Competitive Intelligence: Learn from the Expert

Babette Bensoussan is a recognised expert on Competitive Intelligence.  We’ve had the pleasure of meeting her, learning from her and having her contribute material to our valued clients.

If you don’t remember or weren’t a subscriber, here’s an overview of her advice, below.  But first, we want to plug her coming training course.

Babette is an author of several books on ‘CI’ and probably Australia’s pre-eminent expert on how to set up your own CI activities.

On November 11, in Sydney, for just $550+gst, she will be running a ‘Practical Competitive Intelligence’ course.

For details, click here.

A Quick Overview Of CI, in the words of Babette:

Competitive Intelligence is important, valuable, ethical and legal. It focuses on gathering information that is available in the public domain.

In fact, right now more than 90% of what you will ever need to know about your competitors is already available to you. Maybe not in the form that will directly answer your specific questions about them, but the pieces of the intelligence jigsaw are there.

There are four main sources of information, each able to validate the other in some way. These are:

Human Sources

Oral information by way of business networks, meetings, seminars, friends and experts. Here your company’s greatest asset is your staff. To tap into this wealth of information you need to find out who knows what and develop a method for gathering and processing the information.

IDEA: Attend trade fairs, product and service demonstrations, local council events and join industry associations.  Here, you and your people can learn much. 

Economic & Financial Sources

Annual reports, trade publications, general media. One of the most obvious sources for public company competitors is the wealth of information available to shareholders. Here companies advise regularly on their every move and planned intentions.

IDEA: If your competitors are large enough, this is a source you should exploit. Otherwise, other media, including Google searches through news, can identify reports of value to you.

Corporate Sources

Customers, suppliers, marketing material, web sites, advertising.  In this area, your sales staff should be gathering this as part of their everyday activities.

IDEA: Put yourself on to some mailing lists of industry associations and competitors. Now, with a new intelligent perspective, these sources will deliver to your door abundant competitive information. 

Technical Sources

Technical reports and journals, product manuals.

IDEA: Subscribe to relevant trade magazines to see launches, ads and technical reviews of your competitors.