There has been a lot of discussion about what makes specific technologies “modern” and this is true with competitive intelligence as well. The definition of competitive intelligence is quickly expanding as new technologies enable companies to more effectively and rapidly promote their marketing initiatives as well as drive sales. “Modern competitive intelligence” (CI) is about having a 360 degree view of your current and emerging competitive landscape. Modern CI is using a careful mix of both online technologies with offline research processes to make sure you minimize competitive surprises and effectively leverage competitive weaknesses. Here are the 5 tenets of Competitive Intelligence that I’ve found to encompass the successful attributes of the entirety of CI.
The 5 Tenets of Competitive Intelligence
Social Media Intelligence
If your competitive intelligence process does not include a social media research strategy, you definitely have a competitive blind spot. Understanding your competitors’ social media strategies as well as learning deep competitive insights that reside across social media channels are essential for marketing, sales and the entire company to have a grasp on.
Win-Loss Analysis
Analysis of won and lost customers through interviews and/or surveys is a critical component of maintaining a 360 view of your landscape. Win/loss interviews can help determine customer perceptions of your company versus your competitors as well as learn competitor strengths and weaknesses. Win/loss interviews can help you identify competitor-specific insights as well as learn high-level competitive trends. For example, win/loss interviews can help you to understand top competitor weaknesses that your sales teams can leverage as well as help identify growing unmet customer needs to develop new product features.
Automated intelligence process
Automated collection of key competitive metrics & information collection is critical for creating a scalable and repeatable CI process. Having a system that collects and segments competitive information on an on-going basis with real-time alerts is key to understanding your competitors and avoiding surprises. Having a proactive up-to-date on new competitor product launches, revised marketing messages, and new social media strategies can help you gain a clearer picture of benchmarks on where you stand vs. your competitors.
Crowdsourced intelligence
A significant component modern CI is to harness the competitive knowledge that resides with your employees, partners, and customers. One way to take advantage of these individual insights is to host a regular “huddle” with your sales and account teams. By hosting a weekly or bi-weekly “CI huddle”, you can identify key competitive trends that your sales and account teams are hearing and experiencing. By giving your sales, account teams, and partners a platform for discussing the competition, you can pick up early competitive insights not otherwise known as well as provide real-time competitive insights to help them win more deals. Another way to harness “crowdsourced intelligence” is to leverage internal communication platforms such as Chatter. I have personally seen Chatter revolutionize a company’s competitive intelligence process. Chatter, or a similar technology, is a critical component of having a modern CI process.
Actionable intelligence
Intelligence has to be distributed in real-time and packaged in a proactive format specific to the audience. For sales teams, competitive intelligence needs to be focused on relevant sell-against information, including leveraging competitors’ weaknesses, in short bits of information. For marketing and product management teams, information should be focused on competitors’ strategies and product plans, marketing strategies, and demand generation tactics. So in turn the marketer can be proactive about their marketing campaigns rather than reactive for when a competitor implements a campaign and the competing marketer knows after the fact.
By using all five tenets of modern competitive intelligence, you can arm your organization with the most proactive and actionable competitive insights. Having actionable intelligence can help arm your sales teams to increase win-rate as well as give your marketing teams insights to create effective, highly differentiated messaging and positioning.
Tim Rhodes has been the worldwide competitive intelligence director at two multi-national enterprise software companies and previously led a U.S. competitive intelligence consulting company for ten years. He can be found at timrhodes.tumblr.com or @Compintellgnce.