Competitive Intelligence?!... What are you leaving on the table?

Here's a good one for you...

Imagine a company that sells products ranging in price up to $5Million and yes, they sell a healthy number of those products.

Now imagine that same company not actively communicating with their prospects, customers, and even sales force to find out what works and what doesn't in their products and and marketing processes.

Now let's take things a step even further and imagine that they can't tell you what percentage of their qualified leads end up buying from a competitor.

How about which of their sales people convert supplied leads and at what percentage. Shoot, how quickly do their sales people act on leads and how does that compare to their competitors.

Let's go even further... imagine if they can't show you examples of exactly what their competitors are doing for marketing... or how about who is selling for their competitors or even what it is that makes sales people push their competitor's product harder than theirs...

Let's not even get into Internal Intelligence such as truly knowing one's own product and corporate strengths and weaknesses or even having a true, current grasp on the demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral backgrounds on your own customers!

What is truly scary is that this happens and is not unusual for many big bureaucratic companies.

Even worse, this information is all available if they knew how to and wanted to get it.

Now, ask yourself what you know about your own business be it just starting out, small, or even quite successful.

What is your true Internet presence and how does it compare to your competition?

Who are ALL of your competitors?

What are their strengths and weaknesses and then next by comparison, what are your own? Could you find hidden opportunities in that knowledge?

I am sure there are a healthy number of members of this forum who could share what their ROI is on their marketing and their product development. They also probably know what their conversion rates are, visitor values etc.

But do they truly know their competition inside and out and all of the wealth of marketing and business knowledge they could be using from them... to make even more money themselves?

Last question -- do you ever wonder how much your competition knows about you and how they are using that to their own advantage?

Do you feel the heat on your neck from that magnifying glass they are using?

What do you think my friends?

This seems to me to be a cache of serious cash being left on the table.

Do you invest any time and effort in Competitive Intelligence and if so how do YOU go about it?

How's that for a good vent/ramble/thought starter?

Onward and Upward!

Sam