I was reading a book recently that talks a lot about "Independent Information Professionals" (or IIP's). Here's a full description of the profession from the industry body, the AIIP.

In a nutshell, IIP's are self-employed people or freelancers who do research, analysis & "information brokering".

The thing I found interesting in the book, which was first published in 2002, is how the profession has changed since the rise of the Internet and search engines.

Essentially, up until very recently, IIP's were paid to search and retrieve information. Before the rise of search engines & the Internet, that really meant researching in libraries, filings, government records, etc by hand, or using a small number of specialist databases.

Up to around 5 or 6 years ago, most of the work was information retrieval, or "rip & ship" as it was commonly known.

Now, most IIP's say that up to 80% of their time is spent on analysis or synthesis of data, rather than simple retrieval. In short, most people can now "Google" for the simple questions. They only engage an IIP when they need those hard to find" answers.

Of course, the profession has also grown since the advent of the Internet, making it easier for companies to outsource some of their research and easier for IIP's to work from home.

A couple of points I found quite interesting, from my own perspective, was firstly that many IIP's are trying to distance themselves from the term "information broker". This was the term that they were all known by up until the media hi-jacked it recently and attached it to various shady dealings such as social-engineering & "dumpster-diving".

I'm always interested by they fact that everyone assumes the only way to get "information" is by illicit or illegal ways.

The truth is that pretty much everything you need for research or Market Intelligence is out there someone, either in public records, online resources or through telephone research. OK, you have to put the pieces together, but it's all there.

Another interesting point is that a lot of IIP's sub-contract their telephone research to a smaller subset of specialists. These people actually sound quite close to my own speciality, as they're the people who you say "find me a person who knows X" and they go out, find them and interview them.

It seems that there's this core set of people who make a living finding people using the telephone. Whether they're called telephone researchers or names sourcers, there always seems to be a demand for someone to pick up that phone.

Labels: competitive intelligence

The other day I was chatting with Maureen Sharib, a leading expert in the names sourcing business.

We were discussing the various merits of the Internet searching vs old-school telephone elicitation (I say old-school because it's what I've been doing way before the Internet came along).

Specifically, we talked about how, with tools such as Google and LinkedIn it's become so easy to find names that people have begun to assume that's the quickest and only way to get them. In the field of NLP, this is known as a "generalisation": your brain takes one experience (finding names quickly on the Internet) and by-passes all other options. It says "this worked well last time...don't bother trying anything else".

A good analogy is the Drive-Thru.

Have you ever been to the McDonald's when there's a long line of cars waiting to go through the drive-thru and you automatically get in line behind them. While you're waiting you see someone park up, get out and go inside to the counter...only to come out seconds later with their order because everyone's outside waiting in the drive-thru!

That ever happen to you?

It's the same with names sourcing, competitive intelligence, lead generation etc. The Internet is a great tool but it not always up-to-date and contrary to some people's opinion, there's still stuff that happens in the real world that isn't Google'd.

When faced with a project to ID decision makers in a list of target companies you have a few options. Hitting LinkedIn or Google could be one (particularly if there's a no-name policy or tough set of gate-keepers) but it could be far quicker to just pick up the phone and ask!

If you're dealing with people who are buried within the organisation, telephone elicitation is guaranteed to be the quickest and most direct way of uncovering the information you need.

So, next time you're at McDonald's...just take a moment to check out the queue inside ;-)

Labels: competitive intelligence

One of the best articles on the subject is Competitive Intelligence: The Ups and Downs of Elicitation by ChiefZilla himself David Carpe.

David's a respected figure in the CI industry, and this article looks at the closely guarded and mysterious art of elicitation.

It's funny, I first heard the term many years ago when I started studying NLP - another mysterious art (actually, there's more than a few NLP terms in this article)

David describes it as "open dialogue...with a purpose", which I think is pretty much spot on. If it's done well, the other person doesn't know it's happening.

This is my favourite quote:

"Search engines, while powerful, continue to fall short when it comes to efficiently delivering deep insight....Skilled primary researchers can glean tremendous insight through conversations with key industry participants - information that might otherwise never be found or is not available through secondary research. This is the main reason why primary researchers prefer to go to the source, and recognize the need for a deep dive into the watery recesses of other minds."

Go to the source...I like that.

Labels: competitive intelligence

There's a great quote from Lou Adler from his article "The Best Article Ever Written on Passive Candidate Recruiting"
on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange.

The article covers key metrics which Lou believes will significantly increase your results for sourcing passive candidates. Incidentally, this article is equally appropriate for cold calling for sales people.

The quote I particularly like is:

"The Internet has made the process of finding names of passive candidates quite easy. But this is only the first step in getting them into your network and possibly hired into your company. Look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Resources such as ZoomInfo have made it easier to search for people (especially if they're US based). For LinkedIn read the same.

However, in most cases, this will just provide the entry-point, or the starting block. As Lou observes, "this is only the first step...look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Whether you're sourcing names, digging for competitive intelligence, setting appointments...at some point you need to pick up that phone ;-)

Labels: competitive intelligence, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company