Why is it important to have an analyst relations practice? What is the business value of analyst relations?

Analyst relations is a revenue generator – analysts build shortlists and longlists of vendors that buying teams reference during their purchasing journey. Analyst opinions indirectly and directly impact buying decisions, so analysts need to be educated about why your company should be on those lists—especially in software.

Analysts relations build partnerships and ecosystem relations – your solutions don’t live alone—software integration is a megatrend… Analyst relations will help you position and communicate how you work alongside other systems and in the cloud. Customers and analysts will want to understand the entire ecosystem and how you work with other vendors.

Analyst reports help companies establish and maintain industry leadership – if you want to be a leader, you need a megaphone—talking to the press is one part of that picture, and analysts are another. A robust presence in analyst research is crucial for industry leaders.

Analyst feedback helps align products with the market – relationships with analysts are a two-way street, and they can teach you a lot. You’ll hear about the features and criteria that are important in your market and catch trends early.’. The market intelligence and advice given by analysts is an incredibly valuable tool to your organization and your roadmap.

What kinds of companies should invest in analyst relations?

AR is particularly crucial in spaces with a lot of complexity (e.g. Cybersecurity) – for example, in cybersecurity there are so many vendors, there’s a lot of change, and it’s a chaotic environment that is difficult for buyers to navigate. In these spaces, buyers want an expert to point out the right fit.

When should you build out an analyst relations function and how should you staff it? Who owns analyst relations if you don’t have a dedicated person?  

The ideal time is just before the market is established – you want to be the leading vendor telling the analysts what’s going on. Leaders and trailblazers get to define the criteria of the market, so you want to invest in analyst relations when the analysts are just starting to wonder what’s going on in your space. Then you can introduce them to your customers, and showcase your innovation and what’s driving the market need. If you show a growing and exciting market that justifies an analyst investing their time and effort in a space, they’ll be intrigued.

You can begin analyst relations at any company size, but you need referenceable customers – you can create a category and become a Gartner Cool Vendor with only 70 FTEs. The size of your company doesn’t matter, but the dedication, time, budget, and patience you’re willing to commit does. The most important criteria is referenceable customers. The natural question an analyst will ask when you pitch a product is, “Who is using this and why?”

You need to have time and patience – analyst relations is typically a slow-moving machine. Nobody wants to hear it, but the truth is you need to build the foundations of it properly and consistently before you reap rewards. The good news is that if you pursue it consistently, you can build relationships that withstand market changes over time. 

Who in your organization should be involved in analyst relations?

Product or product marketing can own analyst relations – these are the functions that are closest to the product and closest to customers. Where you go with it depends on your organization and culture. I’ve seen analyst relations functions report to the CEO, product, marketing or comms. 

You need a middleperson or concierge who believes in AR and has bandwidth for intensive work – AR gives rise to sprints of work and you need someone who believes in the program and can respond with the right product information and customer references to help the analyst do their research. Getting an analyst connected to the right executive at the right time is an urgent situation that will need attention.

You need to have CEO/executive buy-in – the CEO needs to be all in on analyst relations because if they’re not, they can cut the whole program in a moment and then you may have wasted thousands of dollars having two-year research agreements that are just floating without providing value. You need executive buy-in for the long haul—don’t expect results in six months, it can take two years. 

How do you think about positioning your product/service so that analysts place it within a favorable product category? What if your product doesn’t fit neatly into an existing category?

If you clearly fit into an existing category:

• Articulate how you differentiate –  I see vendors fail at this repeatedly. You can’t just be in the market, you need to be able to articulate how you’re different from every other vendor. I’ve seen vendors with the same codebase and one is a strong performer and the other isn’t because the strong performer showcased leadership, content creation, customer service and amazing customer references. 
• Showcase benchmark data – if you can show quantitatively what your system can do versus another with a new approach, that’s really powerful evidence. 
• You want to be at the top of your category and extend into other categories – analysts will break markets into subcategories—you’ll likely have a core category that you play in, and you want to try to get mentioned wherever else you play. 
• Don’t make friction where there isn’t any – it makes your life easier to be in a category, don’t fight it unless there’s material gain. Analysts make charts for decision-makers based on these categories, and you want to be in those charts. 
• Align what you do with analyst approaches – if the market is thinking in boxes, try to think in their boxes and learn from what the analyst tells you. Then, you can slowly begin to have a conversation about why the boxes are wrong and why your approach is unique. You have to be willing to rumble and have a very educated discussion about this. 

