According to NFL.com,

To win, the Cowboys had to rally from a 13-6 halftime deficit. Buffalo had forged its lead on Thurman Thomas’s 4-yard touchdown run and a pair of field goals by Steve Christie, including a 54-yard kick, the longest in Super Bowl history.

But just 55 seconds into the second half, Thomas was stripped of the ball by Dallas defensive tackle Leon Lett. Safety James Washington recovered and weaved his way 46 yards for a touchdown to tie the game at 13-13.

This recap doesnt tell the whole story of this fumble and recovery for a touchdown. The fumble was no accident and the impact it had on the game was extremely important. The Cowboys accidental discovery of a bit of intelligence ended up turning the entire game around. Ill relate the story as I have heard it from Norm Hitzges.

As you know, there is an incredible amount of hype and press coverage leading up to the Super Bowl. Reporters are everywhere and no story is too small to receive significant coverage.

It just so happens that the day before the game, Buffalo Bills coach Norm Levy was being interviewed for television. He was down on the field with his team, but talking to reporters as his players walked through some drills. Coach Levy didnt know that the camera was catching some of his players in the background. He probably thought that the camera was tight on him. Had he known that his team was on display, he certainly would have changed his angle.

Turns out that the Bills offense was adding a new wrinkle especially for the Super Bowl game. In the background, almost off camera, the offense was walking through a new play from shotgun formation. The idea was that the Bills running back, Thurman Thomas would take a direct snap from the center rather than the ball going through the quarterbacks hands. This type of play is meant to confuse a defense and create a quick strike opportunity. This play might be most effective in a passing situation, where the quarterback can fake the reception of the snap and distract the defense while the running back gets up to speed with the ball. This is a play that Buffalo had not used all year, and they figured that the element of surprise would work in their favor in the biggest game of the year.

In their hotel rooms, the Dallas Cowboys defense was watching Coach Levys interview. The Defensive Coordinator happened to pick up on the trick play being practiced in the background. It was almost sheer luck (or very thorough attention to all things related to the next days game) that he noticed at all, but the play caught his attention and he made note of the Bills formation.

He immediately called a meeting of the Cowboys defensive players. He explained what he had observed happening behind the coach during the interview. The defenders created a code word that would be called out if they observed the formation on the field during the game.

On Sunday, at the halftime break, the Bills lead 13-6 and were playing very tough football against the Cowboys. Just after halftime, the Bills had the ball again and in less than a minute, they had moved the ball to midfield. With only 55 seconds played in the second half, the Bills decided it was time to do something unexpected and break the game open. As they lined up in shotgun formation, the Cowboys began to yell their code word, indicating the trick play. Sure enough, the ball was snapped, the quarterback faked backwards as though he had received the snap while Thomas attempted to grab the ball out of the air and start around the left side of the line.

Completely prepared, Leon Lett of the Cowboys defense raced around the left side of the line and hit Thomas before the ball was secured. Thomas went one way and the ball went the other. Dallas safety, James Washington, scooped up the ball and returned it 46 yards for the tying touchdown.

This dramatic turn of events apparently demoralized the Bills while pumping up the Cowboys. The Bills did not score again all game and the Cowboys went on to win the game, 30-13.

So, what are the takeaways (pardon the fumble reference) of this Competitive Intelligence story?

1. Keep your eyes open and ear to the ground. Information is always in the air. You just have to know where the most likely places are to intercept that intelligence. (Too many people try to get that one silver bullet that they completely miss the dozens of little arrows that go by constantly)
2. Make sure that you can interpret what is happening. Any regular fan sitting at home watching the interview would certainly have missed the significance of the play being practiced. Find people that know how to interpret data and trust their opinion.
3. Everyone on the team needs to know how to assimilate and react to the intelligence. If not, there will be no coordinated action based on the information and the value will be compromised, at best.
4. Counterintelligence Make sure that your secrets stay safe. Who knows where the camera is pointed, even at seemingly insignificant times?
5. Do something with the intelligence. Information that doesnt result in improvement is interesting but completely worthless. And, there really isnt any glory in telling someone you knew something was going to happen if you didnt take action on the information. Hindsight may be 20/20, but for CI purposes, it may be very low on the value scale.

