SageCircle strategist Carter Lusher is heading to Lost Wages on Monday to attend the Forrester events. If you are going to either IT Forum 2008 or AR Council meeting and would like to meet, please let Carter know.  Carter will be on the “Analyst Relations 2.0″ ARC panel at 10 AM on Tuesday the 20th and attending the IT Forum through Wednesday night. Contact Carter at 650-274-8309 or carter [at] sagecircle dot com.

This best practice comes from guest contributor Gerry Van Zandt (Twitter handle), AR manager with HP Services.

Often (as you know) analysts will provide drafts of research notes or event-reaction pieces to vendors to review for inaccuracies.  You have a limited opportunity to provide a response or comment and need a process for action. Here are tips on how best to respond to draft research:

• Be prompt — Help the analyst(s) by meeting the often very tight deadline they are providing for feedback. Respect the analyst’s business and don’t try to buy more time or delay by asking for an extension.
• Check facts — Analysts will always want to ensure all facts and figures are correct, and will generally take vendor input and corrections here (for example, for revenue or employee data) unless they have additional, reliable sources. If the facts are totally correct be sure to tell them and thank them for their accuracy.
• Be reasonable — Provide reasonable commentary and adjustments to analyst statements that you or your firm may not agree with. Don’t expect analysts to change their statements wholesale based on your comments or proposed corrections. If you take strong issue with an analyst’s statement or viewpoint, back up your response with facts and/or customers who can help reinforce your comments.
• Set and manage internal expectations — If you get notice via a draft research note (Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, Navigator, SWOT, etc.) that your organization may not be rated as highly as you (or your executives) feel it should, you should prepare them as soon as possible and seek to mitigate potential negative impact among customer base or prospects. This does not mean issuing a press release or other public statement, but rather preparing talking points or other credible information that can be disseminated internally and to your field team to help prepare them. Do this as soon as possible and BEFORE the research becomes publicly available. If the research is appropriately positive you should prepare talking points and/or a silver bullet document for sales.
• Manage executive response appropriately — If executives take strong issue with published research, discourage them from calling the analyst on the phone and venting. Rather, set up an inquiry through your account-team channels, and sit down with your executive(s) to rationally prepare a response. Seek to provide alternative viewpoints or provide additional references from customers that can reinforce your position. Conduct the meeting as a conversation and do not point fingers or reactive negatively. Use the discussion as a vector to improving the relationship, and find out from the analyst what he/she feels your firm needs to be doing better.
• Close the loop — Distill the research and provide analyst feedback back into the executive ranks of the company, where it can do the most good in terms of decision-making.

Update: Here is what two Twittering analysts commented about when it came to AR responding to draft research. Not good.

Do you have AR, analyst or research consumer best practices that you would like to share with the community? If so, send them to info [at] sagecircle dot com. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Bottom Line:  Being asked to review draft analyst research is a golden opportunity to strengthen relationship and develop credibility as a go-to resource for acting as a sounding board for new ideas, not just ensuring the facts are right. AR managers should give every draft research review request a high priority and provide valuable, non-self serving comments.

Question: AR managers - Do you give responding to analyst draft research a high priority? Do you approach the task in an ad hoc manner or do you have a set process you follow?

At a recent client meeting we got an interesting question: How does a person become an analyst? Is there certification? A test?

At this time the requirements for becoming an analyst consist of ownership of a laptop, cell phone, business card and an opinion. A website and / or blog are nice, but not required. There are no educational requirements, no state certifications, no tests to pass, no professional licenses to acquire, no World of Warcraft guilds to join, or secret handshakes to learn. Direct experience as a vendor or end user is not a requirement either as firms hire people straight out of collage and even outside of the tech industry as well.

Obviously, an individual has to be smart and insightful to be successful as an analyst. But to become an analyst one only has to be hired by a firm or hang out one’s own shingle.

While this statement produces chuckles and rolling of eyes in AR training or meetings with clients, there is both a serious issue and a real opportunity for AR teams in this reality. The issue is the amount and type of education - with deep and broad context as well - that an AR team has to provide new analysts who do not have direct experience in the markets they are covering. The opportunity is that vendors that invest appropriate effort into helping new analysts become well educated about a market reap the benefits of relationship building and therefore analysts that potentially buy into the vendor’s perspective.

