AR programs should put their contact info on the company website

A recent survey of vendor websites indicates that while PR and IR contacts are clearly listed often AR teams do not post their contact information.  When questioned some AR teams have indicated that they know their tier one analysts and do not want to be contacted directly by other analysts.
The analyst landscape is constantly changing.  [...]

Budget cutting part two — Alternate solutions for analyst contracts

Last week (see Budgeting cutting can help AR focus and innovate) we suggested that potential budget cuts may have the effect of causing AR teams to prioritize and innovate in their programs and might not always be as negative as when first viewed.  Another way to deal with the possible cuts in funding that follow any [...]

Can the IT industry analysts be objective?

I recently saw this question on Twitter. It was from an AR practitioner, but it also applies to research consumers as well. Several studies* of IT manager clients surfaced that “objectivity” or some variation is an important consideration for buying analyst services. But is this a reasonable expectation for the research consumers? The answer is [...]

Why do analyst consulting days? [AR Practitioner Question]

 As was briefly mentioned in Strengths and weaknesses of analyst research delivery types, analyst consulting days (aka SAS or strategic advisory service in Gartnerese) have a high risk/reward profile for vendor analyst relations (AR) teams. After that post, we received a question from an AR practitioner asking why AR would want to spend the money on [...]

Blogs as part of the AR tool box — Is there a chicken-or-egg issue?

While blogs have been around for a number of years, they are seldom used by communications and IT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams*. I have found only Adobe, Cisco, HP, IBM** and Sun. This is too bad because blogs can be a valuable tool for communicating certain types of information in a less formal manner.
Now [...]

IDC on the CEOs 2008 Agenda

A little bit of a different twist on the IT analyst firm “agenda” series. This one from IDC’s Frank Gens in the eXchange blog looks at the CEO’s agenda not the CIO’s.
CEOs’ Agenda for 2008: ‘Selling’ Joins ‘Innovation’ and ‘Customer Care’ at the Top
Click above to go to the IDC blog entry. Click on the graphic [...]

Should startups use PR agencies to do AR? [Startup Saturday]

This is a post that will no doubt irritate my PR friends, but the answer to the question about whether startups should use PR agencies for AR is “only for the boring stuff.” By boring, I mean interaction logistics and basic information dissemination. However, when it comes to building the relationship and developing credibility with [...]

Challenges for Analyst Relations in 2008 – part two

Last week in Part One we summarized some of the issues noted in our survey on LinkedIn asking what people felt were the biggest challenges that AR will have in 2008?  Last week’s list focused on the traditional problems that AR teams always face.  Today we look at some new areas of concern.
Return on AR Investment
While [...]

Budget cutting can help AR focus and innovate

It is a fact of life that because of the reports of economic slowing, marketing departments at communications and IT vendors are considering budget cuts. Because most analyst relations teams report to marketing, there will be trickle down cuts hitting AR as well. Unfortunately, most AR functions are already short of staff and funding resources [...]

Strengths and weaknesses of analyst research delivery types

The communications and IT analyst industry has four basic ways (i.e., written, inquiries, speeches and consulting days) that analysts deliver research and recommendations to their clients. Not all firms use every method listed below and with social media there are new methods being developed that will someday be widely available (e.g., think about a virtual world inquiry [...]

Six more analyst tips for AR added today

Robin Bloor’s tips # 6, 7 and 8, two by James Governor, two by Jeremiah Owyang and one by Charlene Li  added on 2/19/08 
Tips from analysts about how to interact with them more effectively (new tips added 2/19/0
Make sure you check to see if there are comments associated with the posts, some have good “ah ha”s. Also, [...]

When hype can go overboard and hurt credibility

While the US Federal Trade Commission in the Lanham Act said that puffery is “harmless exaggeration or colorful hype” and is not prosecutable as false advertising, too much hype can severely damage a vendor’s credibility. This was reinforced the other day when I participated in a Twitter conversation (right, click to enlarge).
Redmonk’s James Governor (”Monkchips” [...]

Are you guilty of monologuing and death by PowerPoint?