I might recommend a very fertile area of intelligence that should be mined often and consistently. Your current client list is full of people or companies that have shopped the competition, listened to their pitches or even have been previous clients of your competitors. If you want to stake out a very promising bit of territory and set up listening ears, I would make sure to include the current client base.

If you need some help incorporating these ideas, give me a call. Id be happy to talk you through. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

What are the top challenges with regards to competitive intelligence in Pharma at the moment?
I’m putting together a Pharma industry conference on the subject and would like to hear what’s hot in the area at the moment.

My answer, which I presented in form of a letter, explains how important ROI and visibility have become. It wasnt long ago that the topics were ethics and espionage (and those topics still get mileage), but thought leaders (individual and organizational) seem to be thinking more about effectiveness than methods.

The response is included below:

Ms. Ojewale,

I’m more of a CI practitioner than Pharma industry expert. That said, I believe that many of the challenges in your industry are typical of many others.

One of the problems inherent in CI is trying to make sure that the information you obtain will be used effectively to drive change that:

1. Strengthens a competitive position with an existing product
2. Finds new markets or uses for a product
3. Helps create new products that meet an unforeseen need.

In other words, if CI isnt producing revenue or leading to the revenue path, it may not be as worthwhile as you might think.

The second problem is trying to convince change agents (senior management) that the intelligence should be used to create business change. This is a widespread problem that causes companies to under-leverage their CI efforts. Too often, the intelligence is judged as trivial. If the intelligence confirms something that the executive already knows, the information is devalued. If the intelligence shows something unexpected, too often, it is dismissed due to the fact that someone in an executive office knows better than a CI analyst.

To understand the significance of this problem, youll note that the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) hosted a conference earlier this month for CI professionals. The topics they intend to cover do not address any of the how to gather CI issues. Instead, their list of topics focuses on making CI relevant, getting CI noticed and meshing with upper managements needs.

Allocating resources
Strategic internal positioning of CI
Understanding and meeting upper management needs
Hiring and retaining CI talent
Ensuring success: Promoting your department
Establishing measurable objectives (ROI)
Vehicles for communicating CI

(For more information: http://members.scip.org/scriptcontent/BeWeb/events/eventdetail.cfm?&PRODUCT_MAJOR=BPFORUM907)

These ideas seem to encompass much of what is being discussed in the professional CI ranks. Thought leaders are leaning toward the topics of relevance, effectiveness, ROI, etc

This Thursday, Primary Intelligence will host a webinar based on making sure that Competitive Intelligence makes a difference. If you would like to attend a no-cost webinar on Thursday, 9/27 at 2pm ET, register HERE.

There is such tremendous change in the marketplace that marketing techniques that used to work may not work anymore, says Roland Rust, chairman of the marketing department at the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business at College Park, Md., and author of numerous books on marketing. Companies are trying a lot of new things and dont know whether they work. The companies that are getting ahead these days are those that use data to make decisions,

Prof. Rust adds. Conquering highly profitable markets, or having the right market focus and position, is one of the key building blocks of a high-performance business, says Mr. Merrihue of Accenture. And a high-performance business today demands cost-effective, results-driven marketing (http://online.wsj.com/ad/accenture/)

The source of this information comes from an advertisement -, but the message, while a touch bombastic, remains the same. Understanding your marketing position and tracking progress against goals has become one of the most important topics in marketing. That is no secret at all. Determining what to measure and how to improve is a large challenge.

Ill toss out my two cents on how Competitive Intelligence can improve a marketing departments ability to compete.

If done properly, competitive intelligence should be able to tell you:

Competitive Intelligence should feed your marketing department with these types of answers, allowing the most effective messages to be refined. Tracking this information over time will provide the ability to measure improvement and/or keep pace with a changing marketplace.

