Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion

-Kénitra-

Reading note card

“Perspectives on competitive
intelligence within business: A tactical
tool for sales-people to gain a
competitive advantage”
By Raj Agnihotri,
And Adam Rapp

Intelligence économique
et veille stratégique

Abdessamad BENZYANE, GFC, ENCGK

2012/2013
 “A tactical tool for salespeople to gain a competitive advantage”

Introduction:
In a world marked by globalization, relationships between buyers and sellers have evolved to
a point where they have now become partners in order to gain a competitive edge through
utilization of each other’s core competencies and selling has turned into a very sophisticated
and complex task. CI can be referred to as “insights about competitors that are derived from
primary or secondary data” and has been touted as critically important in “shaping strategic
marketing decisions and building market-oriented organizations”

A number of studies suggest that it is possible to collect information by utilizing a sales force
that is already in place. But, the problem is that salespeople do not have a clear perspective
on CI.

Tactical use of CI:

The majority of the research in the CI domain focuses on the ways that organizations can
develop and build an effective CI gathering system, and how an organization’s sales force
can be a practical tool in this regard.

Hannon (1997) argued that an organization should promote and allow its employees to
utilize strategic competitors’ information the concept of an “alert” organization. In fact,
salespeople must be autonomous and learn to solve problems without direction from
supervisors and trainers.

Often, businesses do not maintain steady CI organizations, especially if they function in a

comparatively less competitive industry. There is no such thing as “perfect information”, this
“intelligence product is unlikely to be created from perfect information”, it should provide
insights regarding one’s actions and directional moves.

Salespeople use different tactics for different purposes during the buyer-seller exchange
process, particular sales tactics such as customer-focused, competitor-focused, or product-
focused that salespeople use to develop strategic relationships with buyers.

Salespeople need CI because it has the potential to provide timely information that
illuminates competitors’ near-term plans, it can be utilized for predicting industry moves,
scheming and managing risks, and crafting better strategies.

CI enables salespeople to match promotional competitive parity. Information about

competitors’ pricing and other promotional strategies receives a high level of attention from
sales representatives. Also, CI should incorporate information regarding competitors’
products, technology, as well as research and development efforts. As well, competitive
information concerning new product introductions or distribution plans can be of significant
tactical importance, and thus crucial for salespeople.

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 “A tactical tool for salespeople to gain a competitive advantage”

Conceptual framework of salesperson CI use

CI and salesperson behavioral performance:

CI has can influence salesperson performance by benefiting such salesperson behavioral

outcomes. To be adaptive salespeople need to have information about customers and
competitors. In this sense, CI keeps them informed.

CI and customer relationship performance:

The performance of salespeople is related to their knowledge of their environment. CI will

positively relate to customer relationship performance including customer satisfaction and
loyalty. CI should help salespeople to satisfy their customers by providing information about
market, competitor, and costumer in order to anticipate changes in the competitive
environment.

Microenvironment variables as moderator:

Weitz suggested that the relationship between CI and performance will be moderated by
micro environmental factors. The main micro environmental variables are:

 Complex buying process: a process where the final buying decision includes
approval from several people
 Customer relationship strength: The relationship between the salesperson and
the customer.
 Discussion: helps salespeople to understand changes in the external
environment.
 Managerial implication: there job is to motivate salespeople to participate at
CI.
The problems managers face:
 Lack of communication
 Lack of reporting system within the company
 Difficulty to transfer subjective information
Limitation and future research direction:
Future research should treat:

 Try to find the variables that influence salesperson CI collection and CI use.
 Focus on salesperson-customer relationship outcomes to salesperson CI.
 Include the variable of motivating salespeople to disseminate intelligence.
 Understand the correlation between the degree of customer-related
information processing and the degree of competitor-related responsiveness
 Elaborate on the range of potential antecedents.

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