Create an intelligence system to make collecting information everyone’s job. By making the collection of information everyone’s business and having it available you can improve your strategic decisions, unmasking your competitor’s secret’s: where it plans to expand, what new projects it is working on, and when it will roll out its new products.

Competitor intelligence means two things: Gathering raw information about your competitor, and then using your experience and common sense
to figure out what it means. Sales people, loan officers, plant engineers, scientists, and purchasing managers come into contact with the outside world every day.

You’ll never discover genuine trade secrets, such as the Coca-Cola formula. Pepsi doesn’t need to know how to make Coke. Pepsi wants to know its rival’s new pricing, advertising, and distribution plans. To determine your competitors’ strategies, you and your people must know where to look and what you’re looking for.

Develop a list of questions about the competition and ask everyone in your company to answer them. They will keep their eyes open for information if they know what you want. One bank turned intelligence into everyone’s job by collecting direct-mail solicitations sent by its competitors to the bank’s own employees.

Don’t overlook outside venders who provide service to you. The best ideas never come from people who work in the area you are investigating. They could be shippers, product manager, sales people, service technicians, or programmers. They know the business.

The most successful intelligence gathering programs follow three steps. Prepare your business with a list of questions, motivate employees with rewards for good information, and create a workable strategy for storing and it.

A 5-person firm spends each business day dealing with customers, suppliers, and competitors, all of which are perfect opportunities for gathering critical information. Everyone in your company knows that for them to do even better with their careers the company has to do better. They are very willing to help if they know how to and why.

At Corning, a pallet of the competitor’s ceramic product was placed on the shop floor for everybody to see. Until then, Corning’s employees were satisfied with their own competitive line. Reviewing the competitor’s sample, they realized they had to improve to compete successfully.

Trade shows are fantastic in terms of payoff. While a competitor will work hard to mask its marketing strategies all year long, it will work just as hard to reveal as much as possible at a trade show.

Don’t overlook public records such as planning boards, regulatory filings, and courts. With 17,000 lawsuits related to asbestos, Manville declared bankruptcy. A room in the court building was filled with accounting, trade secrets, and management’s plans.

We, in the Hudson valley, are surrounded by the information we need to make our businesses even more competitive. By focusing on what we are looking for and letting our employees know, we can gather unlimited amounts without incurring cost!

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