If you don’t fit neatly, it’s still easiest to find a category to join – creating a category takes time and a unique ability to showcase the need for a new category. Without a compelling reason, the path of least resistance leaves you in an existing category.

Note: one option is to ask to be mentioned as an alternative – then you might get mentioned in reports separately as another approach that buyers can take, but you won’t be tabbed in the category. This is a very difficult tactic to pull off that, typically, only a very large vendor can achieve.

If you decide to create your own category, know that it takes time. You’ll need to: 

• Demonstrate vision and leadership for the category – if you can get the analyst to envision your company supporting a market five years from now and being innovative with the latest technology to consistently support customers through success, that’s a win. 
• Point to other vendors – the MACH Alliance is a great example of vendors coming together to propose a unique conceptual framework for a market. They’re a group of vendors building out the notion of composability. It’s easier to create a category if you can point to a couple vendors.  
• Articulate differentiation – show vendors that you compete with but who don’t solve the problem the same way. Or point to a mega vendor entering the space but not doing a great job; this demonstrates market need which is primary to analyst considerations
• Show why your customers chose you over alternatives – if you’re a smaller player, tell the analysts why you beat the leaders for your customers. If you have an NDA, show them your win/loss reports. Once they see why you’re beating the leaders, they might see a market change they might not have known about.

How many industry analyst firms are there and who are they? How many should you engage with?

Engage with the analysts that affect your customers, prospects, and ecosystem – there are hundreds of market research companies. But if they’re not talking to your customers, they don’t matter to you. Find out where prospects are looking, and focus your efforts there.

How many you work with depends on your time and resources available – if you have an in-house person on your marketing team with extra time, they should be reaching out and asking for briefings. You can build engagement beyond the core markets and into peripheral markets where you can get more mentions and you might even find other categories that impact your category (plus the analysts like these conversations.) Conversely, don’t sign research contracts that you don’t have the team to staff. 

How can you find the most influential analysts for your market? 

Look at ARchitect by ARInsights – this tool will show you who is covering topics relevant to you and sometimes you get one-off people who you may not know. There are topics that the Big Three don’t cover but you can find smaller analysts with influence and expertise.

Regularly connect with your sales teams and listen to where prospects find information – if your sales team is hearing about a report that prospects have been mentioning, you want to know that and start engaging with the analyst.

Mature Analyst Relations programs have an alert dashboard – they flag the alerts, tweets, quotes, blogs, and research relevant to your market so that your teams wake up and instantly see what’s happening. At an earlier stage, you can set up Google and Twitter alerts; these can be overwhelming and messy but they’re helpful to see who’s saying what.

When does it make sense to leverage a relationship with one of the Big Three? 

If there’s a Magic Quadrant or Wave in your category, you better be there – these really shake up your industry. This is the most obvious answer and it’s a fight to get into them—but they have an outsized impact on buyer decisions.

If you can’t get into the Big Three now, start laying the groundwork – you can start with niche analysts, but you should simultaneously build up for next year’s Gartner or Forrester report. If you’re a smaller vendor and don’t fit the revenue or customer requirements of the Big Three, you can still set yourself up for when you do. 

How can you successfully leverage the major industry analyst firms? 

Overall:

• Consistently engage with analysts – this is where most everyone fails. You say you’ll take once a month and then things come up and you’re down to six per year.
• Come with an agenda and questions for each call – do your homework to ensure all of your calls are productive.  
• Showcase innovative use of your technology – there are the core use cases and then there are the unusual use cases—communicating the core is important, but the atypical cases are fun and help get the analyst intellectually engaged with your product.
• Be an information concierge – you’d be surprised at the attention analysts pay to the studies, videos, and emails you send. Facilitate and concierge relationships and information constantly for the analysts you work with.

