Press Releases
dna13 in the News
Resource Library
Industry News
Professional Services and Support

Get in the driver's seat. Request a web demo
Industry News    Competitive Intelligence    Bulletproof Competitive Intelligence - For...

Bulletproof Competitive Intelligence - For price of lunch


Print - FPinfomart - Newstex Blogs - Thursday January 24th, 2008
It's the 21st-century and this we know: It's rare that any organization or any player can endure as an untouchable brand.

The environment is simply too hypbercometitive with too much guerrilla warfare from upstarts [think Valorem]. Models of success keep shifting. And clients have their own changing pressures which make their requirements morph, sometimes in radical fashion [think Merck's (NYSE:MRK) abrupt flight into settlement].

So, a bulletproof competitive intelligence strategy is available for the price of lunch at a legal event. This gives you the opportunity to observe the other teams. If they haven't been in-touch enough to significantly raise their Emotional Intelligence [EI], you know they'll soon enough be less of a formidable competitor to you.

EI is not about social skills. [Below you can click on my new new free e- book on EI]. It's about being an open enough system to take in the environment.

When I was employed at IBM (NYSE:IBM) pre-Gerstner era, that ability to see reality had atrophied - almost completely. Any stock picker could have just watched the employees and brass strutting out of the facilities or arrogantly selling their hardware in that failed IBM retail extension to discern this was not the horse to bet on.

What tips you off that your competition will soon enough be toast? Here is some of it:

- They haven't changed their mode of speaking, one-on-one or to a group, to conversational. That blocks access to them and they won't get needed information and insights from the outside. This also applies to how they write. Pompous predicts a downward trajectory.

- They don't listen enough. The ratio of listening to talking has become 3:1. Whenever I approached John Tarantino during the Rhode Island Lead Paint Trial II, he listened, then responded to what I had to say. He got an acquittal for his client ARCO. Let the fools blab on.

- They aren't intellectually insecure. Uncertainty expert and best-selling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an evangelist for not being too confident of our knowledge base or the categories we use to filter what's out there. [His "Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets" is a useful read, at least three times]. "Microtrends" author and Hillary campaign head Mark Penn is being vilified for taking his categories too seriously.

- There is an apparent allergy to being near competitors. Breakthroughs come through mashup teams of God's Plenty. Hold the competition close. You will probably be collaborating with them.

- They self-promote. That's not the way you do it any more. You put out evidence of accomplishment. Better yet, you get third parties to do that.

Your competitor might not collapse today. But, as the Wicked Witch of the West said in "Wizard of Oz," it's just a matter of time, my pretty.

Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.pdf

This article and summary was retrieved from online electronic sources using keywords setup within dna13's media and market monitoring software. dna13 offers on-demand, communications and stakeholder management software designed to help PR professionals manage, monitor and measure their outreach, relationships and corporate reputation. The web-based solution helps you organize your communications workflow around the campaigns and issues you.re tracking, for synchronized management 24/7 and around the globe. The automated media monitoring function lets you define unlimited search terms as it scans the largest collection of TV, print, Internet and blog media content available electronically, bringing full text and video direct to your desktop. No more ordering broadcast clips. Instead, click a button and watch a clip stream on your computer. Real time alerts on breaking news, and comparative keyword analysis of markets, mediums and outlets . even competitor coverage, puts you in a position for agile reaction. Create campaign outreach and media analysis reports with our integrated Clip Book publishing wizard and share electronically with your stakeholders and team members in multiple formats.

Download whitepapers, factsheets and case studies