Forrester Q1 FY08 earnings — Roles roles and more roles, Oh, hired more sales people too.

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 communications and IT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams.
Forrester Research (NASDAQ: FORR) announced its Q1 FY08, ended March 31, 2008, financial results. Revenues were up 16% to $55m and [...]

Why technology buyers use the IT industry analysts

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 [...]

Social media is a multi-facet opportunity for major industry analyst firms

Major analyst firms like AMR Research, Gartner, IDC and Ovum are rightly criticized for being slow out the gate when it comes to addressing and using social media. The one major firm that has done the most to leverage the potential of social media is Forrester, but even Forrester has not been as aggressive as [...]

Use the analysts’ words to build executive understanding about the impact of the analysts on sales

One of the critical success factors for analyst relations is strong executive sponsorship. Many AR teams believe they have executive sponsorship when in reality they do not. In these cases, AR is misinterpreting an agreement to do the occasional briefing as executive sponsorship. AR needs to persuade executives to take an active sponsorship and oversight [...]

Why AR is more important than PR for a Startup [Startup Saturday]

Research by SageCircle, H&K (in multiple Technology Influencer Studies conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates), Lighthouse AR and other AR advisory groups has consistently shown that the most significant influence on purchases is peer recommendation and personal contacts.  Second is industry analyst opinion, which leads all other influence including advertising and PR.  For a [...]

Top Five Ways Analyst Relations can Help Sales [Vendor Sales]

The ultimate goal of Analyst Relations is to drive revenues for your company.  Analysts influence revenues in a variety of ways that may impact your sales team and how they interact with current or prospective customers.  An effective AR program recognizes that there needs to be a high level of cooperation between Sales and AR. [...]

Analyst Analyst - a new blog to analyze the quality and accuracy of the industry analysts

Analyst Analyst launched today. It has an interesting premise - have the analyst ecosystem police the analysts.

What’s happening at Ovum? David Dom Duncan discuss

Two Three (I added Duncan) smart Brits, David Rossiter at Analyst Insight, Dominic Pannell at H&K and Duncan Chapple of Lighthouse AR look at recent changes Ovum. Well worth checking out their posts:
Ovum telecoms chief to leave
Shake-up at Ovum
Ovum at the tipping point?

Why it is a really bad idea to cut AR, even in a recession

It is common for tech vendors to cut marketing spend in a recession. Because Industry Analyst Relations (AR) is typically in the marketing department, AR is often asked to shoulder part of the cost cutting burden by cutting spending, freezing hiring, or even cutting head count. As a consequence, AR often cuts back on the [...]

What is the business value of inquiry for vendors

SageCircle promotes the use of inquiry and we have offered suggestions on various topics for both Enterprise IT research consumers and Communications and IT vendors.  In general, vendors spend far less time doing inquires than they should.  This both decreases the business value they are receiving from the analyst contract and misses some important soft [...]

Managing your budget in a recession — SageCircle’s Coffee Talk

On Tuesday April 1 SageCircle conducted a web-based Coffee Talk around the potential impacts of budget cuts and how AR teams can best handle them.  We began with a few slides to review the techniques for managing a budget and then opened the session to questions from the participants.
Often when resources are trimmed certain areas [...]

Earnings calls are scheduled - Forrester on April 30th and Gartner on May 8th

Forrester is on April 30th at 11 am ET. Gartner is on May 8th at 10 am ET. Both earnings calls are webcasts that you can find on each firm’s investor relations webpage.
I don’t listen to the Gartner and Forrester earnings calls with the same mindset as a financial analyst. What I listen for are [...]

Influence is not a zero-sum game so analyst influence is not necessarily diminished by the rise of bloggers

A common thread in blog postings is that because bloggers are becoming more influential, analysts have to becoming less influential. Also, not a week goes by where we hear that some vendor executives - who often loathe the communications and tech industry analysts - have said that analysts and AR are less relevant due to [...]

