5 Tactics to Research Your Marketplace using Competitive Intelligence Skills

Posted on April 6, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Recently I was interviewed by Adam Sutton of MarketingSherpa, and in the spirit of cooperative intelligence I am sharing some highlights. For the full article you need to subscribe to MarketingSherpa. Check out MarketingSherpa’s free trial. It is chock full of marketing information, studies, white papers and current articles like this one. I will summarize each of the five tactics, and then blog on each of them individually this month.

Tactic #1 Conduct win loss analysis
Interview new customers and prospects you lost to the competition. Your goal is to uncover the motivations behind their decisions and to learn whatever great information they impart to help improve product development, tweak your existing products or service, change your marketing message, learn how your competitors are successfully unseating you and so much more.

I recommend you conduct these interviews in cooperation with your sales force, rather than behind their back. Building trust with Sales is the biggest reason to include them as part of the win loss analysis process. Sales can save you so much time by telling you how the people you’re going to interview are motivated to share. Wow, that reason alone is enough to work with Sales.

Tactic#2 Talk to internal and external experts
Use a cooperative approach when connecting with internal and external experts. People inside your company tend to know a lot about your industry and can connect you with external contacts who might be helpful. 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.

Tactic #3 Use trade shows as fact-finding missions
Trades shows are the biggest Meccas for competitive intelligence. No where are there more people who want to share their knowledge and insight with you: industry experts, prospects, competitors and journalists.

Do your homework: Prepare a game plan before the conference. Study the exhibitor floor plan and all the presentations and decide how best to use your time and write out the questions you will ask to the various audiences.  Keep the plan rough as you’ll need to be flexible since you’ll need to jump on opportunities as they arise, which you can’t predict.

Be observant. Most people think about gathering competitive intelligence from competitor’s exhibit areas and formal presentations, but sometimes 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 in the airplane.

Tactic #4 Build an information database
Build a database for all the information you have on the competition and the marketplace that can easily be browsed and that is easily kept up-to-date. Also build a database of contacts both internal and external to your company who are great sources of information about your industry, the marketplace, the competition…and make this sortable as well! This quick access to contacts and information greatly speeds up your research timeline!

Tactic #5 Remain ethical and avoid deception
Make sure anyone you use to collect information is operating under the same ethical standards as held by your company. Check out SCIP’s website for its code of ethics.

Remember I will provide more detail about each of these 5 tactics in future blogs.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, product development, research, SCIP, trade show, win loss analysis | 5 Comments »

Assess Your Effectiveness at Trade Shows

Posted on March 5, 2010 by ellendnaylor

In honor of my competitive intelligence colleague, Jonathan Calof, I am writing this post on his subject of expertise, trade shows! Jonathon just won SCIP’s esteemed Fellow’s award which will be officially presented at SCIP’s annual conference in Washington, DC which takes place from March 9 – 12. Trade shows are one of the best venues for cooperative intelligence practices since if you display cooperative connection and communication skills, the floodgates of knowledge will be yours!

Most discussion around trade show analysis measures their effectiveness in ROI terms:
How many sales did we close as a result of connections at our booth? How many new connections did we make that represent customer prospects?

Many of the other benefits are more squishy to measure:

How much scoop did we collect on the competition, market trends, technical innovation, product development, or new technology that helps us develop a better strategy or adjust our sales tactics?

What infrastructure do we have in place to quickly report our findings to those in our company which might engender further collect during the trade show? And after we return from the trade show?

What infrastructure do we have in place to qualify prospects for our business?
This can start right at the booth as you can qualify the better prospects and have coffee or drinks later, since you don’t want to spill all your company secrets right at the booth area since you never know who might be listening in who is not a prospect, but might be collecting on your company!

I like to prepare a cheat sheet which helps me qualify customers when I exhibit. It’s kind of cumbersome, but it is fail proof since people’s answers to these questions guide me on how and if we should further our relationship.  Remember customers aren’t the only great connections at trade shows. For example, industry experts, newspaper reporters and bloggers help sell your company too. They have their biases just like anyone else, and you want to influence them to favor your company and your products and services so they write good things about you. Think: who else do I want to connect at this trade show mecca where people are so pre-disposed to share what they know?

