How many times have you been asked about competitive intelligence? Someone sincerely wants to know what you do and how you might be helpful so they ask the obvious.

“What exactly do you do?”

I have tried many answers to this question. Sometimes I have given them a definition of competitive intelligence. Maybe I say something like, “Well, I work on analyzing all of the factors of the competitive environment to discern patterns which help people make decisions.” Usually they just stare at me. If they are friends, they manage a wan smile and I imagine them silently wishing me luck. Potential clients are often lost after my accurate but ineffective definition.

Another tack is giving them technical information about competitive intelligence. “I help companies employ models, information searches and other techniques to leverage primary and secondary research findings for competitive advantage,” I proudly announce. (Even my friends don’t smile at this one.)

Some kind people have given me advice to shorten (even more) the description of competitive intelligence. “Just say that you help them,” one succinct friend offered. “How about saying that you ‘make success possible’?” proffered another (this seemed a little grandiose to me).

Frankly, nothing seemed to work if you define “work” as consistently making an emotional and factual connection with a prospective client. That is, nothing worked until an experienced, older consultant gave me the magic words that he had received some years before. His advice was simply to start each definition or explanation this way.

“You know what it is like when …”

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” – American Marketing Association definition of Marketing

If you are an Apple fan, do you really care about their product development processes, the processors in their iPhone, the Unix roots of the Mac OS or the contractual arrangements between Apple and music industry players? Are things like their software testing techniques, documentation standards or even their clever advertising campaigns important? I doubt it.

If you are like me then you are more enamored with elegant products that bring you pleasure or utility in ways that are simple to grasp and use.

The benefits of using Apple products are always front and center. For instance, I can easily answer why using the AppStore for iPhone applications works for me. It solves a problem (avoiding complexity) while delivering value (thousands of free or inexpensive applications). Meanwhile the iPhone itself delivers on the promise of the mobile internet. Shockingly since so many other companies were trying to do the same thing for years, Apple got it right first. Well, maybe it is not so shocking. After all, Apple makes a habit of entering a market late but, and this is a big “but”, with superior understanding of the product and service characteristics which are prized by consumers.

For most of its history, Apple has mastered understanding consumers, translating their needs into hardware/software/service requirements and delivering a whole, satisfying experience. This is a marketing rather than a technology mindset.

This is exactly where (with exceptions, of course) that the Competitive Intelligence community fails to deliver.

We started this journey a couple of months ago. The goal has been to describe how to develop and deploy a new competitive intelligence function for your company. You might recall how the early articles tiptoed around the issues and people sensitivities to the new function. Later, I was more specific about tasks such as budgets, branding and assertively expanding the function. Boldness became the order of the day.

We talked about how many people will not understand what you are trying to accomplish. Some that do understand what you are attempting will be nervous and suspicious about your aims. Are you trying to supplant their role? Is your goal to implicitly criticize their performance? Why should they help you with their special knowledge? And, what is it about competitive intelligence that will help them?

All along the way we have discussed practical tips for the development and deployment. More than that, I have tried to illuminate people issues that are important with the thesis that these issues are the most intractable if not dealt with properly. All of the other issues of analysis techniques, infrastructure design, acquisition of tools and budget are simpler (though not trivial) issues if the people ones are aligned well.

And now we come to the final step.

The final step is to spread the word about competitive intelligence.

My wonderful son stood in front of me excited to be retelling the adventures he had at church camp last week. He was full of words and stories. I just love hearing him talk about his experiences and answer questions. I asked him about his favorite food, the friends he made, the different play activities, the bus trip and so on.

Did he remember the things that his mother told him before he left on the trip? For instance, did he always put on sunscreen (the Texas sun is bright and very hot in July)? Yes, he assured me that he always had done so.

Did he remember to always wear his swim shirt to the lake? That’s when he averted his eyes, shifted his feet and changed his tone. “Well,” he said “I only went to the lake twice.” And then he grinned at me and I knew. TRANSLATION: Dad, I forgot about the shirt.

When you know someone really well, you can often sense their message from many cues that are more telling and accurate than their words. All of the other signals give them away. In fact, in a strange way, the actual words are distracting as often as they are informative.

Interpersonal signals abound among those we know best (and that know us). I use this often with close friends.

We might be listening to a speaker when one of us will signal the other with a lifted eye brow (TRANSLATION: can you believe this speaker?). A casual flicker of the hand (TRANSLATION: this is not important), a half smile (TRANSLATION: I’ll tell why it’s amusing later) or rolling eyes (TRANSLATION: we are wasting our time) can all be quite meaningful when interpreted correctly.

In competitive intelligence we can use the same signals (except that our subjects are other companies).