modern competitive intelligence · competitive intelligence leveraging internal competitor...
TRANSCRIPT
M O D E R N
Competitive Intelligence
Leveraging Internal Competitor Knowledge to Create an Ongoing Competitive Advantage
Tim Rhodes: Oracle’s former director of competitive intelligence
About Pragmatic Marketing
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Experts in technology product management and product marketing
Specialize in training
Trained hundreds of thousands of people at thousands of companies since 1993
About the Presenter
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Tim Rhodes • Former director of market intelligence at Oracle/Eloqua
(Oracle Marketing Cloud) • Responsible for competitive and market intelligence, including
“voice of the customer” research and marketing strategy • 10 years competitive intelligence and strategy consultancy
for Fortune 500 firms including Microsoft, IBM, Spring and Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Former military intelligence officer
Agenda Webinar objectives • Learn how to identify and leverage internal data to generate
competitive insights
• Use technology to harness and distribute competitive intelligence (CI)
• Create intelligence sharing culture
• Learn to create “crowdsourced” competitive intelligence (CI) from internal employees
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Why Share CI? CI = ability to proactively respond • Companies with poor competitive info are usually reactive
• Competitive intelligence on top competitors enables proactive response to changing market conditions
• In order to USE competitive information wisely, the organization must first CAPTURE the information
• Information is NOT intelligence
• Value of proactive competitive intelligence is exponential
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Why Share CI? CI is like a puzzle • One piece doesn’t give you a
lot of information about the picture
• When you put two pieces together, you start to see a pattern emerge
• The more pieces you put together, the quicker you can envision the whole picture
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Why Share CI?
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Information Sources Internal competitive intelligence sources: • Sales and account staff (field, inside sales, account management)
• Leadership (CEO, CFO, COO)
• Channel partners
• Service and support
• Former competitor employees
• Former employees
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Sales Teams Sales reps/account teams have unique perspective: • Customer perceptions on competitor strengths, weaknesses and
differentiators
• Hear about new competitive products, new pricing plans, new sales and marketing tactics
• Often have diverse background, prior industry experience
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Sharing Strategy Successful CI sharing
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(1) Culture Company culture and motivation • Company willingness to collaborate and share
– Company culture HAS to be one of collaboration and cooperation
• Motivation within the company to share
• What motivates employees to participate and share? – Express themselves
– Supporting others/sharing knowledge
– Demonstrate command of knowledge
– Recognition
– Culture of organization
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(1) Culture Company “silos” prevent information flow • Many businesses internally resemble the old “smokestack”
industries
• Their “smokestacks” are the isolated “silos” that make up individual departments
• These departments act independently, without sharing information, decreasing chance of successful company-wide effort (potentially for more business unit sharing strategy)
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(2) CI Structure To capture and use CI, you must have a CI process in place • Dedicated CI teams
are still rare
• Requires a defined structure and process to manage CI collection, analysis and distribution
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Who manages your competitive intelligence?
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(3) Sharing Processes Use multiple ways to gain and share CI • Communication
– Build a business case for CI sharing process (less expensive to use internal resources than outside vendor)
– Dedicated CI email address
– Internal collaboration platforms (Chatter, Yammer, blogs, Wiki, Jive/Confluence)
– Internal document sharing/repositories
• Regular “CI huddles”/crowdsourced CI – Live regular meetings with: sales, channel managers, solutions
engineers/pre-sales consultants, account teams, inside sales and business development reps (BDRs)
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CI sales huddle value • “Crowdsourcing” process that leverages experience of reps who have won
and lost against competitors − Harness how reps won against competitors (sales tactics, sales approach,
messaging, differentiators)
− Learn from lost deals how to prepare against specific competitors
• Create a cadence for CI, a “CI sales huddle” can give reps the live access they need to help in positioning against competitors
• Approach to reps should be that this is a regularly held “brainstorming” session on how to win against top competitors − Can also use a “detective metaphor” to focus on “investigating” how to position
against rivals in a specific deal
− .
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(3) Sharing Processes
CI sales huddle structure • Regular meeting (monthly or bi-weekly) can be added to existing sales call
• Advertise/promote with specific competitor/topic being covered
• 30-45 minutes total – first 15-20 should focus on presenting value to team (new competitive insight, overview of new competitive tool, etc.)
• Last 15-20 minutes for solicitation over specific competitor encountered
• Have 1-2 sales reps bring an active competitive deal to meeting
• Rep presents prospect, specific competitor involved and competitive situation encountered
• Allow attendees to provide feedback based on their experience with competitor in their own sales cycles
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(3) Sharing Processes
CI huddles foster creativity • No evaluation of ideas—only brainstorming and experience
sharing
• Diverse perspectives and expertise
• Peer pressure and recognition for creative ideas
• Allows other sales reps to hear how to successfully sell against the competition
• Creates a cadence for CI and positioning to increase win-rate
• Fosters open discussion about competition, encourages information sharing
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(3) Sharing Processes
(4) Tools Communication tools are important • Providing tools for employee collaboration DOES NOT mean they
will be used – Depends on culture, motivation, ease of use, and education/promotion of
tool and sharing process
– “Not another platform” attitude
• Real-time sharing tools – Chattter, Yammer, SocialText, eXo, Convofy (integrated with GMAIL)
– Create specific channels for CI
• Sharing communities – SharePoint, Confluence, Jive, Wiki, Huddle, Bloomfire
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Case Study Eloqua (SaaS-based marketing automation platform; acquired by Oracle)
• Program combination: culture, process, motivation and tools
– Established a strong CI framework first
– Leadership buy-in with quarterly CI sharing award
– Promoted bi-weekly “CI sales huddles”
– Covered 1-2 competitors per session
– Provided competitive insights not already provided
– Opened call up for general questions and feedback on specific competitors being covered
– Had 1-2 sales reps bring in current competitive sales cycles
– Used existing tools to communicate in real-time (Chatter)
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Obstacles What can get in your way • Motivating people/unwillingness to participate
• Culture of company
• No leadership buy-in
• Tools not convenient to use
• Highly siloed company
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However long you THINK it will take to deploy a CI sharing system (and for it to be effective), multiple it by two
Recommendations Successful CI sharing requires buy-in • MUST have leadership commitment (at all levels)
• MUST have employee buy-in at sales level
• Honest assessment of culture, willingness to share information
• Educate and market CI sharing system and CI sales huddle
• Start with small team and move outward (especially if large company)
– Start with a small sales team (geo-based or product-based)
– Remind and reinforce CI sharing process often
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Recommendations Using tools to reinforce competitive learning • Reward and incentivize participation
• Make it fun!
• Measure success through tracking win-rate before program and after (overall win-rate and competitive specific win-rate)
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More Information Contacts:
• Stacey Weber [email protected] @pragmaticmkting
• Tim Rhodes [email protected] @TimWRhodes
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Thank you for attending! Download this webinar at
pragmaticmarketing.com/live
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