Lastly, I assess if this was even the right show for the company to exhibit at. Many companies don’t think about this as much.  We tend to exhibit at shows since, “We’ve always had a booth at ‘X’ show.” Each year I like to assess our effectiveness at trade shows we’ve attended. Sometimes I use an ROI calculation. Sometimes I realize I can’t afford not to be at a trade show since all my competition is there connecting with a finite number of potential and existing customers. At other shows, product announcements are made: can you afford not to attend this type of show and blow your horn? Where it gets gray in decision-making is when results are gradually getting worse: do you just pull out of the show or do you change your behavior and tactics in hopes of improving your results? Marketing through social networks is also competing with in-person events like trade shows, which could be the subject for another day.

How do you assess your effectiveness at trade shows?

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, product development, SCIP, social networks, trade show | Comments Off on Assess Your Effectiveness at Trade Shows

Competitive Intelligence Case Study Initiative

Posted on February 18, 2010 by ellendnaylor

In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I would like to share a competitive intelligence case study initiative that my colleague Tom Hawes is leading.

He saw a need for more sharing in the field of competitive intelligence. In many cases people don’t share since well it’s the competition after all, who might be reading or listening to what I share. So he decided to create case studies for people to comment on. The first example is a story in a competitive intelligence manager’s life where he has to organize and prepare a presentation for his executive management about how a competing company is ramping up its R&D initiative. The story goes on for six days and takes a person from getting the assignment, doing a needs analysis, getting the information, making the final presentation, and dealing with people issues and communication.

The idea behind the case study format is to draw people out of their shells to discuss how they would approach the issues that this CI manager faces. It is thought that people will more readily share what they know and how they do competitive intelligence, if we’re talking about a hypothetical situation rather than their company’s particular issues.

Tom has gone to a lot of trouble to professionalize this case study approach by even creating a website for these cases. Tom is also creating additional cases to draw people in. I agreed to comment on the 6-day case study, and am offering a cooperative intelligence perspective to my comments. Arik Johnson and August Jackson are also offering their comments for the 6-day case study.

There are three ways you can contribute to this initiative to improve communication among competitive intelligence folks:

Read and respond to the case studies and commentaries that are posted. Volunteer to write a case study. Volunteer to be an expert commentator and share your problem-solving ideas.

PS If you’re a SCIP member, look for these case studies in the next 3 Competitive Intelligence Magazines!

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, SCIP | Comments Off on Competitive Intelligence Case Study Initiative

Improve Your Cold Calling

Posted on February 5, 2010 by ellendnaylor

I was writing an article for FUMSI and editor Marcy Phelps suggested that I add a list of ways to be better at cold calling. It was a challenge since most of my experience with cold calling is following my intuition. However, in the spirit of cooperative intelligence I will share some of the practices that I have developed over the years as a researcher. Like anything else, practice makes you a lot better. I am always thinking about ways to empathize and be more sensitive to the other person. I am most effective when I focus on the person I am speaking with, think emotional intelligence, and forget about myself. I also strive to keep an eye on the clock to respect their time.

Think and Do
How do you think they’re motivated?
Why would they want to talk with you?
Can you guess what they’re like based on their occupation?
Read up on their profession if you don’t know it.
Prepare a good intro about yourself: short and crisp.
Be ready for their questions about you. Decide what you won’t share.
Prepare the list of questions you need to have answered.
Why would they want to answer these questions?
Which questions might be easier for them to answer?
Make sure you have some open ended questions to start.
Do you want to mix your interview tactics with questions and elicitation? (that is getting a conversational interview rather than questions and answers)
Can you learn about them on LinkedIn, Zoom Info, Jigsaw or other social media?
Warm up the call up with this information: do you have something in common?
Or is it easier just to call the person without taking the time to research who they are?

How to Be
Psych yourself up: envision and expect them to share with you.
Be interesting on your end, even if you’re horrified!
Smile as you talk: your optimism travels through your tone of voice.
Think confidence: this comes through the phone line too.
Psych yourself up: what’s the worst thing that will happen? (They’ll hang up or ask you too many questions & you’ll hang up.)
Prepare yourself for the call to go differently than you had planned so you’re not taken by surprise. Some of my best intelligence collection comes from being open when the call takes a unexpected twist!
Learn what works with every phone call & tweak your approach accordingly.
If you listen closely to their tone, their words, their silence and confidence, you’ll be amazed at your creativity to probe in different ways.
Leave them feeling good about themselves: it’s always a good practice. Making them feel good also leaves the door open for future communication!

What are you doing to improve your cold calling?

Filed under: communication, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, emotional intelligence, research | 1 Comment »

How well do you Emotionally Connect?

