Article Series: 5 Minutes Can Change The Way We Think & Work

Most people struggle with making business decisions. As scary as decision making is, they cannot be avoided. Every decision requires some sort of action. Imagine being on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? to only walk away from the million dollar question with a nervous breakdown. What a costly mistake!

Article Series: 5 Minutes Can Change The Way We Think & Work

When Twitter first gained mainstream popularity at South by Southwest Interactive in 2007, many people hopped on the social networking service to share ideas and stay connected. Six years later, Twitter has become more than micro-blogging. It’s now a platform used to deliver breaking news. But is it a reliable source of secondary intelligence for companies trying to beat the competition and be aware of their surroundings?

Are you a sucker for giveaways or free samples? Let’s be honest. Who can resist a great deal from a hip company about the next big thing? But what’s interesting is what happens after the fact. Most people nowadays share their experiences on social media and blogs, making them great sources of information to find customer insights- for free!

Guru: a person with knowledge or expertise. 

One of the best ways to learn great tips and tricks is to surround ourselves with experts. For that reason, we created “Need a Clue? Ask Our Guru,” a blog series featuring competitive and market intelligence experts who are willing to answer questions directly from our readers.

What keeps decision makers up at night?

Maybe it’s the threat of a growing competitor? Or concerns about growing economic or legislative factors impacting the company’s bottom line? These and many other factors create uncertainty for decision makers all the time, hindering their ability to make the best possible decision every day.

Every salesperson hopes to win when working a deal. And when they win, sales knows exactly why it was a slam dunk. Losses, on the other hand, are left unexplained or credited for the wrong reasons during win/loss reviews, leaving leaders in the dark about their efforts at the front line. During SCIP’s lively discussion last week, we found salespeople take losses too personal to reveal their faults or sales intelligence.

Here is some good news for coffee enthusiasts: Starbucks will continue to beat the competition with an updated product pricing strategy. Starting May 10, Starbucks will lower their prices on bagged coffee by 10 percent. The 12-ounce bag of coffee will drop from $9.99 to $8.99. This price modification is for the U.S. market only. And although it won’t include single-serve coffee packets, it’s expected to be an aggressive move to beat the competition. (For more ways to beat the competition, click here.)

For as long as corporations have existed, decision makers have had to make tough and risky strategic decisions. Although these decisions don’t involve how to avoid the walking dead, decision makers have had their own share of unprecedented situations to face.

Shock.
Sadness.
Searching for answers why...

Perhaps that’s how you and most of us reacted when tech giant Google announced that their content aggregator, Google Reader, is shutting down. Google’s blog entry on March 13th outlined the date of the shut down - July 1st, 2013 - and cited declining usage as the main reason.

”Watch your habits for they become your character.”  -Lao Tzu

Communicating intelligence can play a major role across all layers of the organizational chart. According to the Harvard Center for Negotiation, 70 percent of all strategic alliances fail because people can’t negotiate in difficult conversations. And although most companies agree communication is important, only a few do it well and it shows in their financial performance.