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What is Market Intelligence?

How does market intelligence differ from traditional market research? Market intelligence is best thought of as an enhanced level of market research a broader, more inclusive view of every aspect of the marketplace, built with market research techniques as an important component. Market intelligence lends itself well to strategic decision making, whereas market research tends to provide tactical support for specific marketing goals and objectives.

Simply stated, market intelligence starts with the question, "What do we need to know to formulate strategy in which we have confidence?" Market Research tends to support tactical action plans and follows idiomatic designs and formulas.

Market intelligence is actionable insight used to drive both strategy and successful decision making.

Traditionally, many executives have thought of market research as the vehicle that develops and delivers information and insight to the marketing process. Yet many disciplines that make up traditional market research processes evolved out of consumer packaged goods industries and, therefore, fit imperfectly into the B2B world. Consumer-oriented demographics linked to buyer behavior fall short in terms of decision support for B2Bs, especially where new technology is concerned.

The question then becomes: What specific processes best support formation of critical management insights that allow for confident and reliable decision making in the B2B environment? Typically, market intelligence centers on three primary areas of focus:

Each focus provides a different perspective and insight that supports decision making. Synergistically, it’s best to have all three. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts in that, when considered collectively, decision making encompasses a far greater understanding of all aspects of the market.

What facts do you need today to support critical business decisions?

When you consider advancing a new business initiative, you don’t make decisions in a vacuum and certainly not impulsively. Professional managers are trained to trust both knowledge and their gut feelings, all the while operating with imperfect information. But how much is enough? How do you assess what you don’t know? Usually, when you put your team around the table, you have a pretty good view of what is going on within the company, with customers and with competitor offerings. The risk is relying on false confidence when you start to aggregate that collective intelligence.

Knowing what you don’t know.

Of course, there is the rigor you can achieve with a properly controlled quantitative study. In order to support an imminent decision, you must often rely on qualitative input from customers and other market participants and observers in order to move quickly to meet a decision goal. The goal of research always is to go as deep and broad as possible given time constraints.

When your questions are in the marketing and sales arena, they are almost always focused outside the organization. And even with a quality assessment program, the information you have is often not precise enough to adequately answer specific questions. Here are a few axioms to consider as you reflect upon your own business circumstances and information gaps:

You will always know more than you think you do when you focus on the right questions and engage your own team properly in gathering market intelligence.

You may know less than you need to know in order to answer the questions with any level of confidence.

You will never have perfect knowledge about the outcome of a decision until after you make it.

You will never regret learning more in advance of the decision, filling the gap between what you think you know and what you need to know.

Is your sales and marketing strategy driven by current market dynamics?

If you run your sales and marketing programs based upon written plans, you often face this challenge. These plans are commonly prepared at year-end and are a refresh of last year’s plan. This isn’t wrong it’s typical; almost everyone does it this way. In the time crunch you have to work in, there usually isn’t a current effort to include a rigorous view of how your sales and marketing environment has changed.

Like the old saw about looking through the windshield while driving, rather than the rearview mirror, you want to have a forward-looking view of the world.

The same is true in terms of assessing your competitorsplans and actions. Knowing what your competitors did last year or what they are doing today isn’t as valuable as what they are planning for next quarter or next year. It’s also critical to understand where you rank among your competitors in customer terms especially the customers you want to retain and gain. It’s not enough to tweak last year’s numbers; you need to understand the changing needs of customers and prospects segment-by-segment in order to win the competitive game and secure customer loyalty. An accurate read of true customer values is essential.

What is the best way to break out of the “So what?trap of market research?

When working with an outside research group, how do you make sure you will get the results you know they are capable of delivering?

1) Be Flexible:

All research starts with a working hypothesis (or several) to be proven or disproven, and a plan to deliver that proof. It’s the nature of research to follow that plan and once research is underway, it’s rare to make midcourse corrections. However, contrary to popular belief, changes in research design are often not difficult to make. Building in systematic checkpoints to allow for mid-course viewing of preliminary results and being flexible about making changes can be crucial in delivering the needed results.

2) Partner with your Research team:

It's important to contextualize the research; that is, make sure researchers know as much as possible about the business underpinnings. It is critical to include everyone in a thorough briefing of any business issues behind the research. It means going several layers deep and briefing them on sensitive strategy and competitive information. This may raise difficult trust issues and will involve a significant investment of your time - but well worth the effort.