Posted on January 29, 2010 by ellendnaylor

I enjoyed Seth Godin’s blog a week ago on “too much data leads to not enough belief.” His bottom line is, “relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission – which is emotional connection.”

I have noticed in my fields of research and competitive intelligence that we have this tendency to drown our customers with data, and while they might be impressed that we dug up all this information, they usually don’t want the details. We also talk the language of competitive analysis, which most people don’t resonate with, and there is no emotional connection—since competitive intelligence is not the issue. Solving a business problem or uncovering and entering new markets or product development are the issues.

Companies pay competitive intelligence professionals to provide them with what’s relevant and to weed out all the excess, which is most of the information that’s out there. Most of the time your customers will connect if you put together a crisp set of information and persuasively articulate your findings, and include some analysis, if it adds clarity and persuasiveness to your recommendations.

But whoa, remember everyone that you’re addressing has a different communication style, and it’s really all about them and not about you. This is a guiding principal of cooperative communication a key element of cooperative intelligence. Some people do want the details, and not just access to them “later”. You better present them and be ready to be grilled since they will have questions! Companies need these type of people to bring balance to decision-making and to avoid being blindsided. Not everyone can or should be a visionary!

Cooperative communicators know that they’re talking for their audience not TO their audience. Their attitude and practice is to listen to their audience, and to query ahead of time about how to connect with the key issues and concerns of their audience (or clients), and in a way that will stick with them.

There is another problem with all that data: it’s historic. The reams of research are helpful however, if you’re trying to put together some scenarios, since you need to be pretty thorough in developing scenarios to include all the factors that might change the scenario, to observe the patterns in the marketplace, including the competition and to conclude with a scenario that you believe is the most likely.

You ultimately want to get out your crystal ball and forecast where the market is heading, right? And better yet, be visionary and LEAD the market!

Back to Mr. Godin: emotional connection is what happens when you engage people. That doesn’t happen with some myriad of facts and figures. It happens because they believe. How do you communicate to make them believe?

Filed under: communication, competitive analysis, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, product development, research | Comments Off on How well do you Emotionally Connect?

Integrate Emotional Intelligence & Selling into Competitive Intelligence

Posted on January 21, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Colleen Stanley

Last week I attended a webinar to improve my selling skills led by Colleen Stanley, Founder and Chief Sales Officer of SalesLeadership, Inc. Effective selling will help competitive intelligence professionals, product management and researchers gain respect, cooperation and appreciation from internal peers. Since many of us have no reporting employees, selling yourself is even more important in this “new economy”.

People obtain more knowledge than ever through the Internet, so they may feel like they don’t need you to provide them competitive intelligence. Due to the recession more people want to see a visible ROI for your solution. This isn’t always possible in competitive intelligence, but be creative and you can develop an ROI solution often enough. People are more skeptical due to the scandals which triggered this recession so really don’t like to be pushed into decision-making–not that they ever did.

Find the pain points and match your communication style to the decision-makers and key influencers in the buying process. This works for every business function I can think of!

People who are optimistic outsell those who aren’t by 33%. When bad things happen they realize that this is just temporary and their self-talk reflects this as they expect positive outcomes since they’re happy. They often find humor when others would be dragged down by unfortunate circumstances or stress. They live with an attitude of gratitude. Optimism must be real: people will see right through you if it’s feigned.

To really be successful in selling, your prospect needs to admit that they have a problem, and identify what it is costing them. This outlook works very well in competitive intelligence. I often ask what it will cost if we do nothing. Sometimes there is a very low cost to do nothing, so it’s not important enough to fix compared to bigger problems where we can more readily measure the impact of success or failure.

I loved Colleen’s Principles of Expectation:
1. Can the Sales person pass the pop quiz test? Make sure all parties in the meeting clearly understand the objective of the meeting.
2. Is there a Mutual Fit? Is the solution we’re discussing mutually good for all parties?
3. Examine your Intention. Are you there to Impress or to Influence? Influencers are intent on understanding customer’s issues; impressing is just selling.

Sales people with high emotional intelligence outsell those with low EI. I think high EI benefits anyone.

Here are some tippers to improve your EI:
Improve your Self-Awareness. Most people don’t take enough downtime to be reflective and introspective to learn why they react a certain way to situations. Solitude triggers the right brain where creativity often kicks in.
Be Assertive: Express your feelings and ask questions without being aggressive or abusive. You have the right to ask for what you need to know to do your job whether sales, marketing, research or competitive intelligence.
Delayed Gratification is usually worth it: Look beyond the immediate. Adopt a long term outlook when selling as relationships are always in development. Be a planner and work on time management towards connection and building these relationships.

