[NOTE: Patrick Fuller, Business Development Executive for Thomson Reuters, guest posts this week.]
One of the obstacles than many organizations face regarding Competitive Intelligence is not the analysis itself, but rather what to do with it once it’s ready. Its one thing to find the needle in the haystack, but entirely another to know how to leverage the needle effectively.
Competitive Intelligence can inform on, and power, multiple initiatives in law firms and those businesses that serve the firms. For example, well-executed competitive intelligence should be core function of the client retention strategy inside any firm, even using basic SWOT analysis techniques. Lawyers should always know which firms present the greatest threat to their top clients, which in some cases, is now the client, as more work is staying in-house.
For business development, it’s a bit different. As a business development professional, I’m really not interested in the answers that CI provides, but rather the unique, engaging questions it creates.
My job is to engage the prospective client in a way that is both compelling and different, but ultimately, memorable. I want to ask the powerful, open-ended question that no one else will ask. If all my competitors are basing their approach on similar information, it runs the risk of quickly becoming commoditized information (ci) rather than true Competitive Intelligence (CI), and there is little differentiation between the presentations from firm to firm.
The two most important skills for any business development professional are the ability to ask engaging questions, and above all, listen to the answers. The key is not knowing how to sell, but rather understanding why the client buys.
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