Category: AR-Sales Partnership

Do I place my bets on AR-Sales partnering or adopting social media?

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgQuestion: If I had to choose between starting an AR-Sales partnership or launching a social media initiative, which way should I go? If I did both, but with limited resources, how should I divide my efforts?

 During the happy hour after the first session of our STRATEGIC ISSUES advanced AR seminar, one of the attendees asked these great questions. Both Dave and Carter answered immediately and in unison:

     “AR-Sales!”

Why? Even a simple AR-Sales partnership pilot will give the AR team an opportunity to gather real world examples of the analysts impacting sales opportunities. These types of hard sales numbers, even in anecdotal form, are powerful tools for illustrating the strategic value of AR. In addition, a pilot project can […]

Tool for Sales – The Prospect Profile Form

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgThe analysts possess a wealth of information that can help vendor sales organizations better understand their prospects. The question is how to get the information from the analysts. SageCircle has put together a simple process and checklist that AR can use to conduct a structured inquiry with key analysts to collect and organize important information about your prospects. The process is simple. Schedule an inquiry with one or two of your Tier 1 analysts (with whom you have Inquiry privileges). Use the questions on the Prospect Profile checklist to gather information from the analyst and enter the responses into the form. After finishing the inquiry, complete the form and forward it to sales.

There are two main categories of input that you are looking for: “Analyst’s Perceptions about the Prospect or its Peer Group” and “Analyst’s Perceptions about Your Differentiation in this Situation.” Within each main category there are sub questions like market, prospect and business challenges. 

Besides obtaining valuable information and insights for your sales teams, using this technique is also a great way to improve your relationships with key analysts. As we mentioned […]

How closely does AR, PR and Sales have to coordinate?

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Here is an interesting comment (click to enlarge) that might portend a problem for technology vendors in the near future:

This reminds me of the discussions in the mid-90’s around the then nascent market category of customer relattionship management (CRM). One of the perceived benefits of CRM was that it would provide companies a single view of the customer that would make life easier for the customer and provide business value to the company. But there was also huge disagreements over who would “own” the customer: customer service, marketing or sales.

Today, people are starting to play multiple roles as customers, influencers, collaborators and […]

Why AR Matters – Analysts can get your company on short lists that you were excluded from

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgMost analyst relations (AR) professionals are in an environment where they have to continually justify the relevance of the industry analysts and AR. One of the best arguments for justifying the investment in AR is the impact analysts have on the company’s sales opportunities. Usually the easiest to find examples are negative, such as when an analyst’s commentary has caused a vendor to be removed or excluded from a short list, because a sales rep will be howling in anger. However, with some investigation AR can turn up positive impacts of the analysts, e.g., when an analyst has been your advocate by getting your company onto a short list.

In Reality Check: Sales reps matter more than product on the Software Insider blog, former Forrester analyst and current VP of Research at SSPA John Ragsdale illustrates how an analyst with a simple question can help a vendor get placement on a vendor short list. 

“…Over the last year I have become increasingly aware of something and wanted to share it with a larger audience. When I have conversations with companies about a pending software purchase (usually CRM or eService), they tell me the core business problems they are trying to solve, then give me the list of vendors they are considering. And almost every time, I hear a little jingle from Sesame Street in my head:

     “One of these things is not like the other
     One of these things just doesn’t belong
     Can you guess which thing is not like the other
     By the time I finish this song?

“Why? Because the obvious vendor(s) who are specialists in their problem are not on the list, and they are selecting from a group of vendors who all do something else. So I ask, “Um, why isn’t Vendor X on the list?” And here is the universal reply. ‘Oh, we started with them, but […]

Equipping Sales for the MQ Effect: the Magic Quadrant & Tech Vendors [part 7]

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Gartner’s Magic Quadrant can have a powerful impact on IT vendor sales cycles – anointing some vendors as a prime candidate for a sales opportunity while denying other vendors even a chance to bid. In order to exploit positive placement on a Magic Quadrant and mitigate negative placement, vendor sales executives need to work with AR to prepare and train their sales teams on certain basics about the Magic Quadrant.

To a large extent the Magic Quadrant is just another form of analyst research that can sales reps have to take into account when working with customers and prospects. However, the MQ does have some unique aspects that have to be addressed including: 

  • Multiple MQs – A vendor can be on any number of MQs, which increases the chances that a prospect will be using wrong research
  • Out-of-date MQs – Earlier versions of a MQ can be available for a long time, which can put a vendor with an improved position at a disadvantage
  • Four boxes, four responses – How a sales responds to or uses a MQ is different depending […]

AR-Sales Partnership case study – Using a teleconference to raise Sale’s awareness of the analysts and improve AR’s strategic standing

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgWho: Director of Analyst Relations at a mid-sized enterprise software vendor

Situation: The vendor’s previous CMO would not permit AR to interact with Sales so there was no outreach to the field on analyst impact and how to leverage positive analyst commentary. After a change in both the CMO and AR director positions the situation changed. The new AR director proactively sought permission from the new CMO to start interacting with Sales, which was granted with enthusiasm.

Process: The AR director teamed with the VP of field sales support to determine the best venue and outline for an initial presentation about the impact of the industry analysts. It was determined that […]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgIn the past several posts we have discussed key ideas of building a bridge to sales and how to start a pilot program.  Now that you have decided to launch your own AR-Sales Partnership program, you need a plan that lists the action items you need to complete.

SageCircle Technique:

  • Educate yourself so you know all your options and have a solid background to explain to others
  • Obtain buy-in from your manager or […]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Use edu-marketing to drive participation

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgOk, you have successfully launched your AR-Sales Partnership Pilot Program. Now you sit and stare at the phone waiting for these selected sales reps to call you asking for help. And you wait. And you wait. And you…

A fact of corporate life is that sales representatives are completely interrupt driven and often will not remember all the tools that are available to them. As a consequence, AR needs to drive participation until the sales reps get into the habit of using AR’s support services. This will be critical to the success of your pilot program and will require resources when you extend the program to the entire sales force.  A technique we suggest is an edu-marketing campaign that uses marketing techniques to educate the Sales team about […]