By Parmelee Eastman, EastSight Consulting
Salespeople are a difficult audience for competitive intelligence
(CI). They are out of the office or on the phone, and in either case,
too busy to read anything. I worked in sales for years so I am speaking
from experience. On the plus side, salespeople recognize the value
of CI and appreciate good information that helps them achieve their
goals. The cost of delivering quality CI to sales can often be justified
by the business that could not have been won without the competitive
information.
Articles in previous issues of Competitive Intelligence Magazine covered
other topics for sales CI, including profiling of competitors, win/loss
analysis, product roadmaps, and collection, analysis, and dissemination
programs for sales forces. In addition, the January/February edition
of Competitive Intelligence will have an article focusing on software
tools to deliver information. So here I am concentrating on the principles
of delivering CI to sales.
So how can you deliver CI to your sales force successfully? Use VIBES:
Value-added Intelligence using Benefits, Experience, and Synthesis.
To deliver excellent CI to sales, follow these five key principles:
- Value-added. Your analysis of the raw data points out the
implications of competitive moves, their impact on your company,
and suggests effective counters.
- Intelligence. Good CI does not just summarize all the data
to fill space. Only include significant data in the analysis.
- Benefits. Emphasize the benefits to prospective customers
of your product or service in light of the competitor’s products
and services.
- Experience. Industry or technical experience is essential
for understanding the context of competitive actions and products,
and completing a meaningful, but concise analysis.
- Synthesis. Your salespeople have access to most of the data
about competitors that you have, but they do not have time to read
it, let alone think about it. It is critical that you synthesize
the key points from multiple sources for your sales force.
Successful programs delivering CI to sales adhere to these principles
irrespective of the resources devoted to the effort. Programs can be
one-shot, low budget, or comprehensive efforts, but they will all be
enthusiastically received by sales if they incorporate the VIBES principles.
The following three examples illustrate how CI can be delivered to
sales while utilizing vastly different delivery vehicles and budgets.
COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED CI
Large pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline,
and Johnson & Johnson incorporate CI principles into continuous,
multi-vehicle training programs for their sales force. CI is not delivered
separately to their sales representatives, but as part of fully-integrated
training systems, explains Amrit Ray MD, an industry expert on pharmaceuticals
strategy with management experience at several large pharmaceutical/healthcare
organizations.
Pharmaceutical sales reps serve multiple customer segments with very
different needs and extremely limited opportunities for communication.
For example, reps must be prepared to fully utilize every second of
airtime with physicians. Think of this as value per second since calls
on physicians are often only 20 seconds to 2 minutes in length.
With that 20 second window of opportunity as a constraining force,
pharmaceutical salespeople have evolved to manage information overload.
Key competitive information such as the results of drug trials are
published in journals, but both the prescribing physicians and sales
representatives do not have the time to read every published report
or draw every possible meaningful implication fromthem. Nor do they
have the time to tie information frommultiple sources together to gain
further insight.
Since it is impractical to ask every sales representative to read
and synthesize published reports, large pharmaceutical companies have
developed internal learning systems. These maximize the benefits of
scale by ensuring that expertly collated and synthesized information
efficiently reaches their representatives and, in turn, brings value
to prescribing physicians and patients.
Pharmaceutical companies use multiple vehicles to deliver CI-laden
training to their representatives including one-on-one coaching, email,
online coaching, phone consults with subject-matter experts, peer-group
teleconferences to share learnings from the field, and classroom sessions
with formal assessments. The classroom sessions often include a senior
representative conveying CI to the class since his or her experience
is more effective than reading a synthesis.
Large pharmaceutical companies devote extensive resources to delivering
top quality CI to their representatives. The value of their approach
is validated by both the high educational value obtained by physicians
from their interactions with pharmaceutical representatives and the
success of the pharmaceutical sector in recent years.
LIMITED RESOURCES CI
In contrast, consider a single individual CI effort. Ben Picard,
at leading paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore& Co., developed and
delivered CI via the company’s existing email system, using no
more than one hour of his time each day.
When he arrives at his office in the morning, Ben scans the news
services for relevant articles and checks his in-box for rumors. He
investigates these rumors to determine the validity of the information,
and whether the rumored action indicated a trend or was an isolated
event. Only if the rumor proved to be part of a trend is it included
in the newsletter. The newsletter title heading then alerts the readers
to the competitive threat.
Picard has a simple criterion for including information in the newsletter:
is it a threat to Benjamin Moore? If not, he excludes that piece of
news. If none of the day’s news reaches that threshold, no newsletter
is emailed that day.
Picard condenses the news into a focused, branded version: two to
three bullets that he knows would catch the attention of sales. He
adds subjective assessments of what this news meant to Benjamin Moore,
and how significant the threat is. He can also pull from his archives
and add additional information or analysis.
