Tradecraft: an Entrepreneurs point of view

First of all before I begin on this article, am so glad that you appreciate my work. It feels good to know that when you come up with stuff people like it. God bless you good people.

Now, tradecraft; we are going all covert with some super spy stuff and how we as business people, or should I say entrepreneurs can use tradecraft in business. This is for your eyes only!

Tradecraft: within the ’intelligence community’, refers to the techniques used in modern espionage and generally, the activity of intelligence. This includes general topics or techniques or the specific techniques of a covert organization.

Hold up!

I am going to breakdown these techniques and activity and try apply them on a business model for the purpose of directing business towards growth and success.

We all have seen those spy movies, with guys with dark suits, running things like they own the world and focused towards achieving an objective .

The directors of some of this movies do it so well that they, temporarily give us a ‘high’ or a genuine rush of adrenaline. Take Jason Bourne for instance, from the book ‘Bourne Identity’ to ‘Bourne ultimatum’, now coming soon Jason Bourne the Movie. The books by Robert Ludlum and the motion picture introduce an organization ‘Treadstone’ and how it made soldiers perform covert, clandestine high octane operations .

Building the character of Jason Bourne was really the best piece of work. Given the odds, that he had to overcome to achieve set objective or get to a destination or get a word out is an exhilarating experience, and if a business model could run on that kind of juice, imagine the outcome?

Creating an entity that leaves a huge part of the people wanting more and at the same time, developing strategies to hook ‘customers’ to your product, which, after all, is the primary objective of all business needs the determination of a special ops operative.

So, as we ponder through the Jason Bourne, let us also reprogram the way we think of tradecraft in espionage and focus that energy into how we conduct business.

Tradecraft in business should be about you going out there and learning what your customers are all about, the ‘whats’, the ‘hows’ and the ‘whens’ will assist you to develop products that will solve your client problem and even create an insatiable need for it.

In applying tradecraft in the ‘Field’ of business means that we go undercover, operate covertly and stay under the radar while planning strategies and concepts that represent what our clients want and essentially creating a product that gets them there!

When Jason Bourne was rescued from the sea in ‘The Bourne Identity’ he had total amnesia. I mean, here is a guy, aware that he is human, beginning from scratch with only his life as collateral to living. He sees things, knows things and even communicates in different languages but cannot understand all this data coming through in his head, it’s upsetting and frustrating for him, somehow he is aware that he knows something and that he has a mission/ objective or simply has to get somewhere. Does this sound like that business startup you just thought of for the first time?

You know you can pull it off, but you need more data from outside yourself, more moving parts maybe, so you can know if you can sail; you need intelligence, credible intelligence to ascertain that your idea is feasible, NOW… here is where you need some tradecraft.

You know the way you get a great business idea, despite it being very green in your mind, it feels like the next big thing? and that you want to keep it to yourself until you are sure it can work before you reveal it? Well that’s where the spy in you kicks in so in a blink of an eye you are Agent X with operation code Y on a covert mission, working under the radar with coded messages and all that special ops stuff.

Today, business tradecraft surveillance begins with social network sites (SNS) you at least begin your ‘Op’ where everyone mostly is, Social Media!

Here are some Intelligence technology and techniques; Let’s see if we can re-program them to fit our ‘Business Op’

Agent Handling: These are case officers known as assets which from an entrepreneur’s perspective are automatically converted to our lovely partners or employees. How well are they informed to carry out the objectives of the business? Is there a code of conduct, a culture that keep them performing and motivated? Employees/ partners need to be well managed if a business is to achieve its goals.

Analytic Tradecraft: The methods used to analyze data mined in order to make the right decisions when it comes to developing a product. What tools do you, as a business use for analysis in order to understand the problem you want to solve for your customers?

Black bag Operations: This sounds intense, well in the world of intelligence it is. It's about breaking and entering, it required tactical skill and abilities and in our business scenario we can call it ‘Penetration’ after the idea has been conceptualized and according to data obtained, you have a product for the market, how then will you get into the market place? Maybe a website? Or a blog, a logo perhaps or some emails, the primary objective here is to get the idea which is now a product to the market.

Concealment Devices: these hide information or things for the purpose of security and secrecy and in the world of an entrepreneur here is where your patents come in, your copyrights and trademarks that guarantee your product is your property.

Cryptography: now hold up, this is deep but we can simplify it, cryptography is the technique for secure communication in a place with adversaries in this case competitor. How is your data / business operations shielded from your own competition so that they do not out-maneuver you in your own enterprise. Its about constructing and analyzing protocols that keeps your proprietary information working for your own advantage, cool right?

The ‘Cut Out’: this is just a way of communication between ‘Agents’ playing in the field, in our case, it could be the way the sales and marketing team operates. How you communicate between attracting a lead to conversion into a customer. This will usually be where SMarketing happens, yes I said it right;

SMarketing: the process of aligning sales and marketing teams for a common objective which is improving revenue.

How does your system treat a visit on your website and converts it to a lead then customer?

This one also uses another tradecraft technique known as a ‘Dead Drop’ when the marketing team and the sales team work together but in secret from competitors to raise revenue for your business without raising an eyebrow from others who want to capitalize on your success strategy while still existing in the open.

Eavesdropping: well it speaks for itself. Keeping your ear on the ground or pressed against the walls to know what is going on around you, who is plotting what, what’s trending, what do the customers want, what are they ‘googling’. Like the way Instagram found out that SnapChat’s storyboards were really creating a buzz so they went for the ‘kill’ (I am not saying anything, I am just thinking)

Honey Trap: mostly used to catch people and encourage them to divulge information, so here in our scene, we design awesome CTA (Call To Action) that lead to engaging and interesting Landing pages that let your customers divulge the information that you need.

These landing pages offer a form that ‘Interrogates’ in a nice way for you to understand your customers better.

Legend: the guy with a synthetic identity meant to infiltrate another organization. Well in a business sense, this legend is a mascot or a brand ambassador that carries the personality of your brand into different markets hoping to create a ‘penetration’ option.

Surveillance: we cannot conclude this without a ‘Stake-out’. I mean, we have applied all this techniques and so we are obliged to, radically monitor, behaviors, activities, changing customer preferences and behavior observation so as to know when to upgrade, update or develop better products and increase revenue.

Well that feels like a real spy outfit right there.

Of course there are multiple tradecraft techniques I have intentionally omitted but I am convinced that, the application of these tradecraft techniques on a business platform has the potential of guaranteeing business growth in all aspects.

Please feel free to contribute more of this article through your comments. I will highly appreciate you sharing this article because you know as they say “Sharing is Caring”