Great questions are the best way to create great intelligence

Great questions are the best way to create great intelligence. However, it’s not just a case thinking up a smart question to catch all about a competitor or market. You have to guide the decision maker to take action.

What do I mean? Well, rather than asking:

What are competitor X’s main strengths?

Ask it like this:

What can we do about competitor X’s strengths?

Arguably, given time and a greater situational understanding, you will be able to come up with an even better question. But you will see how a subtle change in the question transforms a concerning situation to proactive decision focused intelligence environment. And that’s the power of Intelligence. We have a saying at Octopus “Intelligence is just knowing” so, we offer a daily short and sharp intelligence based thought with an aim to help your day to day work.

Here are some other questions:

• How committed are our competitors to achieving their declared strategy objective?
• How and where might our competitors objectives conflict with ours?
• What is the range of options open to us for dealing with unfolding new realities?
• What vulnerabilities in our competitors can we exploit?
• Where do we not want to compete with our competitors?
• Who are our competitor’s key suppliers?
• Who are our competitors biggest customers?
• What brands are in our competitors portfolio?
• What is our competitors preferred advertising route they prefer an agency to pursue?
• And what is our competitors social media footprint?
• Who are our competitors key customers?
• What is our competitors International Customer Base?
• Also, what is our competitors real Financial Position?
• What is our competitors supply chain?
• Are our competitors supply chain ethical?
• Who manufactures our competitors range of products?
• Who owns our competitors IP?

Route to market

• What is our route to a market?
• And what products do our competitors offer?
• What products do our competitors not offer?
• And what clients do our competitors prospect?
• Which prospective clients are our competitors not interested in?
• What have our competitors stopped doing over the last few years and why?
• What gives our competitors distinctiveness?
• Where do our competitors compete, which customers and niches?
• What kind of demand is there for our product or service?

Great questions are the best way to create great intelligence. It’s not just a case thinking up a smart question to catch all about a competitor or market. You have to guide the decision maker to take action.

About Octopus Intelligence

Octopus is a global Intelligence service company. Answering the questions to help you grow. We help you beat competitors, increase sales, be disruptive, enter new markets and invest with more certainty with our Strategic and Competitive Intelligence, Due Diligence and good old common sense. We live in an increasingly uncertain, competitive and ever-shifting world. What you need is active real world business development strategy, where deep expertise combines with Competitive Intelligence based actions to answer the what and the how, for the now and the next.