What’s the Future of SCIP and the Competitive Intelligence Profession?

Competitive intelligence is not recognized enough to keep SCIP afloat on its own. Many companies include competitive intelligence as part of other business functions which are well defined: product planning, strategic planning, marketing, PR, sales, R&D, but CI really isn’t perceived as a discipline in many companies. SCIP also faces competition in CI from other associations and social networks. I hope SCIP turns on its marketing machine with urgency and reaches out to companies and individuals and educate them on the compelling value of conducting systematic CI. I hope that SCIP’s leadership is reading the CI Ning. There are so many good ideas posted, so SCIP has a great opportunity to listen and query these individuals more closely and engage them to be part of the solution.

Capture Competitor & Market Intelligence through Elicitation: Webinar Follow-up

Teach Sales elicitation skills: they don’t get it anywhere else and it will help them close more deals and collect information to help your company develop better products. Some of the best elicitors are more introverted since they are likely to be more thorough in their preparation for elicitation interviews. Introverted people are often better listeners than extroverts, so are often more skilled at getting the other guy to talk!

Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence Skills

In my field of competitive intelligence, strong emotional skills are essential since we’re often delivering people bad news which can cause stress since often “they” don’t want to hear bad news or threats to the business even if it is the truth. We have to stay strong not just to deliver bad news, but also be sensitive as to how “they” are going to take the news and not spring surprises, for example. What’s neat about EQ versus IQ is that we can learn and be coached to improve our EQ skills. Check out EQMentor, a web 2.0 delivery mentoring service to sharpen you EQ skills.

Netiquette on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is primarily a business to business social network with over 30 million members as of Jan. 09. Users have different objectives and come from different cultures on LinkedIn. Some people use it to connect with people who they would never otherwise know, while others will only connect with people they know well. This post contains 12 LinkedIn user bad habits.

Connect Cooperatively through your social & old fashioned networks

When Bonnie Hohhof, SCIP’s editor of Competitive Intelligence Magazine asked me to write about social networking etiquette, I was totally overwhelmed since there is reams of information on this topic.  How could I make it meaningful to SCIP members?  I found my answer in Chris Brogan‘s blog entry of Jan. 27, 2009 entitled, “You’re All Doing It Wrong.” …

Read moreConnect Cooperatively through your social & old fashioned networks