I am reading Seena Sharp’s book Competitive Intelligence Advantage. In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I am sharing what I liked about the introduction and the first two chapters in this blog. Stay tuned: I will continue my review as I read further!
In honor of my competitive intelligence colleague, Jonathan Calof, 2010 SCIP Fellow winner, I am writing this post on his subject of expertise, trade shows! 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!
On March 23, I will be giving a 2 hour session entitled, “Improve your ROI: Proven Tools & Techniques for Integrating Sales & Marketing” at the American Marketing Association’s Spring Marketing Workshop which takes place in Denver, Colorado from March 22 – 25 at the Westin Tabor Center www.westintaborcenterdenver.com.
In the spirit of cooperative intelligence I want to share the news about our SCIP Denver Rocky Mountain Meeting for Feb 19 2010 at the Qwest Bldg, 1801 California St, Conf Rm 3, 13th Fl, Denver CO 80202. Lynnette Woolery, our long-time chapter leader will hand the reins over to Richard Caldwell and Tom Seward.
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. 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.
While many of us are programmed at a young age to strive to be successful in our lives, we have problems with the little steps getting there, like prioritizing what we should be doing to progress, versus what we almost aimlessly “do” to get through our day. I have three practices to share with you in the spirit of cooperative intelligence which help me keep balance in my life.
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 and am most effective when I forget about myself while keeping an eye on the clock to respect their time.
The devil is in the details: do you know your audience or clients well enough to know how to connect with them emotionally when you communicate? This is often a weakness in competitive intelligence professionals as we are far too hung up with our world of competitive analysis lingo and perspective. Whether it’s a speech, a project or a simple e-mail communication, you have the opportunity to emotionally connect through cooperative communication if you truly empathize with your customer’s position and care to take note of how they learn and how they like to be communicated with.
Last week I attended a webinar to improve my selling skills led by Colleen Stanley, Founder and Chief Sales Officer of SalesLeadership. Effective selling will help competitive intelligence professionals, product managers and researchers gain respect, cooperation and appreciation from internal peers. Combine emotional intelligence practices and selling with the collection skill of elicitation and watch your effectiveness soar!
In competitive intelligence and research, many of us don’t have any reporting people and report into another functional area of the company. Thus cooperative and purposeful leadership skills are all the more crucial 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. My most purposeful leadership was with Sales while I was 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.