How can you successfully leverage events in your analyst relations practice?

Events are great for meeting people and building relationships, not for ham-handed selling – events are a great chance to meet people and build relationships—you should inject talking points and customer stories into your conversation, but don’t bring a pitch deck into every casual conversation.

Research analysts ahead of time – know who you’re talking to, read their bio, and do some homework on what the analysts are working on. Listen to what they say on stage and then relate that to your customers and product when you meet afterward.

Schedule meetings – this can be hard for some people, but it’s crucial to getting the most out of the event. If you pay for a conference ticket, you typically get a 1:1 meeting—for a memorable meeting, pick the last slot of the day. Then, you can go grab a drink and get out of the room they’ve been sitting in all day talking to vendors.

Promote your analysts at the events and act like a thought leader – if you’re a thought leader, be a thought leader; don’t hide your notes in your notebook/notes doc., Put your takeaways in a blog post. Follow up afterward with an email that connects the topic with your differentiators and showcase customer proof Provide actionable recommendations for your organization. Note the information you learned from the analyst. 

What are the different Gartner offerings and how should you interact with each? 

Gartner owns 85% of the market – it’s crucial to understand Gartner—they are the 800-pound gorilla of market research.

• Magic Quadrant – this is the most important piece of research; it shows the Leaders, Visionaries, Challengers, and Niche Players in a given category.
• Peer Insights – this allows buyers to read peer thoughts on your product. It isn’t traditionally set up as an analyst relations function, but it can drive the results of your Magic Quadrant.  Peer Insights affects sales because buyers are becoming more digital and they want to do their own homework. 
• Thought Leadership Research- market research can be as important as getting into the MQ despite not having a name. When they’re developing a category for MQ they will draw on the previous market research for tools that impact a technology trend or best practice—and if you aren’t in these, your chances at MQ are lower.
• Critical Capabilities – this is published next to the Magic Quadrant and allows orgs to deep-dive into the MQ companies. It gives digital tools to customize the criteria based on your organization. Fewer buyers will dig this deep.

What are the potential costs to building an analyst relations program? 

FTE time – there are several roles that will need to spend time on analyst relations.  In the ideal world, there is someone managing the AR efforts, creating the strategy, managing the processes, etc.  In the most successful programs, CEOs, and heads of product and marketing will also be engaged.  Often there are 3-4 executives from a vendor on briefing calls with the analysts.  If you think you’re going to hire someone to manage AR and they can do it alone, your program will not be as successful as having a multi-role relationship.  

AR is more expensive and time-consuming with every research contract you add – the management costs should be considered with the cost of the contract. Who’s going to use it and what business are you going to generate from it? These are usually 2-year contracts, so you have to start with your 2-3 year goal and work backward. The contracts only provide value if someone with bandwidth is engaging with analysts.

Should you “pay-to-play”? 

Pay-to-play can be successful for an early-stage company – it helps explain to the market where you fit in, especially if it’s a new category and there are a lot of unknowns. Some of the smaller analyst firms offer pay-for-play and it can help you test and build the process for talking to a knowledgeable expert, putting your deck in front of someone, and sorting it out. It can be a great asset for sales or marketing to put on your website—and if you don’t use it, it probably wasn’t very expensive. 

Make sure you have a plan to use the report to generate value – most companies don’t have a marketing person on staff who can comply with the extensive citation requirements from a report at a moment’s notice. Make sure you can support the asset over its lifetime. Also, don’t buy the report before you have seen it. Wait until it’s done, you’ve seen it and have the ability to use the report to generate some value.

Review Sites

Which software review sites are important to manage your presence on? 

The software review sites with substantial influence include:

• Peer Insights – this is Gartner’s offering and a good presence here can help your MQ performance. 
• TrustRadius – seems to be designed for product managers and marketing—70% of views are publicly identified people which is helpful even though they’re not important titles.
• G2 – it has an amazing sales enablement machine behind it. You can get access to lists of people searching for a tool and turn them into leads. You get a lot of good information about who is looking. It seems more skewed to IT and SMB. 

What are the keys to developing a favorable presence on software review sites? 

