Tag Archives: Primary

How Do You Obtain Competitive Intelligence Ethically? Six Points

Situation: A CEO is concerned that many of the ways that her company might gain competitive intelligence could compromise the ethics and values that she has worked to instill in the company. What legal and ethical methods have others used to gain competitive intelligence? How do you obtain competitive intelligence ethically?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It’s critical not to use methods that compromise the company’s legal position. Using spies or spy devices fit into the category of both illegal and unwise methods to obtain intelligence.
  • Do not misrepresent the company, or have employees misrepresent themselves to competitors in order to obtain competitive information.
  • Do not talk about prices directly with your competitors. This compromises both companies legally.
  • Here’s a test: If an action is being considered to gain competitive intelligence, would the company be willing to put up a banner in the office for all employees to see, telling them about this? If not, don’t do it. If questionable activities are employed, it’s likely that they will find out no matter what is done to hide these activities.
  • Here are primary sources for gathering competitive intelligence ethically:
    • Customers;
    • Competitors’ customer service and engineering departments, possibly through 3rd parties;
    • Editors of trade journals;
    • Former employees of competitors;
    • Trade Associations; and
    • Trade shows and conferences.
  • In addition, these are good secondary sources:
    • Google and other search engines – whatever appears through these is publicly available;
    • D&B Hoovers;
    • Web sites;
    • Reverse engineering – without using information obtained unethically;
    • 10Ks and Annual Reports available on the SEC web site.

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How Do You Focus on Doing Things Right? Seven Recommendations

Situation: A CEO is concerned that her company is not as efficient or effective as it could be. Of the key activities where the company is focused, few have any obvious connection to the customer or the customers’ needs. How do you focus on doing things right?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Create a set of cost graphs to parallel the company’s revenue graphs. If these are put side by side, does it indicate that the company is doing some things that add relatively low value and profit? What happens if resources are shifted away from less valuable activity?
  • Concentrate resources on doing one profitable thing well. Become best in class at this one thing. This may both increase the value of the firm and help to focus future development.
  • Bring in a senior level marketing research person or marketing manager with marketing research experience to determine what the customer wants, how should the company compete, and what current customers may be willing to pay for its software.
  • Strengthen the primary product – it represents 90% of sales. This is where the company has the best understanding of both its customers and the market. Look at what it takes to become enterprise wide with the company’s largest customers. Expand vertical capabilities and build $1 million accounts to $5 million a year.
  • The company already has a diverse group of clients, many of whom are huge.
    • How deep is the company in each of these clients? It may be easier and less expensive from a sales standpoint to go deeper into these clients than to bring on new clients.
    • Look for ways to make current $1 million clients $5 million clients by selling what the company currently sell to more of their divisions and locations.
    • The key to executing this strategy is to listen closely to what clients’ needs are and adjust or customize the offering to better meet their needs.
  • Focus on solutions and reduce the cost of solution implementation. Consider becoming more vertical in one key implementation and become the best at that.
  • Create a relevant framework for the company’s strategy. For what purpose is it necessary to do the right thing? If the purpose is to exit in 2 to 3 years, this yields a very different strategy than if the objective to dominate the company’s market in a 5 to10 year period.

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How Do You Increase Brand Awareness? Six Observations

Situation: A CEO wants to increase brand awareness for her company and its primary service. The objective is to increase the client base and drive revenue growth. They have identified their primary growth opportunity and differentiating advantage. What else should they do? How do you increase brand awareness?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What is lacking is a clear vision, path, and marketing plan. These are prerequisites to deciding either the solution or hiring a high caliber individual to execute the plan.
  • What steps are involved?
    • Survey 20% of current clients. Ask “why did you choose us?”
    • Develop the tools to track and show clients service performance online.
    • Use these same tools to show company performance online.
    • Tune messaging to potential clients to highlight demonstrated service performance.
    • Play elite – as the company’s name and reputation grow, clients should aspire to being accepted as clients.
  • Think long-term.
    • What is unique about the company’s ability to manage and extend the longevity of clients’ key assets?
    • How well prepared are potential clients to manage this on their own?
    • How does the company help potential clients to manage and extend the life of those assets?
  • Once there is a clear plan, fine-tune the internal focus of the company to align with the plan.
  • Increase involvement in communities where potential clients are found.
    • Host seminars and webinars on relevant topics.
    • Evening seminars in locations that potential customers congregate – existing clients attend and bring a friend.
    • Focus on referrals from existing clients – with a reward – a free consultation.
    • Look for non-competing service providers who can be good referral sources.
  • Make it easy for potential clients to switch. Use mass-marketing to spread the word with a multi-tiered approach to different segments of the target market.

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