Communication

Questions to Ask Competitive Intelligence Software Providers

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Many companies use CI software to both collect and disseminate intelligence. As a CI professional, I look for a solution that will free up my time to be a critical thinker, to do the analysis, prepare persuasive communication from what I can deduce, and connection with my users and providers of CI–in some cases maintaining that relationship in others finding and building relationships. here are some practical questions you want to ask a prospective CI software service provider.

Gain Competitive Advantage through Risk Management: NCBA’s Story

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Being ready when a crisis hits is a huge competitive advantage! Scenario planning is a great exercise to flesh out which crises you should be prepared for. If you wait until the crisis hits, it’s too late, especially in today’s real-time world! While the more sensational story was around NCBA’s involvement in the Oprah Winfrey show in 1996, I more appreciated how NCBA implemented its risk management strategy when Mad Cow entered the US on Dec 23, 2003, and believe they reacted in a way that reflects cooperative intelligence principles.

Real-Time Competitive Advantage

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I am enjoying David Meerman Scott’s book, Real-Time Marketing & PR. He explains the competitive advantage to companies and individuals of being responsive to events that affect them in real-time. No longer can you just monitor the news: you have to take action! So many companies are stuck in the past and the future and forget that we operate in the NOW!

Preparation: Step 1 for Successful Collection Interviews

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Preparation, even for cold calling, or should I say especially for cold calling, is essential since the other person has no incentive to talk to you. The first thing I do when I get a collection assignment is to learn the language and jargon of the industry I am targeting. I find if I am thorough in my preparation, I am more relaxed, and can listen fully since I am not panicking about what I should ask next.

How to Encourage Cooperative Communication from Sales

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Many competitive intelligence, marketing, research and product developers complain about poor communication from their sales force, who has a direct conduit to your customers—one of the best sources of knowledge about what your company is doing right and wrong as well as ideas for new products, services and tweaks to your existing products that can be revenue generating!

So how do you encourage cooperative communication from Sales?

Why Cooperative Intelligence? An Extreme Presentation

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Recently, I wrote about the Extreme Presentation format for presenting material to smaller audiences. At the conclusion of that post, I gave an example of how Extreme Presentation looks. This post describes and illustrates an example of Extreme Presentation by defining what and how to use cooperative intelligence in competitive intelligence or research.

Why & How Extreme Presentation Works

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Dr. Andrew Abela recently wrote a second book on Extreme Presentation. The first book detailed how to create an Extreme Presentation while this book provides a simple case study which illustrates clearly how Extreme Presentation can be created at companies, particularly for smaller audiences. It’s powerful as most of us present to small audiences, and usually want to persuade them to take a certain course of action. This is the objective of Extreme Presentation.

Be Competitive! 22 Tips to Kick Start Your Marketing

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Mary Ellen Bates delivered an excellent AIIP webinar on how to market your business more effectively using her tested and tried best practices using the telephone, snail mail and social networks. You will want to buy her book, Building and Running a Successful Research Business” for even more than the 23 tippers she shared. Free webinars are a great AIIP benefit and all webinars are taped for later listening for the membership.

Sales Intelligence from the Competitive Intelligence Expert Panel at SLA 2010

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This blog contains wisdom from the competitive intelligence expert panel from SLA’s 2010 annual conference. This blog focuses on their discussion around PTW (price to win) and win loss analysis. It’s remarkable than only 20% of companies even do win loss analysis given its great insight into customers and competitors!

Jan Herring’s Words of Wisdom for Info Pros

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Jan Herring, competitive intelligence guru shares tips for information pros that competitive intelligence professionals can also benefit from. The final 3 tippers are: improve your company’s financial based competitor comparisons; build innovative early warning alert systems; and develop CI software systems to improve your effectiveness through the right use of technology.

© 2026 Ellen Naylor