The Why, What & How of Win/Loss Analysis

A week ago I delivered an IntelCollab webinar on win loss analysis, and have now posted my win loss analysis slides on my Slideshare account. At the conclusion we had time for a goodly number of questions, which I have recapped below. For those who are unfamiliar with win loss analysis, it is the process of interviewing customers and non customers, usually over the telephone, as to why they chose to do business with you or another service provider. You tally up the results of these telephone interviews, and provide quantitative and qualitative analysis based on what you learned from the interviews. It is my favorite tactical competitive intelligence practice since you learn so much from these short interviews, much of which you can take action on almost immediately.

Improve Your Win Loss Analysis Skills: IntelCollab Webinar

Join us, Arik Johnson and me, Ellen Naylor, for an informative webinar on the how to behind win loss analysis. Win/loss interviews and analysis, are still one of my favorite tactical collection techniques. This is a low cost form of primary collection which always provides a high return for improving your company’s bottom line. Who better than your customers and those who decided on a competitor to tell you what you are doing well and what you need to change?

Cooperative Intelligence: Kindness in Competitive Intelligence

While competitive intelligence is not a kind business function, it is a necessary one, and we can be kind people when we bring cooperative intelligence practices into our work. Cooperative intelligence is kindness: you give without an expectation of something in return. People realize that you genuinely want to help them in their work. After all, competitive intelligence is a support function. You need to keep giving, and eventually those in your network of contacts will support you by sharing great tidbits on the competitive environment since your giving is infectious, and they just can’t help themselves. People are attracted to you by your good example of producing the goods they need and your giving attitude.

Reach out to people for the best & most real-time intelligence

Many are too focused on what they can find from “big data,” the Internet and social media–which anyone can have access to who has time and money. If you want to learn what’s really happening, you need to talk to human beings on a regular basis, not just for competitive intelligence, but for anything in life that you care about.

How to Find Health Information for Veterans

No matter how you feel about America’s presence in war, our veterans deserve support, particularly as they return to their families and work life after deployment. This blog takes some of the guess work out of research for great support resources for veterans and their families, particularly the Colorado University Health Sciences Library’s resource guide: http://ow.ly/nrm5V maintained by Dana Abbey.

Debra Fine & The Fine Art of Small Talk

Small talk is an appetizer to any relationship. People like to do business with their friends. When you forget someone’s name, for example, be open and ask them graciously. This psychology of assuming the burden of someone else’s comfort is similar when you are on the telephone doing research or competitive intelligence. Make the other person feel you care, but also keep in mind that you might be catching them at a busy time.

How To Talk Like A Most Creative Person

Conversation will always be a key to sprouting creativity. We need fellow human beings to help us develop our creative seeds. They also remind us about the marketplace of products, services and ideas that are out there–keep us from being blindsided. We all have biases and blinders. It’s human nature.

Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com

By the end of Markham Nolan’s TED talk, there will be 864 more hours of video on YouTube and 2.5 million more photos on Facebook and Instagram. So how do we sort through the deluge? Ellen Naylor‘s insight: Great talk by world class journalist, Markham Nolan, based in Dublin. Here are some of the nuggets: …

Read moreMarkham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com

Conversational Intelligence

Companies have business blind spots, and since they’re run by people: we also have blind spots. Two common blindspots are:

Assuming that others see what you see, feel what you feel, and think what you think
Thinking you understand and remember what others say, when you really only remember what you think about what they’ve said

One way to loosen up those blind spots is to engage in dialog with other people and listen, truly listen to what they’re saying. That’s behind many a successful marriage, business relationships, effective interviewers and successful researchers.

Elicitation with Enthusiasm

I have been using elicitation techniques for many years, but not quite in the military intelligence way, which seems like using the other person in a more negative way. These techniques take advantage of human tendencies to complain, gossip, correct and inform, which certainly works. However, I like to capture the human desire to be happy.