Combine these emotional intelligence practices and selling with the collection skill of elicitation and cooperative intelligence, and watch your effectiveness as a competitive intelligence professional soar!

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperation, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, emotional intelligence, product development, research | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Purposeful Cooperative Leadership in Competitive Intelligence

Posted on January 15, 2010 by ellendnaylor

I was led to the Purposeful Leaderships’ blog, “Leading from the Heart” by Janna Rust earlier this week. Leading from the heart is a trait of cooperative intelligence, namely cooperative leadership as it rings of caring and authenticity.  Janna also discusses taking care of your reporting people by being there for them and listening. Another great point is to “be protective” of your reporting people and let them know you’re all on the same team.

So many things I read about leadership focus on “managing up”, that is impress your bosses. This often comes at the expense of managing your subordinates, who are doing the work! Yet it’s a delicate balance since your boss decides on your pay raise, can open a lot of doors, and often controls or influences budget moneys allocated to your projects. Whether with bosses, peers or subordinates, cooperative leadership is more about “them” and less about me.

In competitive intelligence and research, many of us don’t have any reporting people and report into another functional area of the company such as Sales, Marketing, Strategic Planning, Product Development or Research & Development. Often enough, they aren’t quite sure what to do with us.

Cooperative and purposeful leadership skills are all the more essential when you rely on other people to give you great information or intelligence who don’t report to you, and your boss perhaps views you as an outlier since competitive intelligence doesn’t quite fit into anyone’s area.

I spent a lot of time meeting with people and listening to their business problems as a competitive intelligence manager. I was really attuned to emotional intelligence as I dealt with my network of contacts and internal company customers and was sensitive to how they were motivated. I would attempt to match my communication style with theirs, including my body language. This was how I behaved whether dealing with peers, subordinates, my internal clients, my sources or my superiors.

I was protective of my sources, especially Sales. Everyone in marketing wanted Sales’ input into their projects. Over time I became the “unofficial” marketing liaison person to Sales. This almost eliminated the number of requests that went to Sales for quick turnaround corporate projects. I made it my business to have more interaction with Sales, and to let them know I reduced their work load, and appreciated that their time should be spent selling. This was the most purposeful leadership I had while at Verizon. I knew I needed to be cooperative in order to gain sales intelligence and customer’s input to be successful in competitive intelligence.

In what ways are you purposeful and cooperative in your leadership and management?

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, D. Sales Intelligence Articles, emotional intelligence, leadership, product development, research | 3 Comments »

Cooperative Listening

Posted on January 7, 2010 by ellendnaylor

Happy New Year! My intention during 2010 is to get better at listening generously to the people who cross my path whether friend or stranger. I hope this poem engages you to be all you can be in the New Year!

The Art of Life
The most precious Art I know of
Is the art of life.
It can be expressed without
Hammer, brush, banjo, pen or clay.
Yet whoever shares this art of life,
Brings a sparkle to other’s lives.
He sees and doesn’t draw;
She listens and hears, yet doesn’t sing or strum.
Theirs is the art of listening and caring,
Choosing to be present for friends and strangers alike.

This is the message behind cooperative intelligence, particularly cooperative connection and cooperative communication. Cooperative connectors value every connection they make with people, and the other person knows that they have the cooperative connector’s undivided attention. There is no multi-tasking or day dreaming while listening to another person’s woes or stories.

A cooperative communicator is a generous listener, not too caught up in his own life that he is waiting for the earliest opportunity to get in the next word without really listening to what the other person is saying. While a lack of good listening is a strong tendency in the American culture, I find it’s more relaxing and engaging to let the other person share what’s on her mind without interruption, while fully listening to what she’s saying: his words, her tone of voice, body language, and what she’s not saying that you might have expected.

Interestingly enough I have found that this ability to communicate cooperatively is invaluable in research, competitive intelligence and sales. In this hurried world we live in, if you just allow the other person to share what they know, they really appreciate this opportunity, whether it’s a scheduled interview, a sales call, a cold call or someone you meet at a trade show.  This dedicated listening engages me to think of creative questions and comments to keep the conversation flowing, which often uncovers valuable information I would never expected to learn. It’s also a lot of fun to listen and learn from others.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, research | 4 Comments »

The Present of Presence & Listening

Posted on December 28, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Yesterday our excellent homilist ended with a story I had read on the Internet several times, yet it hit me differently due to the recent loss of my Dad. An old man had recently lost his wife, and was so heartbroken that he just couldn’t do anything. A neighbor’s little girl saw how sad he was, just sitting on the porch staring out into space, and ran to him and sat in his lap. The old man was delighted and told the little girl’s family that she had brought him back the will to live. They asked: “What did she say?” And he replied, “Nothing. She just sat on my lap.”

