tag along with them. Be smart about who you pick: I accompanied one of the competitor’s key clients, so the account rep answered all my questions and remarks to impress the client. The client had a number of additional questions that I would never have thought of since my product knowledge in that industry was not as deep as his!

After the Conference: Start writing up your findings during the conference and see if your home office has more questions based on what you’ve uncovered. You can pull more information out of a conference especially if you have a few people’s input, even if you’re attending by yourself.

I have even ducked into the ladies room to write out some technical details after a booth visit before I forget. I review my findings every night and often wake up with better questions. I don’t write up anything in the airplane ride home since there might be other attendees around and I don’t want to arouse any suspicion. Also they might start talking about the conference among themselves. Share your findings ASAP with co-workers upon returning to the office!

Note #1: Your competitors and other industry experts are collecting information about your company at trade shows too. How do you qualify who you will share what, and how much to share? Your booth personnel are a target, as are your company’s presenters. Have you thought about how you will answer difficult questions in public? Have you trained your employees not to have private conversations in public places like the elevator, the restroom, airplane or restaurants?

Note #2: Here is an article with more detail on cooperatively collecting at trade shows.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperation, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, Elicitation, trade show | Tagged: | Comments Off on Use Trade Shows as Fact-Finding Missions

Connect Cooperatively to Internal & External Experts

Posted on April 20, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Recently, I blogged about “5 Tactics to Research Your Marketplace using Competitive Intelligence Skills” originally published by Adam Sutton of MarketingSherpa. As promised, I am focusing on each tactic. This week’s is #2.

Tactic#2 Talk to internal and external experts

If you work for a company versus consulting, your co-workers can be such valuable sources for scoop on the competition and trends in your marketplace. Sales is one of the best places to start since this is part of their job, to win business over the competition. Many folks have trouble getting sales to cooperate, but that’s usually because they don’t understand Sales’ point of view, and expect Sales to cooperate without giving them useful information in return.

A good way to think about who to connect with internally is: who is dealing with my competitors, customers, the investor community, suppliers, distributors, regulators or attends trade shows? This list of internal connections is longer than you would think and includes: investor relations, product managers, product developers, market research, and trade show personnel.

Externally, you need to consider who tracks the marketplace you compete in, in all its aspects: technology, innovation, the environment, economic conditions, politics/lobbyists, regulatory, social issues and the competition. When you’re new, you find these people gradually. I found that product managers, investor relations and market researchers often subscribe to publications and connect with many of the same external people I want to meet. Our incentive for knowing them is different, but why not be cooperative and share your external people sources, and buy fewer copies of the same report.

You can also find these experts using social networks such as LinkedIn groups or #Twitter groups such as #prodmgmt for product management or product development. You can find experts through the Question & Answer sections of LinkedIn. Sometimes someone else has already posed your question on LinkedIn, so no one can track your interest in that topic or competitor. You need to be wary of this since the Q&A on LinkedIn forms a permanent record. The same this is true of your Twitter Tweets.

Use a cooperative connection approach with internal and external experts regardless of how you reach them. I noticed when email came into vogue in the mid-1990s, people tended to be quite rude sometimes. They would email messages that they would never have delivered face to face. I notice that people using social networks can often be quite rude, and just push stuff at me without any regard for my actual interest in the topic. Next thing I know I’m on someone’s newsletter list, and they’re a recruiter or a business coach looking to expand their business. I’m not a good prospect.

Here is a little test to think about before you issue communication: Put yourself into the receiving end of your communication, and think how you would feel.  If you still email, pare down the list to those who care. If you do social media, share other people’s blogs, news, and comment on other’s Tweets, blogs etc. Social media is meant to be shared, but for many it is one-way, SELLING!

Be sure to thank your experts and send them information you come across that they might find helpful. This two way communication and connection is invaluable to your knowledge pool, whether co-workers, folks you deal with regularly outside your company or your social media contacts.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, LinkedIn, product development, research, social networks, trade show, Twitter | Tagged: | Comments Off on Connect Cooperatively to Internal & External Experts

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