Author: SageCircle

Analyst integrity issues – the urban legend that won’t die

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On Monday the 31st, Zack Urlocker a blogger/columnist for InfoWorld had a nicely provocative headline Other Underreported Stories: Analyst Integrity?  Of course, the rumors – urban legends – about pay-for-position or pay-to-play have been around forever. In general, these rumors are just that. The easiest way to dismiss them? Common sense. […]

Spotlight on… Gartner’s Carl Claunch – Doing the hard work and delivering client service

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photo-gartner-carl-claunch.jpgOne of my favorite sayings is “It’s good to be good, but it’s better to be lucky” and we were definitely lucky in early 2004 when Gartner appointed VP and Distinguished Analyst Carl Claunch as one of the two Lead Analysts for the company Dave and Carter worked at.
 
Up to that point, many of the major companies had great difficulty in getting Gartnerians to see the big picture about the entire company. We had the classic “blind men and the elephant” problem in that an analyst’s primary research coverage defined how they saw the company as a whole. […]

Interesting mix of analyst videos on YouTube

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While browsing around YouTube this afternoon, I came across an interesting mix of analyst videos. Everything from firm level experiment like the Forrester Research channel (left) and the IDC eXchange channel to one-off videos by many other firms and individuals. I thought that Redmonk had a regular show on YouTube, but I did not find[…]

What am I missing? Why would a vendor brief a competitive intelligence firm?

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While an AR director, each time I received a call from a competitive intelligence (CI) firm analyst requesting information, I would politely decline. When asked why I had declined, I would respond “Why would I give you information that you will turn around and give to my competitors?” This CI types often tried to persuade me by suggesting that I did not want them to have out-of-date information because that could cause them to inaccurately inform their clients. “Hmm,” I would answer, “wouldn’t it be better for my company if you were giving my competitors and their sales representatives inaccurate information so they would be less effective in stealing sales from us?”
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Best practices for client inquiry execution

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icon-phone-headset.jpgWhether IT managers at corporate/government organizations or product managers at IT vendors, many analyst clients do not maximize the value of client inquiry because they do not approach using inquiries systematically. The best practice below does not require a lot of time, only a few minutes to write up the background e-mail, but can result in a much more valuable interaction because the client and the analyst come to the call more focused.
 
SageCircle Technique: […]

The Payback for an Analyst Briefing can be Measured in Minutes

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As part of the ongoing struggle to convince their management about the value of analyst relations, AR professionals often prove the effectiveness of their AR programs by showing written research with mentions about the vendor. This type of metric is often shortsighted because it does not take into account the verbal delivery of research via informal conversations over the phone and at analyst conferences.Because the IT industry analysts that focus on advising IT managers (e.g., AMR, Forrester and Gartner) are on the phone every day with their clients, the payback for a briefing can be nearly instantaneous. […]