I'm pretty new to the world of competitive intelligence and recognize that I have a lot to learn. I've seen a lot of great insight from many of you on this forum already and thought it would be helpful for everyone (especially those just starting out in CI) if we had a place to share some general advice, guidance, or tips and tricks on how to be successful in competitive intelligence. So, what is the best piece of advice you could offer to someone in our field? What is something you've discovered that has helped you excel at your role?
Get creative! I can only gain X amount of information from a competitor's website, so finding other resources is critical. Talking with industry experts, gathering intel from sales reps, reading G2/Capterra reviews, news articles and podcast interviews have been really informative for us.
Thanks Melanie! Building relationships with the sales reps has been one of the most helpful resources for me as I build out our CI program. Good call out.
Aside from the importance of working cross functionally whenever possible (sales, marketing, account managers, partners), I recommend getting a clear understand with your company's legal team on what they feel comfortable with. CI has a lot of gray areas and it helps to have a clear set of guidelines of what your company feels comfortable with.
From what I've seen secret shopping is one of the biggest gray areas that can be extremely valuable. Especially if your competitors don't have a lot of public information and have a lot of content like a help center gated behind a login. Personally, I've done secret shopping and I've made sure that I'm not crossing a line like signing an NDA in order to get information. I know some companies per to hire an agency to do this type of work while others don't mind it being done in house.
Secret shopping can be really valuable but if you think you can just call up a competitor without doing your research and having a plan fist, it can easily backfire. I'm really curious if anyone else has done secret shopping and what guidelines they have set in place.
I've done CI work at two different companies and currently doing some freelance work. One of the companies I worked at wanted to be more careful about the terms you accept when you join a webinar while another company left everything to my best judgement.