Many of the authors of externally published reports and articles
are not experienced enough in the paint industry issues or knowledgeable
enough about the competitors to recognize the significance of specific
news to Benjamin Moore, so Picard annotates them. Links in the newsletter
points the readers to the full article and related stories, both external
and internal, archived in the corporate database. Once the newsletter
was up and running, it only consumes between 30 and 60 minutes a day
of his time.
This newsletter does not depend solely on external sources of information.
Picard recognizes that for him to receive information from internal
stakeholders, he must provide information back to and acknowledge the
providers. He emails thanks to the information provider, and copies
his or her boss and the boss’ supervisor. He also acknowledges
the providers in the newsletter.
Only the regional and district sales managers receive this newsletter.
This distribution pattern helps build trust with sales managers who
prefer to control the information received by their salespeople so
they are not overloaded. The managers forward information to their
teams as training on competitive activity.
Two measurements validate the newsletter’s value. At regional
gatherings all salespeople know Picard’s name and refer to information
that had appeared in the newsletter. His other measure of success is
the high open rate. Benjamin Moore’s email system tracks the
opening of emails. Sixty to seventy percent of recipients open his
newsletter within 30 minutes of receipt.
SNAPSHOT CI
Sales meetings often feature snapshots, or one-time views, of competitive
actions or products in addition to presenting essential marketing material
extolling the positive features and benefits of the company’s
products or services. During my marketing career, I received positive
feedback with two internal documents developed for sales training sessions:
- an Attack/Response chart listing what the competitor is saying
about the company or product, and the effective talking points sales
should use to counter-attack
- product feature comparison charts
| TABLE 1: TALKING POINTS
RESPONDING TO COMPETITIVE ATTACKS |
| Attack |
Response |
| Our product updates the data base faster than all our competitors’ do! |
How fast do you really need to update? Our customers tell us
that updating at a speed of X is sufficient for their needs. |
| We have 50 offices around the country to support the instruments
that we sell. XYX has guys driving around in their cars. |
We’ve made each one of our technicians a “minioffice.” The
technicians average 20 years experience in the industry and have
a complete set of the most common failing parts in the truck of
their cars. Our response rate is the highest in the industry. |
| Your market is our priority. We do not spread our resources across
multiple markets. |
We find synergies between products developed for separate markets.
This lowers the cost of our product in your market. |
| TABLE 2: SAMPLE PRODUCT
COMPARISONS FOR AN AUTOMATED BILLING SYSTEM |
| Feature |
Home Team |
Competitor A |
Competitor B |
| Multi-currency support |
Yes, any currency may be added |
Only 10 currencies supported |
No, but may be added |
| Authorization |
Yes, real time |
Yes, but only during nightly batch update |
Available in authentication, authorization and accounting
add-on |
| Event-driven pricing |
Under development |
Yes, but not integrated with billing for standard
services |
No |
ATTACK/RESPONSE CHART
How are your competitors attacking you? What are they saying about
your company or product/service? I asked my best salespeople what attacks
competitors were using and the responses that they found effective.
Obviously each salesperson has developed his or her own unique approach
and different industries require different features.
Discussions with several salespeople revealed which attack statements
were frequently voiced by competitive salespeople and what responses
had been effective in deflecting the attacks. These were included in
the chart as verbatim as possible, as well as contact information if
the salesperson needed additional detail. Table 1 is an example of
Talking Points responding to competitive attacks.
PRODUCT FEATURE COMPARISONS
Product feature comparisons can also effectively parry sales thrusts
by the competition. Side-by-side charts are the easiest to read and
suit as a reference document. Product feature comparisons can also
take the hype out of the competitor’s tactics. Table 2 contains
sample product comparisons for an automated billing system.
Talking Points charts can be three to four pages long. Product comparisons
range up to 30 pages depending on the complexity of the product or
service. If the charts are complex, be sure to logically group the
points with tabs or headings so salespeople can find the appropriate
section quickly. Any document over two pages is a reference document
for sales.
In summary, delivering CI to sales is not a question of the level
of effort; it is the right kind of effort. Follow the VIBES principles.
Add Value to solid competitive Intelligence stating Benefits and using
industry and competitor Expertise to Synthesize. If you follow these
principles, even if your resources are limited, you will be recognized
for your contribution to your company’s success.
Parmelee Eastman is president of EastSight Consulting
(www.eastsightconsulting.com) which helps provide more effective utilization
of external information in internal decision-making processes. EastSight
Consulting clients range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Prior
to founding EastSight, Parmelee was the vice president of the global
technology and communications practice at Fuld & Company and employed
for 16 years at Digital Equipment Corporation. Parmelee holds a B.A.
from Wellesley College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.
She can be reached at peastman@eastsightconsulting.com or at 781/416-3686.