Don’t underestimate the lift – getting customers to write reviews is a time and resource-intensive process. Half may say they’re not allowed to just because they don’t want to. There are complicated processes and rules to screen reviews and get them verified on the sites. You have to commit to encouraging customers to write them because they affect buyer behavior.

Explain the importance of the review program to your customers – explain how these are important for the community, your growth, and they contribute to their relationships. It takes frequent requests to source these, so you have to start early and keep your quotas low. 

Set up a review kiosk at your events – one easy way to source reviews is to set up a kiosk at customer events where you literally stand there and hold people’s drinks while they enter their  data.

Set aside budget for incentives – many firms will offer spliffs to customers and create multiple campaigns to customers to share $25 gift cards for positive reviews.

How should analyst relations and Customer Success (CS) work together to cultivate positive customer reviews?

Owning customer reviews is teamwork – it requires collaboration among teams (marketing, CS, analyst relations) that notoriously don’t work well together. Divide up the labor in categories that everyone is comfortable with and take a team approach. Don’t blame people for poor success and keep your quotas low. If you run into problems, brainstorm solutions together. 

Start with the most satisfied customers – if CS says you have 100 companies at 8/10 or higher, ask for the 20 that are 9’s and get their reviews first. The first question you’ll see when you ask is “Who else did it?” So you should get the best ones first and then you can nurture more. 

Don’t shotgun mass review requests – consider your target customers who will make an impact on readers who see their logos or stories. You want to start with reviews that will feed into future success.

Overall 

What can an analyst relations firm do and what do you need to handle in-house?

In-house you need to provide:

• Clear messaging around product, roadmap, and differentiators 
• Customer list and street/deal level information on wins/losses
• Articulation of innovation
• Waves and Magic Quadrant survey support
• A demo
• Access to executives’ calendars 

Analyst relations can guide the process and support:

• Setting the strategy for the analyst relations effort.
• Setting up and staffing interactions with analysts
• Conducting prep work for analyst calls
• Aligning product/company differentiators with analyst research and agendas
• Customizing demos for the analyst to ensure it shows what a particular analyst wants to see
• Guidance on how to holistically answer survey questions to make sure you are looking at the whole picture
• Recommendations on injecting analyst guidance to influence your roadmap, messaging, and positioning.

In a mature program, the flow of information is two-way – the analyst will inform your messaging and positioning of the product, and even the roadmap. At the same time, you’ll be telling the analyst what’s unique and valuable about your specific product and how your organization brings it all to life.

What are the most important pieces to get right? 

Focus on the end goal of your analyst relations program – is your goal category creation? Is your goal to be in the Magic Quadrant? You need to set these goals and then tailor your AR program to meet them. 

You need to be realistic – if your goal is to be a leader in the Wave, and you’re not even in the Wave, at some point you’re going to have a tough conversation. You can be ambitious but you need to take a step-wise approach.

Be consistent with real engagement – consistent, real, and authentic human engagement is the lifeblood of your program. You’ll face challenges and the analyst is there to be helpful. If you do an inquiry you need to follow up with engagement to foster the relationship. 

Show off your product and customers in an innovative and delightful way – you’re selling software, not spoons; make it fun and give great examples. One of my clients showcased an AI innovation on Alexa from a smart coffeemaker—it was cool and it showcased the capabilities of building something on the fly for analysts. If you can make analysts think and laugh – you’re in good shape.

What are common pitfalls? 

Signing a research contract and letting it whither – this happens all the time. There is no correlation between signing the contract and being a leader in the space—the value in a research contract is what you make of it.

Getting annoyed and frustrated at the process – AR can be time-consuming and you need to be okay with that. It can require challenging conversations and force you to think deeply about your assumptions. Many companies don’t want to be told they need to demonstrate how they differentiate, they just want to say they’re different. It can be extra work, but you have to showcase your differentiation in the demo, in customer references, and in the buying process.

Lack of customer success – remember to highlight your customers. Feature your new customer wins, tell the stories of how and why you beat your competitors, and explain and showcase the innovation of your customers and your solutions. This is concrete proof of your solution’s merits to the analysts.