SageCircle Technique: 

• Consider an analyst’s official bio as only the starting point for understanding their experience
• Reach out to new analysts via inquiry to learn more about their background and direct experience
• Suggest - diplomatically - to new analysts with little direct experience that your company would be very happy to provide extensively background briefings on the market as well as your company

Bottom Line: Not all analysts start off knowledgeable and experienced in the markets they cover. AR teams that quickly identify new analysts with minimal industry experience can position their companies well with these analysts by proactively investing in the analyst’s education.

Question: Have you ever been surprised by how little a new analyst knows about your market? Were you further surprised by the analyst’s lack of direct experience?

Hmm, let’s see, Gartner’s Fall Symposia series kicks off on October 12 with Europe, Japan and Australia following through mid-November. That is what, five months away? I’m sure that many folks are thinking that there is plenty of time to worry about educating the Gartnerians.

Alas, if that is your impression then you will not like to hear that you are already behind schedule.

In last week’s Coffee Talk, we discussed a timeline (click on image to enlarge) that AR teams should consider following in order to ensure that their information and points-of-view are reflected in Symposium presentations. This timeline sparked many interesting questions and raised some new issues. Here are a few of the questions and our responses:

Question: May seems awfully early to get started, what’s the rush?

Response: Even though the Symposia series does not start until October, now is when Gartner management is making important decisions about the agenda and staffing. By talking to analysts and research managers now, you have the opportunity to contribute ideas that will be legitimately considered for the conference lineup. Even after the agenda has been posted, Gartner is still open to changes if done early enough. Another reason to start this early is that presentations will be locked by mid-August when they are sent to Editorial. Scheduling briefings and inquiries leading up to the Editorial due date can be problematic due to summer holidays, vacation and business travel.   Starting now will make it a tiny bit easier to get on the analysts’ calendars.

Question: Why so many briefings, interactions, etc. Shouldn’t one briefing take care of everything?

Response: To really influence Symposium presentations, AR teams need to provide both breadth and depth of information, references, and insight. AR should adopt the motto “early & often” to remind the team that multiple touches are required.

Question: If we have a big announcement in the September - November timeframe, will analysts honor their NDA that long?

Response: Great question. The answer is “yes,” but you should only do this advanced of a briefing if you know the analyst can be trusted. Industry analysts are brokers of information and would endanger their access if they developed a reputation for not honoring non-disclosure agreements (NDA). In particular, you need to be very explicit about the nature of the NDA and why it is so long in order to get the analysts’ compliance before telling them the confidential information. SageCircle has a SageNote* on best practices for handling NDA situations that you can obtain from us.

SageCircle Technique:

• Schedule inquiries with your top Gartner analysts to discuss what they know about any presentations they will be giving, panels they will be on, and which of the four Symposia they will be attending
• Check the Symposium webpage regularly as the agenda has not been posted as of this time and will change regularly for the first month or so
• Generate a plan and update it periodically
• Set goals on what you want reflected at Symposium
• Inventory your available resources: AR bandwidth, customer references, executive and domain expert spokespeople
• Create Symposium-specific analyst lists (aka Analyst Groups in ARchitect3) that distinguishe between content developers, presenters, and analysts attending for 1-on-1 duty
• Create a calendar for briefings and inquiries that also tracks company and analyst summer holidays and travel
• Start scheduling briefings and inquiries

* SageCircle Advisory clients, either Annual or Hour Blocks, can request a copy of SageNote^TM AR141 “Protecting Confidential Information is a Personal Responsibility” and the presentation “Steps to influence the Fall Symposium content.” In addition, clients can sign up for an inquiry to go through this content, how to apply it their situation, and review any plans being developed.

Bottom Line: Gartner’s Fall Symposia series will have thousands of IT decision makers in attendance representing hundreds of billions (dollars, euros, pounds, yen, yuan and more) in IT budgets. By acting early, AR teams can ensure that their companies’ information and message are properly highlighted which will generate a highly qualified leads.

Question: Have you started your Symposium planning yet?

A critical success factor for best-in-class analyst relations (AR) programs is an appropriate measurement program. A measurement program can help AR managers demonstrate the business value of AR, generate information to improve day-to-day operations, and harvest intelligence valuable to the Sales organization. As social media matures into a regular part of the business communications environment AR managers will need to start incorporating data from blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, podcasts and so on into their measurement programs. However, because social media is just another form of communications, AR teams should not get too stressed about the implications of this step. Rather, they should just consider this step the logical and not too burdensome evolution of AR measurement. Ways in which social media might fit into an AR measurement program include:

Analyst Opinion Monitoring - This item is the most important because analyst commentary in social media can negatively or positively impact ongoing sales deals. For more information please read Social media inputs need to be added to analyst opinion monitoring programs.

