Gathering data for measuring analyst impact on sales
SageCircle research shows that overall analysts have a significant impact on IT buyers. However, each vendor in the community often has only a general perception of how much the analysts have an impact on their sales. Often, the perception is formed more by anecdotal information than systematic research, with stories filtering up from individual sales representatives about analysts negatively influencing deals. Vendors that do systematic research on analyst influence discover the broad and deep influence, both positive and negative, that the analysts have on deals. Analyst relations (AR) teams with a goal to become more strategic should institute a formal program for gathering sales impact data.
Unfortunately, it is not a simple task to gather sales impact data. If it was easy, then everybody would already be doing so. There are many factors that contribute to the difficulty in gathering sales data including:
- Multiple types of data
- Multiple potential sources of data
- Multiple points within a sales cycle when an analyst could impact a deal
- Lack of institutional relationship with the company’s leads management and sales teams
- Lack of skills
- Lack of formal measurement plan
- Lack of bandwidth to do the work
While there are these barriers, none of them are so difficult to overcome that AR should not even try to […]
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SageCircle has received several reports lately from AR managers who perceive that Forrester’s direct influence on IT purchasing decisions seems to be going down. These perceptions are based on reports from their sales organizations that Forrester is not being referenced as often — or at all — as a source of information or advice by IT managers. This seems to be especially true in the IT infrastructure