These ideas are some of the most basic possibilities. If you have other ideas or need suggestions, lets chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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Cover Story
Your Prospects Are Talking. Are You Listening?
By Mark Larson, Primary Intelligence
What’s ironic is that a prospect is generally the easiest source of information about a company’s products or direction. Consider this idea: the people most willing to help with anything are those that will generally benefit the most for providing feedback. (For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Where does your Competitive Intelligence Go?
In some recent studies from Primary Intelligence, we have asked representatives from various industries and company sizes “Who has access to the competitive intelligence data?” For more, click here)

The A-List Archive
Straightforward Pricing Helps Siebel Win Contract with Terry Hinge & Hardware
Originally Published in January 2005.
With its recent growth through acquisitions and development of new divisions, Terry Hinge & Hardware needed to standardize and integrate its sources of sales information. The President/COO explained that the Company originally evaluated Salesforce.com, Siebel, and Caritor, but eliminated the latter because evaluators believed the vendor did not have enough. (For more, click here)

A summary of the webinar follows:

While information provides the fuel for strategic direction, how often does yesterday’s “can’t miss” competitive intelligence initiative get lost in the shuffle of today’s realities?

Overall, too many sales, competitive, and market intelligence initiatives are judged ineffective due to the fact that the intelligence is never used to increase sales, gain a competitive advantage, or capitalize on a new market opportunity.

Primary Intelligence would like to invite you to a presentation that will show:

-Why competitive intelligence is often under-utilized
-How to generate findings that actually makes a difference
-How to start with the end in mind
-Different methods to ensure that the intelligence will provide a guiding beacon.

Those that will benefit include:
-Marketing leaders
-Market research managers
-Market and Industry analysts
-Sales leaders
-Corporate leadership positions (CEO, CMO, CSO)

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/976829978

Date: September 27, 2007
Time: 2PM ET, 1PM CT, Noon MT, 11AM PT

Stories of PPT abuse are not hard to find. Your company may be PPT agnostic, but many companies are forming opinions one way or another. Competitive Intelligence is, by definition, a source of information and sharing information is job #1 of PPT.

But, like anything else, you have to know how to use PPT to maximize its effectiveness. One of the weaknesses of PPT is the fact that it tends to simplify concepts much too easily.

Gettysburg Address PPT Style
How has PPT changed the way we communicate? Imagine a world with almost no pronouns or punctuation. A world where any complex thought must be broken into seven-word chunks, with colorful blobs between them. Wait. You dont have to imagine it. You are probably exposed to it regularly. You may even speak fluent PPT.

For a funny example, check out the Gettysburg Address, done in PPT. Click on the link below and then click on Click here to start.

Gettysburg Address in PPT

IBM and Sun Talk Business
Lou Gerstner’s remarkable turnaround of IBM from near-collapse began with a briefing he asked for on the state of the mainframe business. Mainframes accounted for more than 90% of the company’s profits, which were sinking fast when he took over. Gerstner describes this critical meeting in his book Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance, as follows:

At the time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics on transparencies that IBMers calledand no one remembers why”foils.” Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, “Let’s just talk about your business.” I mention this episode because it had an unintended, but terribly powerful ripple effect.

Scott McNealy, a self-styled Chairman of Sun Microsystems, famously declared in 1997:

We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, “What a huge waste of corporate productivity.” So we banned it. And we’ve had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, “What do I do? Guess I’ve got to go to work.”

Regardless of whether the ban was real or its contribution to record-breaking profits a hyperbole, there is something to be said for PowerPoint slide shows in the form of an infomercial getting in the way of having an honest discussion of complex issues and detracting from finding out the truth. – MarketingProfs

Next time you are called upon to share information, consider the benefits of standing in front of a group and talking. What would happen if there were dialogue instead of slides? Would you be seen as more of a consultant, or would your audience be uncomfortable, not knowing how to react?

Just some thoughts. Let me know what you think as well. (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

A buddy of mine passed me this video a while back and it has become a standard in our office. Not sure our PPTs are any better, but at least we have context when we laugh at each others presentations. Also, Dan McHugh included this in his CI blog a while back. If its good enough for him, its good enough for my blog

Now you know.

The key findings of the report are remarkably similar to information available from Primary Intelligence. For example:

Best organizational fit: Organizational placement or fit of the CI function significantly impacts its ability to influence and engage decision makers. Strategic planning and business development are the locations most often cited by study participants as desirable departmental homes.

