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.
If you want to stay in business for the long haul, you need to be observant about your marketplace, question your assumptions, and be willing to make changes! Dr. Redelmeier, a physician researcher says, “Do not get trapped into prior thoughts. It’s perfectly OK to change your mind as you learn more.” While his world of research evolves around behavior, his practice of questioning and researching around your assumptions, and his willingness to change based on learning, will benefit researchers of all types and including those running a competitive intelligence operation.
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.
In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, here are short excerpts about the 7 competitive intelligence presentations that will be given at SLA 2010 Annual Conference held in New Orleans from June 12 – 16, 2010 at the New Orleans Convention Center.
While GE uses rivalry to stimulate innovation, I believe it can also be used to support other functions such as competitive intelligence in the case of war gaming, in particular. Another group that responds well to healthy rivalry, if you publicize their contribution, is Sales. People are naturally competitive and want to be the best, so healthy rivalry that advances your company’s goals for innovation, improved competitiveness and winning more deals—is a good thing!
I look to build 2 databases to support competitive intelligence: one which is a repository of data/reports/analysis and another which is a contact database of experts and users of competitive intelligence both inside and outside your company. The repository is useful for monitoring, as a source for quick retrieval of data for projects, and can facilitate self-service of existing information and analysis for competitive intelligence clients. The contact database is most precious especially if sortable by expertise, topical interest and whatever way it makes it easy for you to find the right person, whether a user or resource for your competitive intelligence needs.
Use a cooperative connection approach with internal and external experts regardless of how you reach them. A good way to think about who to connect with internally is: who is dealing with my competitors, customers, the investor community, suppliers, distributors, regulators or attends trade shows? Externally, you need to consider who tracks the marketplace you compete in, in all its aspects: technology, innovation, the environment, economic conditions, politics/lobbyists, regulatory, social issues and the competition.
I was interviewed by Adam Sutton of MarketingSherpa, and in the spirit of cooperative intelligence I am sharing some highlights from each of the 5 tactics to research your marketplace using competitive intelligence skills. 1. Conduct win loss analysis; 2. Talk to internal and external experts; 3. Use trade shows as fact-finding missions 4. Build an information database 5. Remain ethical and avoid deception. I will provide more detail about each of these 5 tactics in future April blogs.
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!
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.