SageCircle Special Webinar: Impact of the Recession on the Analysts and AR – Time for Ruthless Action

The worldwide economic downturn is impacting analyst firms that only a few months ago thought they would see slowing of their revenues, but not much more. In the last month, eight analyst firms – including Forrester and Gartner – have announced layoffs. More are surely to come.

And it is not just the analysts who are caught up in this recession. Analyst relations (AR) programs often get caught in the downdraft of a recession experiencing budget cuts, headcount freezes or reductions, and less analyst interaction support from executives and domain experts. If AR is to avoid being the target of budget and headcount cuts is it critical to ensure that it is aligned with corporate priorities and is demonstrating positive economic contributions. While this seems obvious, too many AR programs are so caught up in reactive mode or simply doing normal day-to-day tasks that they don’t see the danger forming. As a consequence, these programs have a greater likelihood of getting cut than those AR managers and teams that proactively or preemptively move to change their focus. 

To help AR professionals and teams take a strategic approach to dealing with the rapidly changing environment, SageCircle is announcing a new public webinar focused on the recession’s impact on the analyst ecosystem and the actions AR needs to take.

Key Issues to be addressed in this webinar include:

• How is the analyst ecosystem impacted by recessions?
• Will the “Big 2” advisory firms see their influence impacted by the recession?
• What are the immediate steps that AR should take when analysts are laid off?
• How will the recession cause AR to work differently and spend differently?

In this SageCircle Webinar, our strategists – who have experienced recessions both as AR professionals and as a top Gartner analyst – will provide a succinct analysis of what is happening to the analyst ecosystem and practical advice on how AR programs need to work and spend differently in this recession. Participants will come out of the webinar with best practices and tools that will help them survive the current recession and thus provide their employers with a competitive advantage by continuing to influence the industry analysts.

Agenda:

• What happened to the analyst firms in the last recession?
• How are end users, vendors and clients being impacted by this recession?
• What have the “Big 2” advisory firms done since 2001 to insulate themselves from economic downturns?
• Conducting a zero-based rethink of AR priorities and activities
• Ruthlessly revisiting analyst lists and service level frameworks
• What is the impact of the recession on the AR measurement and reporting program?
• Does the recession change the priority given to an AR-Sales partnership program?
• What AR spending cuts should be considered and how will analyst contract reductions impact relationships?
• Should AR shamelessly market its contributions to its executive sponsors?

There will be plenty of time for your observations and questions.

The cost of this information-packed session is only $95. You can register by clicking here or visiting www.SageCircle.com.  In addition, the cost is per login not per person. Feel free to schedule a meeting with your colleagues in a conference room and have all of them participate via a single ticket. Then afterwards you can discuss how to apply what you learned during the webinar.

We are scheduling two sessions to make it easy for you to fit the webinar into your busy schedule. The sessions will be held:

     Thursday, February 12th at 8:00 am US Pacific Time

     Tuesday, February 17th at 10:00 am US Pacific Time

If you have any questions about the webinar or wish to arrange a private session for your company, please call SageCircle at 503-636-1500 or send an email to “info [at] sagecircle.com”