This story reminded me of the hours I had spent with my Dad in those last weeks, quietly sitting with him, particularly late at night when he couldn’t sleep even though he wanted to. Sleep deprivation particularly haunted him in the hospital with all the disturbances, noises and lights. I like to think he just didn’t want me to go home. After he came home I continued to sit with him when it was my turn, quietly watching TV, and sometimes while he slept during the day or the night. I stayed up with him the last night he was on planet earth, and I think Dad took great comfort that I was there with him, quietly sitting close by and periodically touching him.

I think this phenomenon of being quiet is also very valuable in business as part of cooperative communication, one of the arms of cooperative intelligence. Sometimes, people just need us to listen to them, and not offer any advice. It is a difficult thing to do: to just listen and listen and perhaps at the end of their ranting just wish them good luck. Often just allowing the other person to talk and talk allows them to release some steam, but also can be used more constructively. If you stay quiet, the other person may share some great ideas to improve your business practices and unleash their creativity. This practice also builds incredible trust and connection between two people since you think enough of the other person to stay quiet and listen.

In my fields of research and competitive intelligence, knowing when to be silent is a great gift, since there aren’t enough listening ears, especially these days with all the downsizing in America. When I call people, even cold calls, I will initiate the conversation, but then I will be silent and give the other person a chance to share what they know. Many of them are so grateful that someone cares enough to ask their opinion, even a total stranger, that a number of them have invited me to call them back any time. I have made them feel good about themselves and warmed up their life just a little bit by asking and caring.

It takes time, life experience and a certain amount of intuition to know when it’s right to just sit back, be quiet and listen. I am still learning and wonder what your experience has been with being quiet and listening.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, research | Comments Off on The Present of Presence & Listening

Christmas, A Season for Gratitude

Posted on December 23, 2009 by ellendnaylor

Cocoa the Cat

The snow is falling gently at my home in Colorado and it reminds me of the purity of birth that Christians celebrate at this time of year.

One of the purest ways to communicate is to express gratitude. This is one of the practices of cooperative communication. There are so many way to express gratitude. A thank-you when someone does something nice is a good start, since we often take these simple acts for granted. There are people in our lives who are often unseen as we go rushing through our lives, like the person behind the counter at the post office who scarcely has time to look up from work for the throngs of people sending out and picking up holiday packages and greeting cards. This year I decided to bake some cookies for our post office staff in my little home town. I took them in last Saturday about 15 minutes before closing. The line was about 40 people long and it was so hot in there. I just walked up to the middle clerk and put the cookies on her weight scale and said, “Merry Christmas, thanks for all that you do.” All 3 clerks looked up at the same time, somewhat dazed from their frenetic pace, and smiled. The cookies evaporated…I had been meaning to do this for several years, but had never remembered. My husband and I sent out many Christmas packages that day, and were happy to share a little gratitude in the midst of the holiday craziness.

This Christmas is bittersweet for me as I mourn the loss of my Dad who died just before Thanksgiving. It takes a while to bring the good memories to the forefront of one you were with pretty intensely as he died.

I like the anticipation that accompanies the Christmas season. When I think about my Dad I anticipate how my life is going to change as I more avidly bring in his good practices into my life. I am so grateful to have been influenced by this good man. He was very warm and giving, and shared a great enthusiasm for life. It’s one thing to bring these practices into your personal life, but I find it more challenging to bring them into business since business is often so self-centered, especially in competitive intelligence, where often companies are looking to be better at the expense of their competitors. Maybe it’s time for me to shift my focus towards opportunity analysis, that is helping companies uncover and develop business opportunities. Competitive analysis is a part of the process, but looking ahead and anticipating and planning are the focus of this initiative.

Ever since Dad died I have brought this blog back more to its original focus of cooperative intelligence since it focuses on being warm and giving—a lot like my Dad.

Filed under: communication, competitive analysis, Competitive Intelligence, cooperative, Cooperative Intelligence, opportunity analysis | Comments Off on Christmas, A Season for Gratitude

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