Competitive Intelligence - Look In Your Own Mirror First Why Don't You?

I've often been blown away by the shear arrogance of A-School MBS students doing corporate consulting. They throw around buzz-words like it is going out of style, think their feces doesn't stink, and think they are smarter than everyone else out to save every business, agency, NGO, and corporation from sure disaster. Personally, I find such un-earned ego underwhelming and quite frankly dangerous. Worse, many go and start consulting firms having never raised a business from weed to seed or from start-up to big brand name. Let's talk.
Recently, a wannabe business consultant asked me to write some articles for them, B2B stuff. They noted that their clientele were top executives in Fortune 1000 companies. Well, no offense, but so what, most of those folks couldn't operate a start-up or run a company to save their butts. Look, I've competed against these same executives in large corporations and even with the vast resources available and all the best consulting money could buy - we still kicked their asses in the market place. Why? Because we knew our customers and we had ground floor competitive intelligence. We knew what we were good at and where we needed to improve, and we also knew our competitors and their best clientele better than they knew themselves.
Occasionally, a corporate competitor would spend big on promotions, come-ons, marketing and score some great sales short term. We welcomed this, as they would attract new clientele into the overall market. But please realize that merely having GREAT Sales records during subsequent months doesn't mean it won't all fall apart tomorrow if you don't pay attention.
This is the basis and foundation for the Win Loss Analysis (latest corporate consulting shallow buzz word they are teaching to MBA students and writing in those publish or perish analog MBA text books and using in MOOC Power Point presentations), that continual feedback loop between company and customer - that goes for exit surveys of former customers, as well as happy repeat customers. By doing these surveys and really understanding the customer's mindset, we whooped the corporate competition. We were more agile, had better intelligence, and didn't need the buzz words to 'getr done' and that is the lesson here.
Suffice it to say, once you get into their minds and understand their desires, needs, wants, and rational for departing with their hard earned money for the products and services you produce you are way ahead of the game. Having great sales today doesn't guarantee you will tomorrow unless you understand your customers. Please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Corporate Business Topics. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net