Primary Intelligence resources:

Customer focus: High performing CI organizations operate within a framework that emphasizes customer focus to shape projects that have maximum impact. Top organizations target and serve critical customer segments that have the greatest impact on the business, personally engage with these customers to understand their business needs, and become instrumental in providing intelligence to inform their customers most important decisions. World class CI groups understand the specific needs of each customer and create custom deliverables to meet their individual requirements.

Primary Intelligence resources:

External customers: External customers are a rich source of competitive intelligence because they talk with competitors and receive competitor product pricing and features information on a continuous basis. Customers also use competitor products and can identify weaknesses in them. However, tapping into this rich resource is a challenge for most CI groups.

Primary Intelligence resources:

Im sure there was a lot of work put into the Best Practices report. Hopefully, those that purchase the report will act on the data and become more effective. But, visit some of our links above to find methods to put these concepts in practice, without having to spend $8,000.

In the meantime, Im going to rethink this free blog content concept. Would my thoughts be taken any more seriously if we charged $5000/year for them? Ill let you know as soon as we put the e-commerce system in place. ( ^;

The concepts of analysis and analytics, however, are sound.

I’ll turn the presentation over to Matt Bailey, Founder of SiteLogic, a company that provides consulting and tools to increase website effectiveness. I enjoyed his lesson on how analytics may help save the lives of the “Red Shirts.”

Analytics According to Captain Kirk
In my seminars, I enjoy teaching analytics because the fun is in finding effective and memorable methods to help people understand the concepts. One of my favorites is an analysis of the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.

What? You don’t know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you’re gonna die. That’s the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn’t seen any definitive proof; it’s just what people said. (Remind you of your current web analytics strategy?) So, let’s set our phasers on ‘stun’ and see what we find…

The Basic Stats:
The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%.

Data Segmentation:
However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:

So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.

However, that’s only just simple stats reporting – ready for some analysis?

In-depth Analysis
Analysis involves asking questions about the data. Analysis attempts to bring reason and cause to the reported data in order to find why something is happening. With that data, one can improve the situation based on the intelligence gained from the analysis.

Q: What causes a red-shirted crewman to die?

There were also many fights during the mission; on the Enterprise, on planets, and various space stations. The fights were also divided between alien races or crazed crewmen (usually wearing red shirts).

There were 130 fights over 80 episodes.

Q: what was the rate of red-shirt casualties?

It was found that red-shirted crewmembers tended to die in groups. In 17 red-shirt fatality episodes, 8 were multiple incidents, 9 were single incidents. In a little less than 50% of the fatal red-shirt situations, multiple crewmen were vaporized.

Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?
Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet’s surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.

Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and “makes contact” the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks’ 24 “relationships” there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.

The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).

Here are the statistics:
Red Shirt Death episodes = 18
Episodes with fights = 55
Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%
Kirk “conquest” episodes = 24
Kirk “conquest” + fights = 16
Kirk “conquest” + red shirt casualty= 4
Red shirt death + fight + Kirk “conquest” = 3

And the data trends
Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%
14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)
Probability of a red-shirt “incident” when Kirk has a “conquest” = 12%

The red-shirt survival rate is slightly higher when Kirk meets women than when a fight breaks out. This trend necessitates the question: How often did Captain Kirk “meet” women? In 30% of the missions.

As the data shows, Captain Kirk “making contact” with alien women has an impact on the crew’s survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out. Yet the analysis shows that meeting Kirk meeting women only happens in 30% of the missions.

Conclusion:
We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).

Reporting the Data:
Now, researching the data can be fun and informative. However, that is only half of the battle. The interesting part comes when you have to communicate not only the data, but your conclusions in an effective, persuasive manner. The best analysis won’t go far if you can’t communicate the conclusions in a manner that people understand.

There are a few options at our disposal. First, the PowerPoint Method.

There are a number of things wrong with the typical method of presenting data. For starters, this presentation could bore even the most hardened Starfleet manager (CEO). The typical corporate PowerPoint slide design is obnoxious and does not leave room for information, the charts are redundant, even unnecessary, and it does not do a good job of communicating the information or the analysis.