Introducing yourself to an analyst for the first time [Startup Saturday]

Startups are often in the position of introducing themselves to industry analysts as they start or expand their AR outreach. In addition to the initial outreach, startups find themselves introducing themselves to new analysts because the analyst landscape is very dynamic.  Analysts change firms, but more importantly change coverages and areas of research.  This means [...]

Knowledge about the industry analysts can be a competitive advantage so create a training plan that includes all constituencies

Best-in-class AR programs do not take training for granted.  They understand that communications and IT industry analysts can touch or be touched by many parts of the company and that a good training program is key for ensuring that all interactions with analysts are positive for the company. In addition to outbound activities a training [...]

Definition and basic characteristics - The ROI of Analyst Relationship Management Systems (part one)

This is the first in a series of posts that will explore the resources required and the advantages gained in using a formal analyst relationship management (ARM) system.  In this post we will look at the characteristics of a good system.  In future posts we will review some of the commercially available products, suggest some [...]

Research consumer’s turn — How industry analysts can be better prepared for inquiries

For the most part the SageCircle blog concentrates how various members of the tech analyst ecosystem interact more effectively with the analysts (e.g., AR best practices and research consumer tips). This post is an experiment to give the community a chance to give a few friendly tips to the analysts.
SageCircle heavily encourages the use of [...]

Social media inputs need to be added to analyst opinion monitoring programs

Analyst opinion monitoring is a critical AR task because it contributes to AR planning, rapid response to sales impact, relationship management, message management, internal politics, and overall metrics programs. In the past, savvy AR means focused on the spoken word - using the SageCircle spoken word audit technique - in addition to the usual written [...]

Does H&K hiring Peggy O’Neill change the agency competitive landscape? Potentially very much.

When H&K’s Josh Reynolds announced at the AR meeting at Gartner US Spring Symposium that he had hired Peggy O’Neill, Oracle’s VP of AR, a lot of us in the industry went “Wow!” Wow because Peggy was leaving one to the top AR jobs to join an agency and wow because H&K had just grabbed [...]

To generate short list placements, you need to narrow your claims to analysts [Startup Saturday]

Founders and senior executives at startups frequent speak about the future of their companies and markets with grand sweeping statements about how they are going to change the world. They also will say that every enterprise and small business or consumer should buy their product or service. While these might be legitimate statements and required [...]

Are you guilty? Classic analyst complaints

Lately we have given some time to complaints that vendor and end user clients have with analysts.  But analysts have a litany of issues with the typical vendor AR teams that they will gladly speak about given the opportunity.  Unfortunately many AR teams don’t listen. 
Recalling the analyst stages post and the hierarchy of needs we [...]

Using the analysts to educate IT buyers beyond praising your products [Vendor Sales]

More often than not, communications or IT vendor sales reps never think about using a tech industry analyst to advance a sales deal. On those infrequent occasions when a sales rep does thinks about leveraging analyst commentary, it is almost always in the context of e-mailing an analyst research note that says wonderful things about [...]

For IT managers - It’s “Praise Your Vendor” Inquiry Day

Now for something completely different… offering the analysts a vendor compliment in lieu of a complaint. Advisory analysts at major firms build their opinions based more on client feedback than on research evaluations. They generally do not do lab analysis or specific competitive research.  That means that the perceptions they have of the products may be more [...]

Peggy O’Neill joins Hill & Knowlton

Peggy, until recently the head of Oracle’s AR program, has joined H&K as as SVP, US Director AR Practice. Here is the press release. BTW, Peggy is also a former Gartner analyst as well. This is a real catch for H&K as Peggy has one of the best AR minds in the industry.
Best of luck [...]

Educate your executives about the analysts to building sponsorship and improve spokespeople effectiveness

Many communications and IT vendors executives are really not informed about the IT Industry analysts.  They often believe one or more the Analyst Myths.  Frequently, tech vendor executives also view the analysts as predators or, worse, as irrelevant. This can both lead to lack of support for the Analyst Relations team and to a reduced [...]