Operational Metrics - These metrics measure AR team tactical and strategic activities and are generally reported through an AR Balanced Scorecard*. Including social media metrics (e.g., number of blog posts per month or number of comments on analysts’ blogs) will help the AR team get in the habit using social media. Care should taken not to create “make work” that will not contribute to desired outcomes.

Performance Metrics - Also called outcome metrics, performance metrics measure the business value of the AR program. These metrics typically focus on sales deals impacted by analysts and AR, and changes to analyst opinion. Analyst commentary in their blogs and blogs comments can be used to assist the Sales force (impacting revenues) and demonstrate movement in analyst opinion.

* SageCircle Advisory clients, either Annual or Hour Blocks, can request a copy of the AR Balanced Scorecard SageTool^TM. Getting the SageTool will permit clients to save time by not reinventing the wheel as well as getting the best practices embedded in the tool. In addition, clients can sign up for an inquiry to go through this SageTool, how to apply it their situation, which metrics are best for them, and where it fits into an overall measurement program.

SageCircle Technique:

• Review your existing measurement program to ensure that it still meets the original objectives
• Determine where social media metrics are appropriate to add
• Identify existing metrics that are candidates for elimination
• Pilot data collection techniques for new metrics to ensure that it is practical to collect the data
• Create draft reports and portal pages that illustrate how the new metrics will be distributed
• Socialize the new metrics with management and other stakeholders to get input and buy-in

Bottom Line: Incorporating social media metrics into your measurement program is not just a nice-to-have activity, but critical for best-in-class AR programs. It is better to take this step now when social media is still a relatively small part of the overall communications environment. The experience gained today will pay off immediately in harvesting valuable information and giving you the experience to be more efficient and effective when social media develops into a much higher profile medium.

Question: AR managers - Will you use this opportunity to review your overall measurement program? Which parts of social media will you concentrate on first?

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 options and have a solid background to explain to others
• Obtain buy-in from your manager or executive
• Build the bridge to Sales starting with exploratory meetings
• Generate a draft plan (this will be an iterative process)
• Identify a pilot group which will support the plan
• Develop and document processes and policies
• Develop your training content and collateral
• Launch the pilot (official or skunk works)
• Harvest the pilot experiences and adjust your plan, processes, and policies
• Harvest sales data points for proving the ROI of AR
• Harvest intelligence about which influencers are most used by prospects
• Review the pilot with the participants to understand their level of support
• Make a Go/No Go decision with your management for full rollout
• Obtain additional resources if necessary
• Stage the broad roll out in phases, monitoring progress

Bottom Line: The AR-Sales Partnership is a powerful tool for analyst relations teams to deliver real business value to their companies, while gathering critical data to help with prioritizing AR’s efforts. While a significant amount of work, an AR-Sales Partnership can pay off by improving the perception of AR from being a cost center to performing a strategic function that drives top-line revenue growth.

This post is part of a series about building the AR-Sales Partnership Program. In addition to this series, there are a number of posts with tips and tricks about preparing Sales for dealing with analyst influence on deals. 

1. AR-Sales Partnership [part 1]: It’s not about pushing out reports
2. AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales
3. AR-Sales Partnership [part 3]: Creating the plan
4. AR-Sales Partnership [part 4]: Rolling out a pilot program for a small group
5. AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Edu-marketing to executives and sales reps
6. AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

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 all the tools that are available to them. As a consequence, AR needs to drive participation until the sales reps get into the habit of using AR’s support services. This will be critical to the success of your pilot program and will require resources when you extend the program to the entire sales force.  A technique we suggest is an edu-marketing campaign that uses marketing techniques to educate the Sales team about the AR-Sales Partnership Program.

The AR edu-marketing campaign is similar to the program AR uses to influence the analysts. It should use a mix of techniques in an ongoing program of interactions. The campaign should use repetition and multiple touch-points to get information across to the sales force. As you go through the pilot stages you should consider and begin planning for the needs of the entire sales force. The audiences will need to be be segmented with different information and messages depending on their particular point-of-view (e.g., executives, sales specialists, regional sales managers and so on).

