Sales Intelligence | LINE OF SIGHT GROUP

30 May

Using External Data to Excel at Pricing

A study published last year in HBR, Forbes and Bain and Company’s own outlets looked at top-performing B2B companies (as defined by increased market share, self-described excellent pricing decisions and execution of regular price increases). The findings suggest that top performers are more likely to:

Employ tailored pricing at the individual customer and product level
Align incentives for frontline sales staff with the pricing strategy
Invest in ongoing development of capabilities through data, training and tools

These top performers develop pricing capabilities by bringing market intelligence to bear on three variables for setting target prices:

The attributes and benefits that each customer truly values (External Data)
The alternatives and competitive intensity in the industry (External Data)
The true profitability of the transaction after accounting for leakage in areas such as rebates, freight, terms, and inventory holding (Internal Data)

What caught my eye, of course, is the emphasis on the use of EXTERNAL DATA to develop the pricing capabilities of these top performers.

Applying external data to pricing decisions requires an underlying capability to collect data, analyze and deliver insight to pricing decisions. While the authors offer no specifics on HOW this is done, here are three techniques we’ve used over the years to help clients develop this capability:

Systematic scanning. Top performers systematically monitor for pricing information and indicators rather than engaging in “episodic pricing projects”. From press releases to published contracts to captured conversations by the sales force, open source data is compiled, organized and analyzed to understand what customers are paying and the pricing strategies of the competition
Market and competitive analysis. The B2B supply chain contains several transaction points – the points at which money is exchanged for something of value, whether a supplier, customer, distribution partner or other. And whenever money is exchanged, data and information are associated with the transaction. Using this ‘follow the money’ approach and asking the right questions, it is possible to extract valuable insight regarding the attributes customers value and the pricing practices of the competition
Win/Loss analysis. When we speak to B2B customers on our client’s behalf following a buying decision, we seek to understand both the key buying factors as well as the customer’s buying alternatives and their perceptions of price. Whether our client won or lost the decision, knowing how their pricing compared aids them in setting future prices

While data and insight are one component of overall pricing success, 77% of top performing companies have access to the right data and tools. An example is a top performing company in the specialty chemical industry that successfully employed these pricing tactics and increased EBIT by 35% within two years.

The authors close the white paper with these words, “companies in almost all industries have underinvested generally across pricing. The episodic “pricing project” approach leaves companies well short of full potential. With meaningful margin upside at stake, managers cannot afford to continue pricing by guesswork or rules of thumb.”

The links below will open a three pricing-related case studies.

Maximizing Revenue Through Market-Based Pricing

https://lineofsightgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/LoSCaseStudyCS32.18_MarketPricing-1.pdf

Price Benchmarking

https://lineofsightgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/LoSCaseStudyCS30.18_PriceBenchmark-1.pdf

Protect Against Low Priced Competition

https://lineofsightgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/LoSCaseStudyCS31.18_LowPriceCompetition.pdf

Here is a link to the Bain and Company brief “Is Pricing Killing Your Profits?”:

https://www.bain.com/contentassets/da6c7f536eeb47ab863ff9719ea2381e/bain_brief_is_pricing_killing_your_profits.pdf

28 Jun

Using Analytics to Stay Ahead of the Competition

“As product strategists aiming to launch a new product or gain market share with a new enhancement, it is critical to be first to the finish line. The risk of losing the race can be in the millions of dollars and devastating to careers.” – Steve Schulz, Line of Sight Group President and Founder

Our efforts to stay current on trends and keep a pulse on the needs of product managers is addressed by attending and sponsoring key events in the local marketplace. Line of Sight Group sponsored the monthly PDMA meeting and presented “Using Analytics to Stay Ahead of the Competition” at Starkey Hearing Technologies in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Line of Sight Group’s Steve Schulz shared some analytical models for using knowledge of the external environment to understand where you are in the race with your competition, and how to think about bets and moves you can make to differentiate and stay ahead. Use cases demonstrated how organizations can apply data and analytics to continuously monitor competitive developments and engage in interactive dialog on how to use that information to respond to threats and opportunities.

One of the ways we help our clients monitor their external environment is through Line of Sight’s SCIP Endorsed Market-i Competitive Intelligence System.

