AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

In the past several posts we have discussed key ideas of building a bridge to sales and how to start a pilot program.  Now that you have decided to launch your own AR-Sales Partnership program, you need a plan that lists the action items you need to complete.
SageCircle Technique:

Educate yourself so you know all your [...]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Use edu-marketing to drive participation

Ok, 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 [...]

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

AR 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 [...]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 3]: Creating the plan

Working with Sales to leverage the analysts’ position in the marketplace to drive sales takes both processes and time. Therefore AR departments should generate a plan that looks at both the long term issues and day-to-day activities. The plan should clearly define goals and outline the programs and execution steps that will be taken to [...]

AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales

The first order of business for an analyst relations (AR) team launching an AR-Sales Partnership Program is to sell Sales on the idea. Without buy-in from sales management, AR will not be able to execute a successful partnership and merely waste time. Getting Sales management buy-in will not assure success, but it will certainly provide [...]

Call for case study volunteers - How the analysts impacted a sales deal

One of the most powerful tools that analyst relations teams have to convince their companies’ executives about the business value of AR is a case study on an impact that an industry analyst had on a specific deal. For example, when we published “SageNoteTM AR107 — Case Study: Rapid Response by AR saves a $35 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Training the sales reps: keep it simple, short, small words [Vendor Sales]

OK, that title was not fair to the sales team, but it makes a good point about how to do training.  Often AR teams try to teach sales so much about analysts that they overwhelm them and miss the real point.
The sales team needs basic information about who the analysts really are, which ones you [...]

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 [...]

Do your customers assume that Gartner or other analysts have done all the due diligence? [for Vendor Sales]

An analyst relations (AR) manager gave me a call this week with an interesting tid-bit that completely reinforces the recent postings about vendor sales reps asking about analyst usage, analyst myth #1  and how IT managers should use Waves and Magic Quadrants.
 
The AR manager was recently at their software company’s annual sales kick off meeting. [...]

Now that is not the way to exploit an expensive Magic Quadrant reprint

I accidently came across an unsecured link to a PDF of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration and Social Software, 2007 courtesy of (vendor). This was a nice little treat because I was about ready to chat with one of (vendor)’s competitors and it good to see what Gartner had to say.
For (vendor), it is a [...]

Vendor sales reps should ask which analysts are advisors on deals [Vendor Sales]

The IT advisory analysts (e.g., AMR, Forrester and Ovum) have their fingerprints all over the IT and telecommunications acquisition projects of large and some mid-size enterprises. While the participation of the analysts is not meant to be a secret, sales representatives of tech vendors are often unaware of their influence behind the scenes. This can [...]