3) Join the team:

Make a point of reviewing source documents, such as interview transcripts. Invariably, you will see opportunities for probing and modifying the discussion guide based upon the verbatim replies to research questions. This may be counter-intuitive since the reason you hire an outside research team is to save you time. That said, this simple quality check is well worth your time, especially in the early stages.

How do you make your research projects actionable the nice to know vs. need to know?

If you are a Research Manager or Product Manager overseeing research, you fight this battle on every project. It is possible to squeeze action-ability out of every project while carefully managing costs.

If the study is quantitative, you know what results you are looking for. But you can also challenge your research team to look for second order significance from the findings - the "nice to know," in addition to the "need to know." Often the "need to know" changes over the course of the project but the data can support this new set of priorities in analysis. Sometimes it’s the subtleties that can make a difference; it takes an astute analyst to look at the data in insightful ways.

For qualitative work, it takes a fieldwork team that is comfortable probing deeply. When a discussion guide is lengthy, the moderator is incented to move on rather than probe in order to complete the interview in the allotted time. Most importantly, the interviewer must not only be comfortable with probing, they must be steeped in the business context so they can probe appropriately and fluidly.

A technique for optimizing cost and insights is known as layering. This approach calls for a more senior analyst to do a follow-on interview with subjects who are deemed to be high value. This in-depth interview can build upon the initial one and provide deeper insights. Often the respondent will agree to a follow-on discussion.

What is the perfect alignment of research methods with the business questions that drive and underpin research?

If you are outsourcing research, you want to avoid the “hammer in search of a nailpitfall. Some research companies specialize in a methodology or at least favor one over another. These biases aren’t always wrong, but one should be cautious. For example, a focus group conducted too early in a product launch cycle may not be as productive as one done later when the panelists can actually react to the product or at least a beta representation.

Often a blended methodology is best, where components from several methods are combined in a creative way in order to provide maximum insight for minimum investment. It is often less expensive to do blended methodology than a single one. In any event, working with a research firm that is comfortable and confident in all standard methods, one that can apply the right set of tools to the task, is essential for results.

How do you validate the market need for your new product or service?

Market validation is not a black and white process; similarly, it’s not a ‘thumbs upor ‘thumbs downdecision. Creating the right attributes for a well-positioned solution is a complex endeavor that requires a rigorous process of mapping buying drivers and assessing the switching potential for buyers from the legacy solution to the innovation you seek to validate.

It’s helpful to go both broad and deep by conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies. However, in the validation scenario, it’s possible only to glean dissatisfaction with current legacy solutions, not propensity to buy your proposed new solution. A mere description of a concept isn’t sufficient to know if you’ll succeed if you really have a clearly superior alternative. In fact, you could be close to the right solution and not know it. A quick survey to potential buyers isn’t enough to make the right decisions. You don’t need a yes or no you need to understand the fine-tuning of what and for whom to know if you are on course for success.

Instead, a multipoint qualitative research process will be useful in determining how all the groups that make up your constituency will accept your solution and purchase it post-beta. Constituencies include target segment buying influencers, key opinion leaders, technology leaders, etc.

Goals often include assessing several critical success factors:

Will a critical mass of buyers beyond early adopters embrace the technology?

What might the adoption rate be?

Where might the company encounter points of resistance?

Are there existing or emerging competitive technologies that represent an insurmountable market lead?

Is there a solid case for making a go-forward decision?

We've never done Win-Loss Analysis before - so why should we care about it now?

Win Loss Analysis is about winning more often.

To do that, you have to be able to assess the underlying perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, values, decision dynamics and biases of the people you are selling to. A Financial Services company learned from Win Loss Analysis that their customers were coming from a wider range of perspectives than previously thought; the better understanding they gained allowed them to model their customers in a more actionable way, and in the process, sharpen their segmentation.

Your sales team might do informal debriefs with contacts from lost opportunity accounts. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for any representative from the company to get a truthful answer from the would-be customer. You'll get answers that make people feel good, or feel vindicated, but not the insightful answers that enable meaningful change.

It's just human nature; people avoid confrontation or any situation where a defensive response may occur. It's best to turn to a highly experienced third party to conduct these interviews and extract the learnings that will be helpful to the organization.