I attended a fantastic presentation yesterday at the Austin Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. The speaker was Suzanne Donnels, the CMO at Allen Matkins, and one of the legal industry's leading experts on the application of competitive intelligence. Her program, on the importance of competitive intelligence (what you know about your competition) and business intelligence (what you know about yourself), made me spend the rest of the day pondering why gathering information is important.
Regardless of your industry, you have competition. If you don't, you are either fortunate or living in the clouds. Companies often dismiss their competition as either too far ahead of them (we can never be like them, so why care what they do?) or too far behind (they are second tier, we need not be concerned). However, you can learn a lot from what your competitors are doing and advance your success by poaching their best people, practices and clients.
This is where having quality market research is important. The good news is that it is easier than ever to discover what your clients are doing (can you say "Google"). The bad news is that it takes time to do research and even more time to compile all the information into a usable format. If your company is not making this a priority, you are not doing all you can to succeed.
Equally paramount is internal business intelligence. How much do you know about your own firm? Your strengths, weaknesses, and position in the marketplace? ....and how much do you know about yourself? Honesty is the best policy in this area. Do not just pat yourself on the back for what you do well ....really look at where you come up short. If you know the areas you do not excel in, then you can position yourself around what you do best. And knowing how you stack up in the marketplace means you will be realistic when talking with clients and prospects (just because your mom thinks you are the best on the planet does not make it a fact).
Suzanne did a great job with her presentation, if you compete against her firm, watch out. They know every move you make!!!
Have A Great Day
Thom Singer
www.thomsinger.com
thom@thomsinger.com
When I owned my office equipment company, we were the odd bird. Competition considered us nothing to worry about until they lost to us. I intentionally flew our "ship" under the radar so they never knew when and where we might turn up. It was a fun game of cat and mouse and I always made sure that I stayed ahead of the game by understanding their companies better than their own staff did.
ReplyDeleteCompetitive intelligence is extremely important in any business, yet somehow many companies fail to put enough time or resources towards it. That's a huge mistake. The head buried in the sand theory hoping competition will just go away never works.
Incidentally, my competition eventually tried their form of competitive intelligence gathering on our company. We caught on more than one occasion some poor competitive rep going through our dumpster looking for some salacious bit of info that could be used against us. Like I have always said, aim low, you get low. Aim towards the dumpster and that's where we are going to put your business.
Competitive intelligence is extremely important in any business, yet somehow many companies fail to put enough time or resources towards it. That's a huge mistake. The head buried in the sand theory hoping competition will just go away never works.
Incidentally, my competition eventually tried their form of competitive intelligence gathering on our company. We caught on more than one occassion, some poor compeitive rep going through our dumpster looking some salacious bit of info that could be used against us. Like I have always said, aim low, you get low. Aim towards the dumpster and that's where we are going to put your business.
Congratulations on the relase of your book Thom.
P.S. You BETTER GET AMY HER BOOK! :-)