Key insights from the event:

How to identify key indicators
Where to find the needed data
How to create and populate a development map and scorecard
Development strategies and response adjustments
How to present the data and strategic response

Starkey’s Aaron Schroeder, Au.D, kicked off the event with a welcome and shared their efforts to help people hear throughout the U.S. and around the world. He showed a music video featuring singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson, who joined Starkey in Peru to help raise awareness and funds for people struggling with hearing loss. I encourage you to watch it here. It is sure to warm your heart.

Thanks to Minnesota PDMA and Starkey Hearing Technologies for the opportunity!

Minnesota PDMA is the place for innovators and product people to come together. The organization holds monthly events all around the Twin Cities. All people, perspectives, and ideas are welcome.

Starkey Hearing Technologies is a hearing-aid manufacturer that prides itself on connecting people and changing lives. The company has provided more than 1 million hearing aids to people around the world.

28 Dec

Competing on Customer Experience in Retail

Customer Experience is the area many retailers have chosen to compete on over the past few years. When it comes to shopping, it is breaking increasingly into “chore” vs. “cherish” activities. On the “chore” side, firms like Amazon offer commodity pricing, streamlined delivery, and voice recognition to make online ordering an easy experience for obtaining essentials. That leaves “cherish,” the type of shopping based on the discovery of interesting products and socializing them with others. This type of shopping is characterized by a great physical presence, unique items, and creating meaningful experiences. You’ll find artisan crafted products, hand-picked selections, custom built offers, or even built-by-the customer creations. How might a retailer best compete in the Customer Experience realm?

One of the first areas to consider is to understand the external environment. What are the trends and who are the competitors? Are there competitors offering something similar? How are they unique? What kinds of experiences do they offer? Are they competing on digital or physical experience or both or is it something else?

Next, savvy retailers track and map internal environment elements like customer journeys and voice of the customer as well as metrics like Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction. Asking for feedback after every interaction or transaction is wearing customers down so building insight via analytics into the flow (that is not invasive) will be a key.

With external and internal environment insight in hand, retailers have a number of levers available to pull. Retailers can swiftly test and prototype various experience design elements using service blueprinting, bio-mimicry and design thinking. Some are using Virtual Reality to conduct their prototyping digitally as a first step. Capturing insight via primary and secondary research about the external and internal environment goes a long way towards creating a strategy to compete on customer experience as a differentiator in retail. Knowing the type of shopping that your current and future customers engage in can align your strategy and go-to-market initiatives on a path toward delivering meaningful and differentiated customer experiences in the digital and physical worlds.

01 Dec

Competing in Financial Services

Competing in the financial services industry can be as risky as it is broad. While the services of our clients in the financial services industry range from consumer finance to sophisticated back-office technology in the insurance industry, they all share a common challenge of dealing with quick, continuous and sometimes dramatic changes in the industry. Driven by government regulations, global economics, technology and many other factors, these organizations know that changes in their industry can happen swiftly and can devastate profits for those that misread the tea leaves. They also know that timely and objective knowledge and insight can help offset those risks and challenges.

In one financial services segment, our client deals with competitive offers and pricing that changes on a monthly basis or less. With the help of Line of Sight Group, however, managers know about the changes in near-real-time, and use the information to identify situations where they have a competitive advantage. They quickly funnel the information to their sales force who uses it to contact client prospects, confident that they have a true advantage to gain a new customer. This client conservatively estimates an ROI on the research and insight at over 20 to 1.

Late last year, another client asked Line of Sight Group to conduct a deep analysis on an adjacent market in which they were contemplating entry. In early 2017, they made the decision to go forward with the move and began maneuvering resources for the planned entry late this year. Not only did the analysis provide the support needed to make a confident strategic decision, it also provided guidance in the build-out phase to align products, pricing and positioning. The insight was further extended as education for the business development team about the market and how to out-sell the competition they were getting ready to face.

