Confessions of a Corporate Spy
What do you think it means to be an expert in "hard-to-get elicitation"? It means people tell you things. A competitive intelligence consultant discusses things that can help a business--at the expense of another.
When I strolled into a Talbots near closing time on a Wednesday night, I wasn't expecting Phipps Plaza in Atlanta's ritzy Buckhead neighborhood to be so dead. Perfect for me. Less so for the store manager. I entered keenly aware of how completely out of place I must have seemed--a heavyset thirtysomething black guy in Walmart dress slacks, trying to look casual while fondling Hillary Clinton-esque blouses. If I were on staff, I might have briefly considered the possibility that I had come in only to knock over the place while things were quiet.
And I would have been about right.
I'm a competitive-intelligence researcher. A spy, of sorts. I don't break the law. But I always feel like I'm right on the edge of it, never mind my rigid ethical standards. The information I secure is given freely and obtained legally, and I don't lie to get it, but in the back of my mind I'm always thinking, You probably don't want me to know this.
I found myself on this perverse shopping trip for a smart green pleated skirt because a company had hired me to learn the sales targets and promotional activity from Talbots store managers. I had been recruited to attempt face-to-face social engineering--basically wheedling out the information in person.
At the time, I had only just launched my practice. I had left a decade-long career as a journalist a few years earlier to earn an M.B.A. With typically perfect timing, I entered the job market just as the financial services industry self-destructed. I had long wanted to start my own business; losing my marketing job at a Web start-up in a restructuring in 2010 simply accelerated things. Competitive intelligence seemed a good fit.
As the sales manager and I surfed Talbots's website together, looking for the green mini my wife saw on the website earlier that day, I mentioned offhand that I had just graduated from business school. I talked about how tough it had been to find a "real" job and said I did some business research now, casually identifying the analysts out in California who had hired me. I mentioned that I was really interested in retail stuff--that, heck, I was helping write a report on it for investors, in fact. And wow, isn't the retail world weird these days with the recession and all? Thus began a conversation about the business.
Apparently that store had been having a great year. Best in the region. Hitting its numbers. What numbers? Oh! You must be proud. Any younger folks biting on this new stuff?
I fingered the cell phone in my front shirt pocket, to see if the voice recorder was still working. No, I didn't tell the manager I was recording her. Legally, in Georgia, I didn't have to.
