When I was growing up, there was a famous TV show named Dragnet. The show had evolved from a radio show of the same name and was famous for (at the time) what seemed like real life depictions of crime and the police work that followed. In retrospect, the scripts were pretty lame and the acting was exceptionally dry.

Nevertheless, the signature statement of the lead character was “Just the facts.” It didn’t matter whether he was interviewing witnesses, suspects or someone else, all he wanted were the facts. Not interpretation, emotion, judgment or opinion. Just the facts!

Sometimes I think that competitive intelligence clients might want “just the facts.”

One hundred and twenty years ago the scene in the American West would have been familiar. The scorching air would have been thick and dusty. The only street through the town of rickety boarded buildings would be crowded with cowboys and their horses. The one refuge from the oppressive conditions was the local saloon. And that was where you found all manner of folks. The tired cowhands, the frontier entertainers and the bad guys would be there. Everyone knew that the bad guys always came to the saloon looking for trouble. It was not a place for the unprepared or naïve because they were easily recognized and exploited. Winning for the bad guys was dominating the saloon.

Still, there weren’t many options for places to go. It was a given that sooner or later the good guys went there too.

So you might imagine going there with a friend. Ah, your friend. The paragon of truth and justice. A cowboy that was strong and good. He represented all that right about the world and that is exactly what made him a target. Others (the bad guys) could not prosper when he was there and they knew it.

As a friend, how would you prepare him for the saloon so that he could walk out alive?

There are 5 things that you might do.

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.