Market Scouting is data-mining your CRM to detect signals of market interest in certain outcomes before competitors.
In a different BlueHelp article, Benefit #2: Data-mine market needs, we looked at a case where phone manufacturers didn't care about glass cracking when their phone displays were tiny. But the outcome, "crack resistance," became more important as phone displays became larger.
Wouldn't it be a strong competitive advantage if a glass producer could detect rising customer needs like this... before its competitors? That's the point of "Market Scouting." It's an early-warning system that allows suppliers to detect weak signals very early.
As we explained in this case, the "sweet spot" to learn about customer needs is when customers are anticipating a need...not too early and not too late.
Market Scouting is the highest Level of market-facing innovation maturity. Most companies are at Levels 1 and 2 in the illustration below. Companies that have implemented New Product Blueprinting are at Level 3.
But you can be at Level 4--Market Scouting--when your sales force is regularly recording their What-Why-Clarify probing notes in your CRM, and you periodically data-mine your CRM to detect rising market needs.
We believe Market Scouting will become more prevalent with the increasing use of AI. Rather than data-mining for keywords, companies are able to use AI to analyze all CRM data to uncover rising market needs and trends. Before this happens, though, salespeople must 1) uncover these needs in customer conversations... and 2) enter them into their CRM. Frankly, these first two steps often break down in many B2B companies:
The SalesPrepTM system is designed to help with item #1 above. And Everyday VOC® training (which includes the SalesPrep system) includes support from the AIM Institute to help clients boost CRM data entry (item #2). For more on the latter, read the article, How to improve 3 B2B sales habits.
Keywords: market scouting, data-mine, CRM, 4 innovation maturity levels, market insight, sweet spot for innovation, customer insight, SalesPrep, Everyday VOC training