Competitive Intelligence
I love working in the field of competitive intelligence. It is a space where curiosity is essential, and I am insanely curious. You must be a lifetime learner to play in this space, and to be sustainable, as the demands of your clients evolve and change along with your company’s industry and the global macroenvironment. You also need to be a critical thinker, a good listener and communicator.
You also need to learn how to use AI to offload some of the boring aspects of our trade: monitoring, on-line collection, some analysis, and dissemination. Wow, what’s left you ask? Read on to recall how essential it is to have human supervision! But first let’s define competitive intelligence!
There are as many definitions of competitive intelligence as there are people who do it!
Here’s my definition.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is a continuous activity that provides an ongoing update of activities in the marketplace. A functioning CI process will provide signals or early warning that allow a company to act first in anticipation of a competitor’s moves or to adopt or counteract new technologies that will impact its industry.
Competitive intelligence helps companies better understand their competitive environment to make sound business decisions, and to uncover threats and opportunities.
Competitive intelligence includes all the factors that impact a company’s ability to compete: suppliers, customers, distributors, competitors and potential competitors. (Think Porter’s 5 Forces.) Macro factors that influence the competitive environment include economic, ecological, socio-cultural, political, legal and technology. (Think STEEP Analysis)
While competitive intelligence is heavily reliant on technology to monitor and increasingly to analyze the competitive environment, it’s unique in that it’s a people centric activity that draws on personnel from different areas of the company to cooperate in gathering and sharing competitive and market developments.
Ultimately, competitive intelligence is driven by human relationships. For your clients and prospects, if you can’t connect with fellow employees, influencers outside of your company and customers, you are ineffective.
Competitive intelligence is a diverse discipline. I like Zena Applebaum’s description of the skills required to be an effective competitive intelligence professional.
“Competitive intelligence (CI) is not market research, it is not strategy, and it is not sales enablement. But it is also all of those things. There are many hard skills in CI that you need to know: how to gather and analyze data, how to elicit human intelligence (HUMINT); and how to run reports and think big. But CI is also about softer skills, the set of competencies that includes but is not limited to curiosity, research ability, relationship building, synthesis, communication, and flexibility.” (Source: A Practical Guide to Competitive Intelligence.)
Victoria Richard Hanna adds, “You also need people who will challenge you and your assumptions and help you be as inclusive in your work as possible.” (Source: A Practical Guide to Competitive Intelligence.)
Those who challenge you help you become aware of and to combat your blind spots and biases. In other words, your humanity. You are who you are, a product of your upbringing, health, race, gender, age, economic status, culture and life experience.
What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive intelligence can mean different things to different people. You need to be sensitive to this to connect and sustain relationships.
A Salesperson looks for competitive intelligence to help him win more deals and retain more business. Concise communication like battle cards is valued.
A research scientist values competitive intelligence on disruptive technology and competitors’ R&D initiatives.
Executives value competitive intelligence that supports the company’s goals with a longer-term focus such as insight on the marketplace, rivals, threats and opportunities…with financial implications.
Product marketers look for competitive intelligence to compare competitors’ product or service features so they can differentiate and develop better products.
Sales enablement looks for competitive intelligence to help them educate and support sales reps to connect with customers and make more sales.
Ellen Naylor’s Major Contributions to Competitive Intelligence
I have worked in competitive intelligence since 1985! I have evolved with the changing times and have written two books to inform the profession.
Loosen Their Lips: How to Capture the Information You Seek During a Conversation
Win/Loss Analysis: How to Capture and Keep the Business You Want
These books are written in the spirit of helping you improve your conversation, collection and analytic skills. They are also a reminder that humans are the core of competitive intelligence, albeit with strong digital support. To differentiate your company’s direction, you need human critical thinking and discernment from all the noise.
My Competitive Intelligence Offers
Training
-
Conversation Enablement - Elicitation
Learn how to gain his trust and engage him in the conversation you want—that is to tell you what you’re looking for. Maybe you’re trying to close the deal. Or perhaps identify if this potential customer is legitimate or is just shopping. Or you want the precious nugget of information that only a human can provide!
I will teach you how to plan important conversations. Here are a few tips and there are many more. Figure out his motivation, be observant, and flexible. Be a good listener and don’t take yourself too seriously. [Elicitation Training]
-
Win/Loss Analysis
If all you need is Win/Loss training, I’m happy to provide that to your team or to you, individually. Or perhaps you need some training to conduct Win/Loss interviews, the key ingredient to develop your Win/Loss program. [Win/Loss Training]
Speaking
I feel such passion about competitive intelligence, particularly around Conversation Enablement and Elicitation. I would love to share this with you. I am available for public speaking and corporate events {Speaking].
But I must warn you: my bias is the human!
Develop Your In-House Win/Loss Program
Many of you can’t afford to outsource your Win/Loss program. I will help you develop your in-house Win/Loss program. This is an economic solution as I’ll guide you through the process and turn it over to you when you are ready. [Win/Loss Analysis]
I was awarded a Competitive Intelligence Fellow in 2006. Back then, we were part of SCIP, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals renamed the Strategic Consortium of Intelligence Professionals.
The Council of CI Fellows is my favorite source of intelligence. We structured into a 501(c)(3) organization in 2017 as SCIP no longer supported the CI Fellow award. We Fellows wanted to continue to advance the profession and to award a CI Fellow award to deserving competitive intelligence colleagues.
We support the profession with monthly webinars, a mentoring program, ethics guidelines and an annual virtual conference, which will be in-person in 2027, our 10th anniversary as a 501(c)(3) an educational nonprofit.
If you feel you’re deserving a CI Fellow, check out the nomination process!
