Ask the Right Questions
If you're in a bid situation, do your competitors currently have a backlog of work or are they hungry? Has one of them done a lot of work for the agency before? Knowing the answers could impact your pricing, or even change your decision to participate. If you're responding to a government RFP, what can you find out about previous contract awards? The right information could help you craft a stronger proposal by showing you where to emphasize your firm's strengths. These are just a couple of ways that tracking competitors can have a positive impact on your business results.

Identify Key Data and Where to Find It
What kind of intelligence will help you beat the competition? Let's start with obvious information such as your competitor's services, people, past projects, past pricing, clients and business partners. A considerable amount of information is available online. Your competitor's website contains a wealth of information, so that's a good place to start. Bear in mind though that most companies take precautions against revealing anything proprietary. An Internet search can turn up articles and press releases that discuss a competitor's business. However, you could easily make a mistake if you make business decisions based on this information, since most of it is old news.

Visit the library for useful information sources such as a local business journal, the business section of your local newspaper, and business directories that rank competing businesses in your market area based on revenues, number of employees, industry classification, etc. Again, using sources such as these is like looking in a rear view mirror; the information is nearly always inaccurate and out-of-date.

Ask your current clients and prospects what they think of a competitor. You might be amazed at what some people will tell you, especially if they've had a bad experience.

Then there's the not-so-obvious information that can be pure gold. Buried within the mountains of federal, state, and local government procurement records lies a treasure trove of hard-to-find information that allows savvy business principals to plan for the future rather than just react. Your competition doesn't want you to have this high value intelligence, because it can level the playing field or even give you an advantage. But how do you obtain this type of information?