Tag: industry analysts

THE TOP 5 Common Mistakes that Analyst Relations Programs Make

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5.  Vendors approach analysts with an undifferentiated message and lack of thought in their vision and strategy.

Downside – why should an analyst pay any attention to a boring, me too vendor, especially if the market is crowded and fragmented?

4.  Vendors use the same approach used for all analysts and all firms. Some firms have very bureaucratic briefing request procedures while others permit vendors and PR firms to call the analysts directly. Market researchers need numbers while advisory analysts provide customer success stories. Some analysts are very structured in the information they want and the briefing structure while other analysts even at the same firm are very informal.

Downside – analysts are narcissistic prima donnas who want to do things their way. Vendors who ignore basic differences between analysts and firms run the risk of irritating the analysts, not providing needed information and wasting the analysts’ time.

3.  Vendors provide the wrong type of information, not supporting the methods the analysts use to […]

Presentation Tip: Watch out for the notes on PowerPoint slides

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If you send industry analysts PowerPoint files of your presentations, do make sure that you review the text in the Notes section of each page. You’ll want to delete any text that is inappropriate to give to the analysts. This is a step that is easy to miss and which will give you great heartburn. Add this step to your standard presentation critique checklist — you do have a presentation critique checklist, right? — is a simple way to avoid reaching for the antacid pills.

BTW, sending PowerPoint and Word files is a best practice that AR managers should consider using. Providing content in Microsoft Office format makes it easier for analysts to repurpose your content. No, silly, this is not “stealing.” It is called […]

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 […]

So, have you started planning and executing your Fall Symposium campaign yet?

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Timeline for informing Fall Symposium contentHmm, let’s see, Gartner’s Fall Symposia series kicks off on October 12 with Europe, Japan and Australia following through mid-November. That is what, five months away? I’m sure that many folks are thinking that there is plenty of time to worry about educating the Gartnerians.

Alas, if that is your impression then you will not like to hear that you are already behind schedule.

In last week’s Coffee Talk, we discussed a timeline (click on image to enlarge) that AR teams should consider following in order to ensure that their information and points-of-view are reflected in Symposium presentations. This timeline sparked many interesting questions and raised some new issues. Here are a few of the questions and our responses:

Question: May seems awfully early to get started, what’s the rush?

Response: Even though the Symposia series does not start until […]

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 […]

AR–Sales Partnership [part 4]: Take baby steps by rolling out a small pilot phase

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icon-dollar-euro.jpgAR teams can impact company revenues directly through assisting sales representatives, either to overcome negative – or leverage positive – analyst commentary and research to close deals. However, AR managers often shy away from supporting Sales because they fear it will ‘open the floodgates’ to hundreds or thousands of requests. To prevent this deluge, AR can take a phased approach, rolling out a pilot project as the first step.

AR can gather needed expertise and information working with a pilot group of sales representatives (10-20), either as part of a larger AR-Sales Partnership initiative (if has Sales leadership support) or as a skunkworks project (to build the business case for AR Sales support).

Operational Objectives of a Pilot Sales Support Program

AR team members can leverage the skills and processes they use to assist analysts with information requests as a way to support Sales. To effectively […]

Social media should not be a “special” activity for AR, just part of the overall AR plan

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icon-social-media-blue.jpgYou do have an AR plan, don’t you?

Your strategic AR plan, the one with the charter and objectives, lists of all interactions types to be used for each purpose, service levels by analyst tier, calendar and priorities?

Ok, unfair question as many AR teams are so under the gun that a plan is often considered a luxury. The main point is that social media (e.g., blogs, Twitter, podcasts, wikis and so on) should not be considered something big and special, but merely just more forms of interactions to add to the mix.

Obviously, the various types of social media are still new to many individuals and AR teams. As a consequence, there is a learning curve to climb and a process you will need to go through to adopt these new forms of interactions. However, social media are not “special,” just like e-mail is not special. Oh, those folks that have been around for awhile will no doubt remember when there was heated debate whether e-mail was an appropriate form of interaction with analysts.

SageCircle Technique:

  • Educate yourself about […]

Why technology buyers use the IT industry analysts

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Sometimes IT and telecommunications vendors express frustration at the very existence of IT advisory analysts and their influence with the technology buyers (aka end users or IT managers). Often the vendors accuse the IT buyers of being lazy or stupid because they use the analysts instead of doing the research themselves. Bloggers are equally amazed at why end users would spend money on analyst contracts when there is so much information available for free on the Internet.

The reality is that the advisory analysts provide valuable services to technology buyers and have earned the trust of those buyers over the years. When they don’t understand the true reasons why the advisory analysts are widely used, vendor executives will miss opportunities to invest in analyst relations efforts.  This is also true for the sales force who need to understand the motivations for using the analysts,  Training is critical for preparing sales reps to handle lucrative deals that are impacted by IT analysts.

There are a number of reasons why IT advisory analysts exist and […]