Month: April 2008

Using the analysts to educate IT buyers beyond praising your products [Vendor Sales]

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgMore often than not, communications or IT vendor sales reps never think about using a tech industry analyst to advance a sales deal. On those infrequent occasions when a sales rep does thinks about leveraging analyst commentary, it is almost always in the context of e-mailing an analyst research note that says wonderful things about the product the rep is selling. This is very much like restaurant owners who tape positive newspaper reviews to their windows. However, a product centric approach misses the chance to use the analysts to educate IT managers about a broad range of issues that can generate future sales opportunities.

Often tech buyers get stuck on what direction to go in for a particular situation, which frequently leads to the buyer doing nothing. Sometimes it is a case of “analysis paralysis” about a strategy or tactic. In other cases, the buyer cannot convince management to […]

For IT managers – It’s “Praise Your Vendor” Inquiry Day

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icon-phone-headset.jpgNow for something completely different… offering the analysts a vendor compliment in lieu of a complaint. Advisory analysts at major firms build their opinions based more on client feedback than on research evaluations. They generally do not do lab analysis or specific competitive research.  That means that the perceptions they have of the products may be more highly colored by negative customer comments heard during client phone-based inquiries than reality would suggest. 

SageCircle Technique:  My suggestion to IT managers is that you […]

Educate your executives about the analysts to building sponsorship and improve spokespeople effectiveness

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Many communications and IT vendors executives are really not informed about the IT Industry analysts.  They often believe one or more the Analyst Myths.  Frequently, tech vendor executives also view the analysts as predators or, worse, as irrelevant. This can both lead to lack of support for the Analyst Relations team and to a reduced effectiveness in using the executives as spokespeople.

As we have said, the most important currency to the analysts is information.  Getting that information directly from the CEO or other executives adds credibility and promotes the relationship you are attempting to build.  As a consequence, it is in the AR team’s best interest to improve their executives’ […]

SageCircle Survey — The tech industry analysts on Twitter

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icon-social-media-blue.jpgTwitter is an interesting example of micro-blogging, i.e., broadcasting very short messages to a set of “followers.” Tweets can be very personal and trivial in nature (e.g., what the person is having for lunch) or can be used for business purposes (e.g., snap polls). In Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR tool box, we discussed some potential ways that Twitter might be used by analyst relations (AR) professionals to interact with the industry analysts. That post led to some interesting comments on the blog post, e-mails, tweets, Twitter DMs (aka direct messages) and the SageCircle Analyst Twitter Directory (at the top of the left navigation menu under “Pages”). The response has been interesting, but what do the analysts think? Do they want AR to use Twitter or other micro-blogging techniques?

To find out what the analysts think, we conducted a SageCircle Survey of the analysts to get their opinions and see if they would like AR to use Twitter or would it cause them to run screaming from their keyboards. The target population was the 28 analysts then in the Analyst Twitter Directory (a few more have been added in the last week). We have received 15 responses to-date from all types of analysts in terms of their research coverage and size of firm, from single practitioners to the largest firms. We were pleasantly surprised by the volume of responses as well as the analysts’ in-depth and thoughtful comments. Obviously this early into microblogging, there is healthy skepticism about the business value of Twitter for AR. The analysts definitely saw some potential uses of Twitters, but also see it as a potential fad and waste of time.

One point that came up in almost every response and subsequent conversations is the fear that […]

Portland’s tech startup community – Startupalooza [Startup Saturday]

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rocket-for-startups.jpgLast Saturday I attended one of the events coordinated by Portland’s vibrant startup tech community and encountered entrepreneurs, executives, bloggers, analysts, and consultants.  Startupalooza (link) is one of the various ways that social media is helping to bring people together.  Organized through the web this event had capped the attendance at 200 people due to space limitations, but had an additional 67 people on the waiting list.  Its goal was to provide a live networking opportunity as well as a forum for presenting ideas.  Many of the attendees had their twitter addresses on their name badges.

Among the presenters were executives from Jive Software to explain their successful startup process.  They understand the influence of the analysts and have dedicated resources to an AR program.  You will note that […]

Beyond BRIC — David Mitchell’s “geosophical technologies” takes a global view of the IT industry

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If you are interested in a global perspective on the IT industry I recommend that you check out David Mitchell’s geosophical technologies blog. David is a VP at Ovum, but geosophical technologies is his personal blog. One of the best aspects of this blog is that David just does not focus on the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil,[…]

The organizational challenges of managing AR, CI and MR [Practitioner Question]

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question-mark-graphic.jpgWe often are asked about the differences in management techniques when AR is organizationally under corporate communications or marketing as compared to a when it is part of a strategy group.  How you deal with analysts, and the need for strategic interactions as compared to product-level briefings, will be altered based on the client base you are attempting to serve.

Analyst interactions also occur in the Competitive Intelligence (CI) and Market Research (MR) groups.  They are also often the keepers of the major analyst contracts and the “repository” of the purchased analyst data, reprints, and commissioned research.  In addition to providing research for the product and strategy teams they contribute to the sales organization with share numbers and competitive bullet points.

Sometimes these groups are in very separate parts of the company (e.g., AR in corporate communications, MR in product management and CI in field sales) while at others, especially in smaller vendors, one person does it all.  In larger companies these functions may be so organizationally separate from AR as to require processes for enhancing the communications and collaboration, despite the fact that you are all dealing with the same analysts.

From time-to-time, companies make organizational changes with AR being told – sometimes over AR’s reasonable objections – to take responsibility for the CI/MR teams. Incorporating the CI/MR teams with AR can prove to be an interesting challenge for the AR manager because […]