Top 5 Ci Podcasts for Bid Professionals

Competitive Intelligence (Ci) is essential to bidding success. The whole concept of offering customers a value proposition requires your offer to be better than a competitors. Competitive Intelligence for Bids & Proposals is the process by which we benchmark our offerings and performance. However, in our Bid Technology survey Ci was highlighted as one of the quickest ways to improve bidding performance. Reading between the lines; most companies are not good at using Ci to improve their bid & sales performance.

The Ci Podcast provided a wealth of information on Ci best-practice, ethics and trends. It ran from December 2005 to June 2011, thanks to the painstaking efforts of August Jackson. There were 39 episodes in all. Whilst the ones that discussed industry news have now aged, several have stood the test of time. This blog post ranks the top 5 Ci Podcasts for bid professionals who want advice on how to do Ci. This will include Capture Leads, Price to Win analysts and Bid Managers. The episodes explain brilliant frameworks for analysing customers and competitors alike.

The Ci Podcast helped unveil August Jackson as an industry expert. It seems to have done his career well. In 2011 he joined Ernst & Young as an Associate Director. He was also elected to the board of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). Basically, SCIP is to Ci what the APMP is to Bid Managers. The podcast is an excellent example of disruptive media. It wasn’t always perfectly polished and does contain a cheesy jingle! But the content quality, variety of subjects and availability make it infinitely more listenable than traditional forms of media. It’s hard not to smile as Ben Gilad and David Hartmann banter with August in episode 12. It’s exactly the kind of unscripted humour that connects with modern audiences.

Here’s our Top 5 Ci Podcasts for Bid Professionals

#5 -  Podcast 39. Rick Marcet talks about the thorny subject of win / loss analysis. He makes lots of good points; encouraging people to learn from losses and be objective about wins. He also stresses the importance of using feedback from Microsoft’s sales team and adjusting it for bias. This means they are not solely reliant on customer feedback for their analysis. Rick has published a book on the subject: Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence.

Right-click to download podcast 39.

#4 - Podcast 16. Max Nelson worked at General Dynamics when he talked about quantitative analytical intelligence. That sounds complicated but it’s explained well. The interview is packed full of practical examples so don’t let the title scare you! Max is now a founding Director at USAble Life.

Right-click to download podcast 16.

#3 - Podcast 7. In this episode August Jackson reviews insights from Clayton Christensen. Clayton Christensen’s work so essential to understanding Price to Win strategy that we reference it in our advanced Price to Win training. It’s so good and so fundamental. Anyone who hasn’t read at least one Clayton Christensen book should start here. Even if you have, a lot of the analysis is counter-intuitive so it’s always good to have a refresher.

Right-click to download podcast 7.

#2 - Podcast 26. Arik Johnson of Aurora WDC discusses asymmetry of interpretation replacing information asymmetry. Whilst the wording is complex, the concept is simple and important. A good example of asymmetry of interpretation can be found in stock markets. They all have access to roughly the same information. However, they draw hugely varying conclusion about what to invest in. Arik discusses how this can be applied to many situations. It’s a critical concept to understanding both customer and competitor behaviour.

Right-click to download podcast 26. 

#1 - Podcast 12. There are two guests on this episode. They discuss the same problems, but from different angles. Ben Gilad of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence talks about Strategic Early Warning and Blindspots. David Hartmann ofStrategic Surprise discusses Proactive Asymmetric Strategy. Just like podcast 26, these frameworks are excellent for analysing customer and competitor behaviour.

Right-click to download podcast 12:

Please let us know what you think of our list. Do you agree with our rankings? You can check out the whole Ci podcast library for all 39 podcasts. Thanks to August Jackson for making this possible. At Amplio we see Competitive Intelligence as an essential part of Price to Win. We offer Price to Win as a Service and Price to Win training that incorporates the principals and frameworks discussed in this blog.