One of the top annoyances of IT industry analysts are vendor briefings where the spokesperson is talking at the analysts instead of having a conversation with the analysts. Not only does this annoy the analysts, it causes vendors to miss the opportunity to find out if their message and content is getting through. We have [...]

Synovate - the market research company with marketing

I had never heard of Synovate until one of its employees friended me on Facebook. That got me looking at it’s website. Hmm, actually has a little marketing going with some interesting branding (tag line “The global marketing company driven by curiousity”) has hip, clean visuals (brochure cover to left, click to enlarge) and uses social [...]

Feedback from analysts on what a tech startup knows that would be really interesting [Startup Saturday]

In addition to last week’s post (see Startups have unique market insights that they can use as currency with IT industry analysts [Startup Saturday]) I also listed a question on LinkedIn Answers to see what sort of feedback I would get from analysts. I am glad I did as I got some really interesting and useful [...]

ARchitect3 users — SageCircle announces an AR Effectiveness Seminar especially for you

SageCircle is pleased to announce that we will be conducting a special version of our AR Effectiveness Seminar for ARchitectTM users on May 5th - 6th in Cupertino, CA.
SageCircle strategists Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher deployed and managed one of the largest implementations of ARchitect while members of the HP Corporate AR team. We were [...]

Challenges for Analyst Relations in 2008 - Part One

There are many challenges that AR has had for years like identifying the right analysts to focus on, obtaining resources and getting great content. There are new challenges now like how to interact with analyst/bloggers and leveraging social media. We recently did a survey on LinkedIn asking what people felt were the biggest challenges that [...]

Illuminata’s Gordon Haff on four things AR teams should be doing to be more effective

Carter ran into Gordon at the Redmonk 5th Birthday Party in San Francisco. When asked about what AR could do to become more effective, Gordon immediately came up with four suggestions:
#1 - Don’t use Webex or virtual rooms.
#2 - PR agencies should understand analysts’ coverages and not

AR–Sales Partnership [part 1]: It’s not about pushing out reports

I think that most, if not all, of us in analyst relations (AR) have been on the receiving end of a phone call from a desperate/angry sales rep who is confronted with salvaging a deal squashed by analyst commentary. Often these calls are unpleasant as the sales rep takes out his or her frustration on [...]

New influencer blog to check out: Don Bulmer’s Everyday Influence

 Everyday Influence is the new blog from Don Bulmer, VP of Influencer Relations at SAP. Interesting title, eh? Don is wicked smart and well worth following.
Here is the description “Don Bulmer’s experience, best practices, and perspective on the new world of influencer relations, social media, communications, and leadership.”

Do’s about using analyst research

Last week we posted some “dont’s” about using analyst written research, so it seems appropriate to follow up with some positive actions for how to use the research and recommendations from the industry analysts.
Contrary to popular belief, IT market researchers and advisory analysts do not do either lab-based product evaluations or take an academic ivory tower [...]

Forrester and Gartner Q4 and full year earnings — Higher prices and emphasis on role-based services

The two analyst firms that are publicly held conducted earnings calls last week, Forrester (February 5) and Gartner (February 6). This analysis does not look at areas of interest to investors, but seeks to pull out insights that are relevant to clients and prospects as well as CIT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams.
For clients of [...]

Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR tool box

Analyst relations (AR) has a number of tools available for interacting with the IT industry analysts ranging from prehistoric-based face-to-face meetings to the 19th century telephone to the 21st century TelePresence by Cisco. Social media (e.g., blogs, communities, wikis and so on) represents just the latest technology to come along to enhance the AR interaction [...]

Startups have unique market insights that they can use as currency with IT industry analysts [Startup Saturday]

As we said in Should tech startups invest in analyst relations?, the currency startups should use with analysts is not euros, yuan, pounds, dollars, yen or pesos. No, the real currency is information (and the executive time to deliver the information).
Startups need to provide analysts with all the usual information such as strategy, ability to execute, [...]

Gartner Quarterly AR Call Schedule

For several years now, Gartner Vendor Relations has held quarterly teleconferences for the analyst relations (AR) community. There is a discussion about a topic (e.g., in December it was about the policy change on surveying analysts) and Q&A on any issue. Sometimes the calls are pretty low key and other times it can get quite [...]