In most cases, PowerPoint is NOT the recommended tool for communicating analytics data. It is not the right tool for the job. Communicating analytics data involves providing conclusions based on facts, tests, comparisons, and research. In order to display the necessary data, a better method must be used, and not one that forces redundant bullet point and “snazzy” charts.

Visualizing the Data:There are some necessary elements required in developing a chart for this type data:

By seeing all of the available data in one chart, associations, patterns and conclusions can be drawn simply by comparing the relationships as they are presented. This is something that I learned from Edward Tufte – 1. More information is needed to simplify data presentation. 2. Unless all of the data is presented, there is no data integrity.

Information is Primary to Design
This is critical in developing a chart of information – the information is primary. List the necessary data elements first. Then, develop the design around the information, and not the other way around. Otherwise, a beautiful chart will lack the critical information necessary to support your conclusions. The graphing software that I found extremely effective for communicating the episode data for this Star Trek analysis is Microsoft’s Office 2007, and in Apple’s OS X graphics software.

(click image for full-size version)

I like this chart – eliminating the need for a legend is critical to allowing the information to flow. The data is the same color or object as the information we are trying to convey. Because there is no suitable color for Captain Kirk’s affairs, we substituted a very flattering picture. Fights are represented by tiny phasers, which are not the best representation because of the size, but can easily be determined by the process of elimination. This chart allows conclusions and observations that simple charts, numbers, and explanations may never bring to the surface. It allows for easy comparison, both to other shirt colors, and in relation to other episodes. It also looks as though Kirk was a very busy man.

In the first year of the series, red-shirt casualties were lower than other color-shirted crewmembers. The second and especially the third seasons were especially brutal. In the third season, only red-shirted crewmembers died; maybe because the other colors enacted better safety protocols, or maybe because they avoided the bridge when a new planet came into view, for fear of beaming down with Cpt. Kirk.

Summary:
Of the elements that helped to provide this analysis, segmentation was key.

Segmentation of groups allows for comparisons. Comparisons allow you to spot trends that may be different from the rest. Asking questions of the data allows you to dig into specific trends and spot additional factors that affect the original analysis. Unless we dug into Kirk’s personal life, we may never have spotted the contrast of Kirk’s attraction to alien females as it related to saving red-shirt crewmen’s lives.

Remember, when you have to account for lost crewmembers, your report needs to account for the how, the why, and the ability to draw specific conclusions as to how to affect the trends in the future. Depending upon your approach, you could either doom the project, and future red-shirted crewmen, or you could be visiting planets full of peaceful alien women.

But, what about sales teams from your own company? What can you give them that would put a smile on their face and a bounce in their step? Well, they’ll appreciate anything you can do to help them sell more effectively. Give them a sale and you’ll have a best friend for life. They might even take you to lunch, but don’t count on it.

Unfortunately, you may not be on the front lines. You might not have a rolodex of potential clients. You may be busy with a ton of other stuff. And, if you really wanted to sell, you would have joined the sales or account management teams long ago.

(What to do, what to do, what to do)

You might consider a Target Prospecting profile from Primary Intelligence. This new intelligence service, introduced this month, has the potential to increase your sales teams effectiveness exponentially by providing a road map to a sale.

With Primary Intelligences Target Prospecting, our clients now have the information they need to understand the opportunity as they enter it, and can address prospects unique needs. Specifically, from the prospect interview profiles, our clients learn:

Think of the benefits of being able to talk to the client about their needs in their language and understanding most of the necessary maneuvers before the first prospecting contact is made.

This isnt lead generation. This is Prospect Needs Identification and the ROI has proven to be huge for our clients.

With this information, provided to your company only, your sales reps and account managers will know the lay of the land before the competition decides to engage. How surprised will the competition be when they arrive at the prospects doorstep, only to find that your company has set up camp in the living room? While theyre still trying to figure out who to talk to, youll be speaking the prospects language.

In the words of my 13 year old daughter, Its like, so totally rad.

For more information, or a sample report, check out our website or give me a call. Ill be happy to answer any questions. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)