Marketing Intelligence refers to the set of procedures used in acquiring everyday information relevant to a company’s markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of confident and accurate decision making in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics Kotler (2009). A Marketing Intelligence System is designed to be used by marketing managers and is often viewed by employees throughout an organization. They may have user interface that resemble consumer software as well as software around individual data sources, which are designed for use by analysts. There are various steps that can be taken by a company to improve the quality of its marketing intelligence function. These include; train and motivate the sales force, motivate distributors, retailers, and other intermediaries to pass along important intelligence, network externally, set up a customer, advisory panel optimal usage of government data resource, information bought from external supplies and collecting competitive intelligence through online customer feedback.
A company’s sales force can be an excellent source of information about the current trends in the market. Hans Hedin (2010) states that it is important for the company to develop team effort and knowledge sharing sessions among the employees to understand the markets and to be able actively contribute more useful information into the system. As “intelligence gatherers the sales force needs to be motivated and properly trained to gather information on customers, competitors, distributors and retailers. This can be done through scheduling regular meetings with sales staff, which can help assess performance as well as the challenges facing staff.
A company can increase staff motivation by appointing salespeople to train their peers, taking field trips, choosing an outside consultant to