Business Benefits of Competitive Intelligence Programs
Make your sales force and marketing the smartest and quickest customer supporter. Market and customer orientation - promote external focus.
All too often marketers and sales professionals are hung up on internal issues and situations. Administration, training on new competences and products, increasing service expertise, testing programs and studying impact, analyzing sales data and transaction activities, chasing supply, resolving warehouse issues, we could go on and on forever.
Noticed something? An entire list of activities that reduce face-time with the customers and market presence. And it reduces your chance to convince buyers of your capabilities and provide live expertise in your customer relationship.
Market Intelligence, if brought to action, will reduce overhead and focus your marketing and sales efforts on front line issues. Providing a constant mirror of your external impact and market opportunities promotes and strengthens priorities that will lead to action in the field.
Don’t underestimate the motivational impact of professional intelligence, easily digestible and transformed into actionable sales goals settings and marketing target developments. Your sales force and marketing staff will be thrilled with excitement if opportunities become transparent on a constant basis.
Identification of new opportunities - e.g. identify new trends before our markets and competitors
Beating the competition where it matters most: in the market place, at the customer site. Isn’t this what it all boils down to? Business insight, competition intelligence and market trends open that door for your sales professionals. Promoting something new that hits the streets nerve, that satisfies an upcoming need not only ensures increased sales but higher margins alike. Repeat this exercise again and again will show in your books big time.
Early warning of competitor moves - enable counter measures
Competitive intelligence visualizes trends that you need to detect early enough to react on. It’s a risky business out there when third parties start repeating your moves and copying your products and services. Moreover will you need to swiftly counter act on new developments your competition launches. Losing customers to a more advanced competitor can be costly and nerve wrecking as your field professionals have invested many hours and energy in customer retention. They want and need to know about any competitor’s move that could threaten their customer effort.
And let’s be honest: beating the competition in their own backyard by rolling out that new service or product range the market has been waiting for in decades just one month earlier with solid patent protection - how sweet does THAT smell?
Minimizing investment risks - detect threats and trends early on
Markets move and change on a constant basis in a variety of dimensions. Geographical shifts of whole supply industries, distribution issues, legal and regulation impact, mergers and acquisitions have to be foreseen so your long term investments still make sense tomorrow.
There is nothing more dangerous to a modern business as to develop into a business direction geographically or with any of your offers that is not even there anymore two years from today.
Protect your future by knowing about the above mentioned and many more variables your future business success depends on.
Better customer interaction - inherit intensified customer market view
Customer retention secures your future. Nothing simpler than that: a satisfied customer you were able to help doing what she needed and wanted to achieve will drive her back time and time again. But how to do it in a recurring fashion?
If you can manage to always stay on top of things by knowing what matters most to your customers, your sales force will always have topics to cover with them. Most important: they will always have the opportunity to generate a reason to visit your customers.
Better market selection & positioning - understand where your offer fits and discover untapped or under-served potential
Market and customer segmentation, opportunity ratings and priority setting for your business goals should be in the center of your attention. This is an area where you shouldn’t even start to act if you don’t know enough. Market and business intelligence are the backbone and the essence of any marketing planning, sales structure and customer relationship management.
Quicker, more efficient and cost-effective information - avoid duplication of report acquisitions and expensive consultant work
Not knowing who acquired which reports is bad enough as your company might spend duplicate money on the same thing. Even worse: half of all reports or intelligence consultant work, analysis and studies land in a drawer, never to be utilized. If you want to make full use of professional intelligence you need to generate a waterproof overview and easy accessibility to efficient tools.
You will be surprised of the savings potential and the productivity increase you could generate, let alone the additional market opportunities and motivational impact you would create
Author: Jens Thieme
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