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Are We Answering the Wrong Question Really Well?I’ve spent more than 35 years in competitive and market intelligence, and I’ve learned that some of the most dangerous assignments begin with a perfectly reasonable question. “What is our competitor going to do?” “What should our price be?” “Why are we losing?” “Is this market worth entering?” “What are customers saying about us?” “Can…
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Every Competitor Price Should Start a Conversation | Pricing IntelligenceA competitor’s price should start a conversation, not end one. Collecting competitor prices is an important part of pricing intelligence. It helps establish where competitors are positioned, identify pricing trends, and understand how the market is changing. The mistake is assuming the price tells the whole story. One project reinforced this lesson more than most.…
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The Day I Realized Information Doesn’t Make Decisions. People Do.One of the most important lessons of my career came very early on. I had just finished presenting the results of a competitive intelligence project to a group of senior executives. As I walked out of the room, I felt pretty good. The research was solid, the analysis was thorough, and the presentation had gone…
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The Silent Majority: Why Your Most Important Customer Insights Will Never Come from a SurveyFrom my experience, every organization wants to be customer-centric. They invest in Voice of Customer (VOC) programs, send satisfaction surveys, monitor Net Promoter Scores, and analyze input from the market. They celebrate response rates and build dashboards filled with data. Yet I believe one of the biggest blind spots in VOC isn’t what we collect;…
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The Most Important Investment I Made This Year Wasn’t in My Business.Over the past three decades, Proactive Worldwide has weathered more than its share of storms. We’ve navigated the 2008-2009 financial crisis, recessions, COVID, market disruptions, and countless shifts over the past 30 years in how companies buy intelligence and consulting services. Like many small businesses, we’ve learned that resilience isn’t a slogan. It’s a requirement.…
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When a Pricing Signal Has a Different CausePreviously, I wrote about the importance of distinguishing between pricing patterns that are real and those that are simply noise. Validating a pattern is an important step in pricing intelligence. The next question may be even more important: Why is the pattern happening? A few years ago, we worked with a client in the trucking…
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AI Knows What’s Been Written. Who’s Discovering What’s Next?A client recently asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “If AI can analyze everything that’s already known, who’s discovering what’s next?” I haven’t stopped thinking about that question since. Over the past few years, AI has transformed how organizations gather and analyze information. It can summarize reports, review earnings calls, analyze…
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When Pricing Patterns Are Real and When They Are NoiseA few years ago, I worked with a manufacturer that became convinced a competitor was aggressively lowering prices in one of their core product categories. The concern didn’t come from a single quote. The pattern appeared repeatedly across recent opportunities. Sales teams were hearing the same message from customers. Competitive examples kept surfacing. Leadership began…
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When VoC Data Lacks Direction, Decisions SufferMost Voice of Customer programs are making companies worse at making decisions. I know that sounds backwards. But I see it happen all the time. Organizations today have more VoC data than ever before. AI-analyzed transcripts. Real-time dashboards. Always-on feedback loops. Millions of data points. And yet—decisions are slower. Alignment is harder. Confidence is lower.…
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