Competitive Intelligence Within Business Development

Welcome to our weekly raw and unfiltered straight-talking look at all things associated with competitive intelligence and associated insight. This week's episode can be found here:

We have created this article to accompany the podcast. This week we discuss the role of competitive intelligence in the lifeblood of any business, business development.

The Role Of Business Development

On our minds today is the role of business development. And its ability to be aided by insight, specifically competitive intelligence services. What’s happening now is that we’re seeing the first evolutions of what might be loosely considered a regressive business landscape for at least the foreseeable future. And irrespective of what central banks do with their interest rates, there’s already a shock wave regarding investment markets and appetite for growth. Also and with governmental aspirations and attitudes towards international business development, all of which lead people in business to challenge their uncertainty about what they’re going to do. And invariably, that permeates across to the business development function.

Poor Business Development Teams

So as we’re heading towards further challenging times, we don’t think it’s sensible to hang everything off what the interest rates will be because we could easily find ourselves in underinflated environments. And then interest rates be favourable, but the appetite and cash availability could be exceedingly different. We could avoid a deep recession, of course. But either way, all of this leaves the poor old business development team with their KPIs still having to peddle the bike away. It’s rather like putting someone on a bike and asking them to ride blindfolded.

This is why the business development function must solidify its effectiveness through the provision of intelligence. It’s pivotal for any business.

But At Least We Have Battle Cards!

But at least we have battle cards 🙂 That’s true. At least business have got their battle cards. Yes, of course, those two-year-old battle cards that one of the interns did when they could get somebody from the university for free. That’s going to stand you in great stead. Joking aside, even if the battle cards are up to date, it won’t necessarily be a perfect strategy to build battle cards that get permeating through your team.

Especially if you’re not asking the right questions, right? And so, how do they verify what goes into those battle cards? Especially, when a fast-moving economic environment and some middle market and corporate environments, you could experience a situation where the production of the battle cards might take three to six months. Well, people can go a long way in the wrong direction in three to six months.

And so battle cards alone are not the answer. But, of course, they are part of the mix. But there are a lot of other brilliant tools out there too. Thinking battle cards are the only answer is the equivalent of saying I bought a car by going to Halford’s in the UK and buying a tire. You know you need the rest of the components before you can drive down the road effectively. And that’s what many people approach intelligence by.

Improving Value Proposition

But it will affect business development if they don’t know what’s happening. How can they create an improved value proposition? If we were talking to a business development director we would want to know that they work within a supportive business environment. So is it:

Flexible and creative for the betterment of their colleague’s performance?
Is that leeway regarding fundamental principles on price-pointing and movement to do deals?
Is that happening in the business?
and is there an organisational structure that listens to the machinations of business development challenges?

In other words, are they open to it? Or do they still think it’s a sort of sphinx-style solid, chiselled-in stone object, and it will always be there? And that the indelible truth never moves. And yet, anyone who looks outside their window can see that things are moving at light speed. Also lightning-scary questions are in coming.

And if that’s not permeating through to the BD function itself, then our questions expand to things like how good is the communication laterally? In other words, how good are the comms inside the business, or is it standard to wait for the next board meeting to mention this urgent problem?

Or is the leadership invested in the business development process or treated it as a cost centre? So when times get harder, BD people are the first ones being kicked out the door. You can see those things happen, and no amount of affirmative intelligence isn’t necessarily going to get them out of it.

Tough Times

Although competitive intelligence insight will add value in a very barren landscape. Nonetheless, in tough times, all of those things in those practices that are not necessarily as good as they ought to be will impact the business. But even in those environments, a positive Intelligence flow on what the other guys are doing, what the market needs, and what the customer wants will still aid that beleaguered BD team even in those acutely challenging internal information and leadership environments.

So as markets regress and depress, opportunity aspects shrink, so the event horizon is going to move in. Because clients that previously may have bought your products may not decide to do that until perhaps in the next fiscal year. All of the old chestnuts come out about budgets being restricted. They’re all true, of course, and it’s just that they’ve decided not to buy your product in favour of something else. And fortunately, the chairman’s new Porsche has been ordered long since, so he/she is unfortunate. They will have to soldier on and receive that from the dealers.

But everything else has to be questioned. And unfortunately, as that market shrinks, three things happen to the competition:

Some of them go out of the game and leave the market
Some of them fail
Some of them crash out completely

Mega Corp Is Circling

Hopefully, our clients or prospects are not on the edge of that precipice because we have worked in that environment and saved them before. But assuming that some competition decided to pull out of the marketplace. Others enter the marketplace because they might be corporates and looking for low, not-so-low-hanging fruit anymore because it’s gone. And they might be foraging in the rough to find new opportunities and aspects. So you can see how megacorp can come in and becomes an overnight competitor.

And the other thing that happens is that the competitors already in the game may or may not outperform you. They may already be listening to their customers, and they may already be investigating you as a company.

And they may actually be finding where their value proposition trumps the day. Therefore, the race for uplift and success is exceedingly different.

And most people, by and large, go from thrive to survive mode to that point. And subsequently, the rest end up cutting on price, defeating the very proposition and their own EBIT. They then start racing to the bottom because they think that to beat the other guy, you must be cheaper. And then, of course, the big, big players come in, and now the client does not only want it cheaper. But I Now I like it quicker.

It’s Called Intelligence

So what looks like the sort of it’s like an oasis in their and you think you love it as the Oasis has got water in it. You get there, and they dry you even more. You get thirsty because they asked for more, and the market becomes very brutal. And subsequently, intelligence plays its part in finding different value propositions, maybe even different client targets, and maybe new markets as well. And so all roads lead to Rome, and Rome is it is called intelligence.

That’s, that’s the secret sauce. That’s the thing that some of your competitors may be waking up to. Mostly they’re not because they run similarly. We all know those organisations where somebody leaves Company A and goes to Company B, and it’s almost a carbon copy. Well, they’re the ones who aren’t going to move. They’re the sphinx, and they’re the ones who are going to get left behind because they’re immobile.

If you work in a business with the right kind of awareness, the leadership is great, and the organisational structure is supportive. There’s leeway for deal-making. Which is the critical value driver. Because if you’ve got avenues of possibility to affect and improve your value proposition, which should do need all those positive things, then it’s about deal-making that you’re going to win because, in difficult times, your clients are probably under suffrage as well.

Value Proposition

And therefore, you know, intelligence being inserted into that thought process. The insight should go across the table to the senior board thinking. It should go in the middle of the table to the operational and planning process. And the insight should go to the other end of the table where the guys who are at the rock face can be effective practitioners of their better value proposition.

And in that sense, intelligence is an early warning system. Also, knowing who’s out there in terms of the pace of the competitor’s capabilities. Of knowing where the new options for deal-making might be. Where the competition is weak and where the opportunities lie that are under-serviced.

All of those things require excellent management support, and they also need the cornerstone. The apex stone is the intelligence flow. Now, if they think they’re doing it with an intern, who’s 12? They Google search, and they believe that’s intelligence. Then we need to start even before then and help them define that. That’s undeniable.