Still another client in the financial services technology sector, utilized our Competitive Landscape Program as part of its overall strategy formulation following a major restructuring. By gaining insight into the key growth strategies and buying criteria of buyers in its target segment, and overlaying that data with insight about its primary competition and its own competitive position (it is not the industry leader), management developed a variation of a ‘fast-follower’ strategy. Predicated on management’s understanding that they cannot predict the future and control the uncontrollable, and that the industry leader tends to respond sluggishly, they are building a competency that enables management to adjust its strategies based on a continuous ‘external learning loop’ focused on its industry and markets. This allows them to quickly identify and take advantage of new opportunities.

The stakes can be extremely high in the financial services industry with high capital intensity, powerful regulation and dynamic market and competitive factors. Because they are in the financial services industry, however, risk management is in their DNA. They understand how to manage market and operational risk, and understand that market and industry research is a vital component of their risk strategy. These firms also understand economics. They understand the value of accurate, timely and unbiased research and insight, and that the investment will pay dividends in both the short and long-term.

06 Oct

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Tips and Techniques

Last week, Line of Sight Group partnered with the Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Association to deliver a panel discussion to explore how various organizational roles define and use intelligence to formulate strategy and execute go-to-market initiatives. The panel consisted of practitioners from several industries and across several roles. There were panelists and attendees not only from SCIP but from other associations representing the roles we sought including Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA) and the Special Libraries Association (SLA).

The fast-paced discussion first explored what types of intelligence were needed. With so much data available from so many sources, there is a heightened importance for analyzing, synthesizing and making sense of it. Several ideas emerged from making it simple, visual, or put into the context of the consumer of the intelligence. One of the firms had operationalized this into Red, Yellow, and Green dashboards. Some added that storytellers could be employed to convey the messages and clues found in the intelligence. There was attention given to the ways that technology was impacting the field – several firms are using or are built on analytics. Others are starting to look at Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR).

There were some interesting examples, as well. One firm conducted Scenario Planning and accurately predicted the acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon. Another example was that Red Roof Inns capitalized on the fact that 2% of all airline flights are cancelled and figured out a way to cater to temporarily stranded travelers yielding a very favorable business outcome.

Another aspect that emerged was the importance of building trust and collaborating amongst the various roles in research, product management, marketing, sales, customer experience and strategy formulation. With the advent of technology like cloud, mobile, big data and the aforementioned analytics, AI and VR, the notion of sustainable competitive advantage is challenged. This points towards an ongoing monitoring of the external environment to either avoid disruption or to get ahead of the curve and do some disruption.

The panel ended by sharing a list of helpful books:

The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company by John Rossman
Do I Make Myself Clear? by Harold Evans
Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World by Adam Grant
Starting a Competitive Intelligence Function by SCIP
The Strategist by Cynthia A. Montgomery
Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John C. Maxwell
Assorted Competitive Intelligence Books by Michael Porter and Liam Fahey

13 Sep

SCIP Minnesota Presents: A Panel Discussion with Line of Sight Group, PDMA & CXPA Practitioners

Line of Sight Group is proud to be part of SCIP Minnesota’s panel discussion later this month. President and Founder Steve Schulz will join other top experts in the competitive intelligence, product management, and customer experience arenas.

The discussion will touch on and provide insight on common challenges, including the type of intelligence leadership is looking for, and illustrate how top practitioners gather intelligence for internal use and on their competitors. Panelists will also illustrate some useful tips and tools that are used by top practitioners.

Other panelists include:

Lori Laflin, Global Customer Engagement Research Program Manager, Cargill/ Member CXPA , CCXP
Paul Santilli, WW OEM Business Intelligence & Customer Insights at Hewlett Packard Enterprise/ Secretary & Treasurer, Board of Directors, SCIP
Mark Jensen, Director of Product Management-Distribution, Epicor Software/ Board of Directors, PDMA
Tom Mcgoldrick, Strategic Insights Director of UnitedHealth Group

The Panel will be moderated by Brett Norgaard, Principal, Line of Sight Group.

The SCIP MN Panel Discussion will take place September 27 from 5 pm-7 pm Central Time at the Grant Park Conference Room, 500 East Grant Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

For more information or to attend the event, please go to the SCIP MN website or reach out to MN Chapter Chair, Julie Johnson.

Line of Sight’s Market-i Competitive Intelligence Program is a SCIP “Endorsed” product. Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) is the nonprofit Association representing the Integrated Intelligence industry internationally for over 32 years.

