Competitive Intelligence Primer Excerpt

Learning What Competitors Are Doing

Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Whatever sector you operate in, and however Unique your Selling Proposition is, there will always be other businesses competing for customers in your target market.

A competitor is a rival company operating in the same industry as you, selling similar goods or services. You may be competing against your rivals to win customers on the basis of price, the type of product you sell, the type of promotions you run, or perhaps the quality of service you offer.

When you look around at your current competitors, do you know what they’re doing? Do you know how effective their current operations are, or how satisfied their customers are? When you develop your business strategies, do you consider what your competitors’ strategies might be?

This sort of knowledge is Competitive Intelligence (CI). It’s generally part of a market intelligence plan, which is designed to improve your business decisions by keeping you up to speed regarding what’s happening in your market environment.

Many small to medium businesses are, at least, vaguely aware of the concept of CI, but most do not attempt to collect CI data. There are several reasons why they don’t, such as they feel it may necessitate unethical behavior, alienate their customers, they don’t see the potential value, they’re lazy, or often, they don’t know how to go about it. First of all, most CI techniques do not involve unethical behavior (I will not recommend any such behaviors). Second, CI will help you improve your processes and that should improve your products and services. Most significantly, if you actively engage your team in Competitive Intelligence you will give your company a significant advantage, and I assert, will actually improve your relationship with your clients.

Strategic Questions for Disruptive Innovation in Markets

Some business conferences you attend are beneficial because of specific content presented. Other business conferences are beneficial because of all the creative ideas they trigger, irrespective of whether the ideas were actually discussed by presenters. The Innovation Summit presented by Kansas City Kansas Community College soundly delivered on triggering ideas for strategic questions for disruptive innovation in markets.

In fact, the free, half-day Kansas City Kansas Community College Innovation Summit was a veritable bonanza since attendees walked away with a variety of ideas triggered by the presenters. Those ideas included ones for several new creative thinking exercises many never before imagined.

To do a little sharing, the presentations from keynote speaker Dean Teng-Kee Tan (of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Bloch School of Business) and several Kansas City innovators suggested eleven strategic questions to ask relative to imagining potential market disruption opportunities:

11 Strategic Questions for Disruptive Innovation

  1. What feature can you create that’s missing in someone else’s product?
  2. Where can you disrupt significant cost areas in physical goods?
  3. How can you digitize a physical element, action, or experience – or digitize all three?
  4. What steps can you take to create a service out of your strongest / most prevalent support capability?
  5. How can you inject a completely emotional experience into what you do?
  6. Ever thought about ways to digitize a service?
  7. How is it possible to smooth demand for inefficient / difficult to provide capabilities?
  8. What would it take to turn in-person interactions into remote interactions?
  9. How can you digitize scarce resources to put them in more places simultaneously?
  10. What could you do to help push the biggest player in your desired market to leave the marketplace?
  11. If the most prominent player in your market did go away, what opportunities would it open up?

Asking the Right Strategic Question

Again, none of the presenters necessarily mentioned these strategic questions for disruptive innovation. The questions were derived from the various case studies and examples presenters shared and by asking one of my favorite questions:

What strategic question (or questions) could cause someone to come up with the same answer the original innovator did?

And when you land on great strategic questions, you can much more easily generate lots of innovation ideas.

The Ultimate Sales Process Guide

data mining and business intelligence

The only way to Increase Sales

  1. Increase Sales Activities (contacts, marketing, etc.)
  2. Increase Average Transaction Size
  3. Increase Conversion Rate
  4. Introduce New Products and/or Services
  5. Expand the Market
  6. Discover and then satisfy your client’s authorized buyer’s emotional Wants & Needs through the integration of your products/services into their process. Help Client understand a “Want” vs. “Need” (as applicable).
  7. Create a profoundly deep and professionally intimate relationship with your client (become part of their process to achieve success)
  8. Capture the Niche by establishing Unique ability to serve the Market (provide a unique solution)

Table of Contents

The Ultimate Sales Process Guide 1
The only way to Increase Sales 1
An Effective Sales Process 2
Sale Classifications 3
Sales Phases 3
Before you try to sell anything – Prepare well 3
Identify Target Clients 4
Discovery 5
Guidelines for Discovery 6
The Most Important Sales Tool 6
Closing 6
Value Points 8
Advanced Skills 8
The line of Inquiry — Pattern of Questions 8
The goal of every sales contact is to advance the opportunity 8
1. Current State 9
2. Desired State 9
3. Obstacles/Challenges 9
4. Issue Motivators 9
5. Buying Motives 9
6. Resources, Authority, Probability 10
7. Past Solutions 10
8. Ask for the sale 10
Key Marketing Concepts 10
The Marketing Challenge 10
Fighting the Clutter Factor 11
Effective Strategy to Increase Sales 12
Identify and Avoid/Satisfy Prevailing Customer Complaints (by Industry) 12
Competitive Advantage 12
Avoid Platitudes 12

An Effective Sales Process

  1. Is a multi-step methodology that is:
    • Repeatable
    • Manageable
    • Consistent
    • Sequential
    • Transferable
    • Client Focused
  2. Transforms services/products into revenue in a cost-effective way
  3. Includes performance goals, measurement procedures for those goals and analysis
  4. May be composed of many sub-processes
    • Engaging in a Common language (learn the client’s language and technical terms)
    • Learning the Client’s: Needs, Wants, Emotional Hook, Company’s Internal Dynamics, etc.
    • Development Steps, Marketing, Discovery (Line of Inquiry), Closing
    • Ongoing process for
      • Analyzing sales opportunities
      • Prioritizing strategies
      • Managing / Measuring / Tracking objectives attainment
      • Overcoming Pricing Pressures
      • Training, Professional Development and Energizing the Sales Team
      • Deepening the Relationship
  5. An Effective Sales Process Develops a Close & Long-term Relationship with the Client
  6. The foundation of an Effective Sales Process is proper & timely questions
  7. The goal of every contact is to advance the opportunity.

Sale Classifications

business analytics
  1. Simple
    • Few applications /options / One Decision Maker
  2. Complex – Usually involves multiple players
    • Buyer has many options
    • Seller has many options
    • Many levels are involved
    • Organizations decision-making process is complex
    • There are several/many Influencers

Sales Phases

Before you try to sell anything – Prepare well

  • Secure a competent understanding of your products/services, including real Value (to your Client)
  • Conduct Competitive Intelligence
  • Complete your Unique Selling Proposition Analysis
  • Ensure that your Sales team understand your Client’s products/services, as well as their processes, methods of selling, etc. How do your products and/or services fit into the client’s world (both, within the Big Picture and precise application(s)) according to their perspective?
  • Creating an effective online presence of

To be continued…

Want to learn more?

Email us at info@DIADconsulting.com and request our complete White Paper, “The Ultimate Sales Process Guide” or get your copy of “100 Ways to Find More Sales.”

You may also request our “Unique Selling Position (USP) Analysis” White Paper and example USP Analysis Worksheet. Email us at info@diadconsulting.com or complete our Contact Form.

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