Facilitating and Managing Customer-Based Intelligence

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· As we mentioned in Chapter 3, salespeople’s motivation and attitudes must be enhanced and harmonized to develop their contribution to organizations’ competitive intelligence system. Although each organization should monitor the specific type of information that pertains to its indus- try, salespeople’s motivation and attitudes can be addressed universally with a few managerial tools and processes. However, these tools and pro- cesses need to remain simple and easy to use.

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· Managerial Tools for Customer-Based Intelligence

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· Customer-based intelligence is too important to be left to salespeople’s will. Executives can organize the flow of incoming intelligence with appro- priate tools. In particular, we need to recognize that firm-level intelligence passes through three main steps, namely:

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· 1. Gathering information

· 2. Consolidating information 3. Processing information

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· Gathering information. The gathering of information depends on salespeople’s information acquisition from the field and the market. Sales- people must be concerned with the importance of their contribution to the organization’s competitive intelligence system. To build and organize their awareness, a Field/Market Alert sheet can offer a good template for them to complete (preferably electronically) any time they notice something in the market.

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· This sheet should focus on three types of information: attention catch, opportunity, and problem. The information cells to be filled should refer to competitors, customers, and others (e.g., prospects and market players). In addition, the salesperson needs room to describe the collected informa- tion—whether an observation, event, or something else—and its perceived level of importance as high, medium, or low. Figure 4.1 offers an example.

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