23 May

Creating a Clear Line of Sight Through Inputs, Strategy and Execution

Last week Line of Sight Group delivered a presentation to the local chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) entitled, “The Intersection of Strategy and Product Development/Management.” The event was held at Padilla in Minneapolis and attended by 50 product management and strategy practitioners. Line of Sight Group Founder and President, Steve Schulz, opened with the question, “what do these have in common?” The metaphorical slide had pictures of a dinosaur, a telephone booth and a Blockbuster Video storefront. All are now extinct, disrupted out of existence by stronger competitors that were better informed and equipped to survive. Why?

Doug Hedlund, Participating Faculty at the University of St. Thomas Opus School, offered the first part of the answer, a Strategy Formulation and Execution Discipline involving the capture of key factors (an organization’s vision, mission, core values and strategic goals), internal environment factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external environment forces (competition and trends) as inputs. Next, he walked through how the key factors inform the Strategy (Arenas, Vehicles, Differentiation, Staging and Economic Logic). Finally, he covered the execution levers (leadership, talent, organizational structure, systems/processes, and culture) and scorecard (metrics and dashboards) needed to successfully carry out the strategy.

Next, Schulz presented an interactive case study using the Strategy Formulation and Execution Discipline where the attendees helped to fill in the key inputs that shaped the strategy and execution. Schulz employed three useful frameworks to organize the external and internal data – PESTEL (Political, Economic, Societal, Technological, Environmental, & Legal) Analysis, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis and a Table Stakes Analysis in his presentation of the case.

Finally, Brett Norgaard, Line of Sight Group Principal, bookended the presentation with two stories highlighting the use of timely external environment intelligence leading to successful strategies and product launches under very different circumstances. (See Stealth and Telephone Switch blog entries.)

Starting with external environment research as the first step to creating a clear line of sight, from the inputs to the strategy formation and on through to the execution and measurement, ensures alignment of the strategic and go-to-market functions, including product development/management. Individuals that can identify and understand what is upstream and downstream from strategy formulation will be best positioned to help their organizations prevail and avoid extinction in increasingly disruptive times.

20 Apr

Line of Sight’s Competitive Intelligence System Now SCIP Endorsed

Line of Sight Group is proud to announce that our Market-i Competitive Intelligence System has been recognized as a SCIP “Endorsed” product!

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) is the nonprofit Association representing the Integrated Intelligence industry internationally for over 32 years.

What makes our system unique? Prior to launching Line of Sight Group in 2002, president and founder Steve Schulz conceived the Market-i System when he was running CI programs. According to SCIP, this makes the Market-i system unique and different because it was developed by a CI practitioner, not by a consultant or technology specialist with no background in CI.

The idea behind Line of Sight’s intelligence services offering, including our Market-i System, is that the most effective way for organizations to understand, respond to and anticipate changes in their external environment (not only direct competitors) is to collect and process information that best represents leading indicators in a systematic and ongoing way. It is done in such a way as to identify changes that are significant enough to deserve a more in-depth look. In addition, our intelligence services fit directly with our analysis services – we get to know our clients and their business and are uniquely positioned to help our clients develop deep insight and strategic options.

Line of Sight Group joins other service providers highlighted in SCIP’s (first-ever) 2017 Service Provider Assessment Guidebook – Highlighting SCIP Endorsed and Certified Services in ISCI. The guidebook is aimed at providing its members and potential users of these services some insight into the features and benefits that may be of service to their decision support program.

If you would like more information about our Market-i Competitive Intelligence System, please Reach Out! To learn more about SCIP or to become a member, contact them at www.scip.org.

22 Nov

How do election results change my company’s strategic, business, and product plan assumptions?

Were your strategic, business, and product plan assumptions based on one candidate winning or did you have scenarios for either outcome? Did you have a scenario in which one party would control the Presidency, House of Representatives and the Senate? How dependent were your strategy decisions on U.S. trade policy, corporate and individual tax policy, the Affordable Care Act, immigration policy, the strength of the dollar, student debt forgiveness, a national minimum wage, environmental regulation, etc.? Will policy and regulatory changes under single party control make your industry more attractive or less? How will your competitors react to these changes? Will political, regulatory, supplier, customer, investor, and competitor reactions be positive, disruptive or destructive to your industry and business?

