Do your customers assume that Gartner or other analysts have done all the due diligence? [for Vendor Sales]

An analyst relations (AR) manager gave me a call this week with an interesting tid-bit that completely reinforces the recent postings about vendor sales reps asking about analyst usage, analyst myth #1  and how IT managers should use Waves and Magic Quadrants.
 
The AR manager was recently at their software company’s annual sales kick off meeting. There was a customer panel taking questions from a moderator and the sales reps in the audience. One question was “How or do you use the analyst firms to make decisions?” One customer said that the proof of concept is usually what causes him to sign on the dotted line, not a bunch of reports. It was what the next customer – from a sophisticated company with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars – said that should concern every vendor:
 
“Technology is important, but if the company is in the upper right quadrant, I assume they’ve got all the feature/functionality because Gartner has done the due diligence.”
 
Hokey smokes! The major analyst firms never formally state that they do lab evaluations, extensive direct research, or due diligence when comparing vendors for a Magic Quadrant or Wave. So the IT manager is really taking a chance with his job to be relying so much on a single piece of analyst research. For the vendor sales team, the danger is that their product could be excluded from or penalized in a sales deal because the IT buyer is misusing the research.
 
SageCircle Technique: Not only should vendor sales reps ask customers about analyst usage, but they should be prepared to educate the IT buyer about the proper way to use analyst research.

• There should be an established AR-sales partnership program in place
• AR teams should be prepared to be a resource for sales reps dealing with an analyst deal impacts
• AR teams should have standard content available to educate IT buyers on how to use research
• Sales teams should look to leverage SageCircle content to educate IT buyers

Bottom Line: Because IT industry analysts can have a major impact on sales deals, vendor sales representatives need to be more proactive in determining what role analysts are going to play in any deal. In addition vendor sales reps need to be prepared to educate the IT buyers on how to use the analyst research.
 
Question: Vendor sales reps – Have you had a deal negatively impacted because an analyst end-user client was misusing the research?
 
How SageCircle can Help — We can help AR and sales teams develop an effective and practical AR-Sales Partnership program. Leveraging our research and experience as AR managers working with sales, we have a library of content, training and services that help vendor sales teams use positive commentary or mitigate negative commentary. Call 650-274-8309 or e-mail info (at) sagecircle dot com for more information.

SageCircle

Since 2000, SageCircle has helped analyst relations teams to focus on business value by encouraging innovative thinking that leverages insights and drives revenue.