Bottom Line: This might seem like one more task AR should do but probably won’t.  The reality is that it is an investment and not an expense - and it is critical to the success of both your pilot and ultimately your entire program. By investing the time and effort to raise awareness about the AR-Sales Partnership Program, which should take only a few hours per month, AR can position itself much more strategically with the sales organization. This can lead to more cooperation from sales colleagues when AR needs examples of analyst impacts on sales deals.  These will be needed as you expand the program and will be requesting more investment in AR from executives.

Question: Are you in the habit of using edu-marketing to drive awareness about AR and the impact of the analysts?

This post is part of a series about building the AR-Sales Partnership Program. In addition to this series, there are a number of posts with tips and tricks about preparing Sales for dealing with analyst influence on deals.

1. AR-Sales Partnership [part 1]: It’s not about pushing out reports
2. AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales
3. AR-Sales Partnership [part 3]: Creating the plan
4. AR-Sales Partnership [part 4]: Rolling out a pilot program for a small group
5. AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Edu-marketing to executives and sales reps
6. AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

Are you intrigued by the idea of a strategic and practical AR-Sales Partnership program? SageCircle can help. Our strategists can:

• Assist AR and sales teams develop an effective and practical AR-Sales Partnership program
• Conduct targeted and succinct training for sales teams that provides only the critical skills and knowledge needed - not “nice to know” info that is not relevant to busy sales reps
• Act as a “life line” when on-demand advice is needed on a critical sales deal that is being negatively impacted

SageCircle’s AR-Sales Partnership Plan Builder workshop is designed to help AR develop a detailed plan based on best practices quickly and eliminate wasted effort associated with the “reinvention of the wheel.” The workshop is a structure engagement complete with tools that help AR hit the ground running. Leveraging our research and experience as AR managers working with sales, we have a library of content, training and services that help vendor sales teams use positive commentary or mitigate negative commentary.

To learn more contact us at info [at] sagecircle dot com or 650-274-8309. 

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.

Press release summary: Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) reported results for first quarter 2008. Contract value, a key leading indicator for Gartner’s Research segment, increased 17% year-over-year to a record level of $778.4 million, reflecting the successful execution of the Company’s strategy to accelerate the growth of its Research business. Total revenue for first quarter 2008 grew 10% year-over-year to $290.1 million, principally driven by strong, double-digit growth in the Company’s Research segment. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, research contract value and total revenue increased 13% and 5%, respectively. (Revenue and earnings both beat Wall Street analyst consensus.) Client and wallet retention rates for first quarter 2008 were 82% and 100%. The full earnings press release can be found here.

Notes from the conference call:

• As always, a call that was consistent with previous quarterly calls. Under promise and over deliver.
• No change in strategy, however belt tightening across the board due to economic uncertainty
• 5^th straight quarter of research contract value (CV) increase in high teens
• Strong growth in CV from enterprise IT clients
• Some vendors more “thoughtful” about conference sponsorships
• 2/3^rd of CV growth due to new clients, not just price increases
• 30 net new sales reps added in Q1, but slowdown in hiring until economy gets clearer
• All regions and industries saw double digit growth
• As always, price increases coming for legacy as well as new products
• M&A an important strategic consideration, otherwise would not have a dedicated business development team

Implications for clients, whether end users or vendors, and analyst relations (AR) teams:

• Gartner Sales will try to upsell clients to a “Leaders” product. Not necessarily bad even though the price is significantly higher, if the “Leaders” product delivers more business value.
• Vendors should consider increasing sponsorship of targeted Gartner events. If other vendors, especially competitors, are cutting back, then there is less clutter on the show floor. Vendors might be able to lock in some bargain pricing.
• No indication from financial performance that Gartner influence with end users is waning. AR teams should use this observation with executives. “Effective AR Drives Sales!” now more than ever because IT managers look to advisory analysts during times of economic uncertainty.

Bottom Line: Gartner continues to execute well, even during a time of economic uncertainty in the US economy. While managing expenses tightly, there is no indication that Gartner is considering job cuts that could negatively impact research creation or client service. Vendors should take away that Gartner’s advice is still valued by IT decision makers which means that increasing AR investment now can have a tangible ROI in terms of increased leads and revenue.