If the questions above left you scratching your head it’s time to pull the strategic, business, and product level plans out and review the assumptions on which your forecasts and decisions were made. Depending on your industry, you may need to simply update or completely redo your external analysis to determine the political, economic, consumer, environmental and regulatory implications for your industry and business. Next, identifying what actions your competitors may take in this updated external analysis and monitoring for leading indicators that may signal competitor actions will position your company to be pro-active vs. reactive.

Doug Hedlund
President, The Hedlund Group, LLC
doughedlund@hedlundgroupllc.com

Doug provides Line of Sight Group clients corporate, business unit, and product level strategy development and execution facilitation and guidance. Doug’s disciplined approach to strategy development and execution helps our clients translate our industry research and competitive intelligence into focused, actionable strategies and execution plans. Doug has evolved the disciplines and tools he utilizes over a twenty-seven year career in corporate development and strategy leadership roles at Deluxe Corporation, CUNA Mutual Group, and Mayo Clinic. In addition, Doug has taught the Strategic Management Capstone course in the MBA programs at the University of St. Thomas and Augsburg College since 2008 and 2009, respectively and has helped numerous organizations formulate successful strategy and strategy execution plans.

05 Oct

External vs. Internal: The Difference between Strategy and Planning

Woman

As we enter the first days of October here in Minnesota, the leaves are turning, football is back and our clients are diving deep into their strategic planning for 2017.
When the concept of strategic planning arrived in the business world in the mid-1960’s, corporate leaders embraced it as “the one best way’ to devise and implement strategies, according to Henry Mintzberg, the internationally renowned academic and author of ‘The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning’. By the mid 1990’s amidst the dot.com bust, however, strategic planning had fallen from its pedestal and planning departments were being dismantled.

“Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. One is analysis and the other is synthesis.”
– Henry Mintzberg

Mintzberg explained that strategic planning had become, “strategic programming, the articulation and elaboration of strategies, or visions, that already exist.” On the other hand, he wrote that strategic thinking is about capturing what managers learn from all sources (including both ‘soft’ insights from experiences and observations as well as ‘hard’ data from market research) and then synthesizing it into a vision of the direction that the business should pursue.

In his 2014 HBR article ‘The Big Lie of Strategic Planning’ University of Toronto Professor Roger Martin laments that “strategic plans all tend to look pretty much the same.” They have three major parts: a vision or mission statement, a list of initiatives, and a conversion of the initiatives into budgets. While they may produce better budgets, they are not about strategy.

Strategic Planning	Strategy
Internally focused: planning, costs, capabilities	Externally focused: customers and competition
Short-term	Future-oriented
Controllable	Uncontrollable in long-term
Comfortable	Uncomfortable
Accurate, predictive	Imperfect, directional
Risk elimination	Risk management
Objectives, steps, timelines	Placing bets

Strategy is about what we choose to do as an organization (and not to do) and why. It is about where to place ‘bets’. Strategy focuses on the revenue side, where customers make decisions about whether to give their money to us, to our competitors or to a substitute. This is the hard work of acquiring and keeping customers. It is uncomfortable because our customers are making the decisions, not our own organization.

How to escape the comfort zone: embrace the angst

Because the problem is rooted in our natural aversion to discomfort and fear, Martin writes, “the only remedy is to adopt a discipline about strategy making that reconciles you to experiencing some angst.”

How can we stay focused on strategy this planning season and not fall into the trap of planning and cost budgeting? Some tips:

Focus on choices that influence revenue (i.e.: customer decision makers).

Acknowledge that strategy is not perfect.

Explicitly document the logic.

Invest in data-driven decision making.

Alignment

Of course, successful strategic planning occurs when both strategy and planning are aligned. The strategic “sweet spot” is the value proposition that meets customers’ needs in a way that rivals can’t. It must include both the external view of customers and competitors and the internal view of our own capabilities.

When the core elements of strategy are aligned (customers – competition – capabilities – mission/vision), and when decisions are driven by solid external knowledge, organizations can confidently place its strategic bets in a way that both grows revenue and delivers it in a way that is profitable for the company.