7 Tips For Zoomer Talent Management – Elements in Competitive Intelligence and Succession Planning

Perhaps you run a small business and have a belief that you simply don’t have the time to consistently monitor your competitors and your market as you should. Keeping the business afloat is paramount to you, and hiring additional staff to address this area isn’t an option at this juncture. Consultants aren’t an option either because they’re costly, or your company can’t sacrifice the time necessary to properly educate an outsider about your inner business workings. For any of these situations, there is an alternative if you truly want to keep tabs on your competitive landscape: have your current employees take responsibility.

Tasking your existing employees with platform executive reports developing competitive intelligence for small portions of the overall endeavor isn’t that time consuming, and it will allow them to feel like they are part of the strategic planning process. If your company has a sales or marketing department, these employees serve as the ideal candidates for undertaking competitive analyses. They should be familiar with the market to begin with and have contacts throughout the territory which may provide some inside information. To think your sales or marketing staff doesn’t communicate with a competitor or two is rather naïve-it happens, and it’s a reality you can use to your company’s advantage if it’s encouraged instead of frowned upon.

What kind of information do you need from each employee as it pertains to the competitive landscape? Capturing the following competitor data is a good start:

o Strengths

o Weaknesses

o How your company can take advantage of their weaknesses

o How your company can minimize potential threats from the competitor

o Product and service offerings & changes

o Pricing structure & fluctuations

o Plans to expand or consolidate operations

o Management & staffing changes