Day: May 6, 2008

Random notes on Twitter

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icon-social-media-blue.jpgThe Analyst Twitter Directory is now up to 60 entries with more analysts added every week. It is interesting that this is one of the most visited pages on the SageCircle blog.

Edelman’s Jonny Bentwood (Twitter) has done another crackerjack piece of research with Top analyst twitters / micro-bloggers. He has come up with an interesting framework to rank the analysts who use Twitter. The criteria are:

  • Followers – the number of followers each analyst has
  • Updates – frequency of updates
  • Conversation- how many […]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgThe first order of business for an analyst relations (AR) team launching an AR-Sales Partnership Program is to sell Sales on the idea. Without buy-in from sales management, AR will not be able to execute a successful partnership and merely waste time. Getting Sales management buy-in will not assure success, but it will certainly provide AR with the required backing needed to get started and overcome certain hurdles.

The first person to approach is to a certain extent determined by the size of your company. If you work for a large tech vendor the person you approach will not be the head of Global Sales. This individual is always under pressure to produce the numbers and often has the CEO, CFO, COO and others breathing down his or her neck. The head of Global Sales is so manically focused on execution that they will not be receptive to a discussion about innovative techniques with somebody they and their direct reports do not know. In addition, the head of sales for a large vendor will have been out of the field so long that they might have forgotten what it was like having a deal squashed by industry analyst commentary. Tech companies that are smaller do open up the opportunity to go directly to the top, but even in this situation we recommend that AR seek out a different individual.

What AR needs is a savvy sales rep or local sales manager who can coach the AR team on […]