Question: Clients - It was mentioned that there has been no pushback on pricing increase, do you feel that pricing is fair and delivers business value? Vendors - Have your sales reps seen an increase or decrease in the number of deals where Gartner analysts are playing an advisory role? Enterprise IT managers - Are you using Gartner more or less when it comes to product and vendor selection?

Do you wonder about the trends in the industry analyst market and the implications for your company? SageCircle can help - SageCircle constantly tracks the changes in the analyst market and analyzes what the implications are for enterprise IT managers and vendors alike. Contact us at 650-274-8309 or info [at] sagecircle dot com for how we can help you succeed in a volatile analyst landscape.

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 can take a phased approach, rolling out a pilot project as the first step.

AR can gather needed expertise and information working with a pilot group of sales representatives (10-20), either as part of a larger AR-Sales Partnership initiative (if has Sales leadership support) or as a skunkworks project (to build the business case for AR Sales support).

Operational Objectives of a Pilot Sales Support Program

AR team members can leverage the skills and processes they use to assist analysts with information requests as a way to support Sales. To effectively translate these skills, AR must take into account the following operational objectives:

• Learn what Sales needs
• Systematically collect data on sales deals impacted by analysts
• Create a proof of concept
• Develop credibility with sales leadership
• Test support processes and services
• Gather sales representatives’ testimonials for later use in edu-marketing campaigns for broader sales support rollouts

Pilot Group Selection

Choosing the right pilot group is critical for your pilot project success. First AR should identify sales representatives with deals impacted heavily by analysts on a regular basis-e.g. direct sales teams that sell to corporations with $800m+ in revenues. Secondly, the selected sales representatives should be easy to work with-e.g. not present obstacles such as geography or time zone. Ideally, the pilot group would do its own lead management but this is not as critical as the first two selection criteria. Some pilot group examples might include:

• A collection of individual sales reps
• Personal relationship with a sales manager and their team
• A small, self-contained sales team

Bottom Line: AR must approach the pilot group with the same care and attention to detail it approaches an Analyst Summit.  If the pilot is executed effectively, AR can rapidly gain credibility with sales executives and representatives. If executed poorly, AR may lose an important opportunity to prove its value. Once the pilot program is implemented, AR needs to drive participation until pilot participants get into the habit of using AR’s support services.

Question: Can you identify a potential group of sales rep that could participate in a pilot program?

This post is part of a series about building the AR-Sales Partnership Program. In addition to this series, there are a number of posts with tips and tricks about preparing Sales for dealing with analyst influence on deals.

1. AR-Sales Partnership [part 1]: It’s not about pushing out reports
2. AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales
3. AR-Sales Partnership [part 3]: Creating the plan
4. AR-Sales Partnership [part 4]: Rolling out a pilot program for a small group
5. AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Edu-marketing to executives and sales reps
6. AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

Are you intrigued by the idea of a strategic and practical AR-Sales Partnership program? SageCircle can help. Our strategists can:

• Assist AR and sales teams develop an effective and practical AR-Sales Partnership program
• Conduct targeted and succinct training for sales teams that provides only the critical skills and knowledge needed - not “nice to know” info that is not relevant to busy sales reps
• Act as a “life line” when on-demand advice is needed on a critical sales deal that is being negatively impacted

SageCircle’s AR-Sales Partnership Plan Builder workshop is designed to help AR develop a detailed plan based on best practices quickly and eliminate wasted effort associated with the “reinvention of the wheel.” The workshop is a structure engagement complete with tools that help AR hit the ground running. Leveraging our research and experience as AR managers working with sales, we have a library of content, training and services that help vendor sales teams use positive commentary or mitigate negative commentary.

To learn more contact us at info [at] sagecircle dot com or 650-274-8309. 

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 achieve those goals.

The AR-Sales Partnership Program plan will likely be four to 25 pages long. The amount of work required to create it will vary depending on how complex your AR and Sales situations are, what goals are to be achieved by AR-Sales Partnership, the expectations of your executives for this type of planning document, and the impact the IT analysts have on your market.

Your mileage may vary. As with all SageCircle templates and outlines, it is important to apply this outline to your specific situation. A common task is to remove sections that are not relevant to your situation or impractical to do.

SageCircle Outline for the AR-Sales Partnership Program Plan:

1. Situation assessment
2. Goals and objectives of the program (outcomes based, not activities based)
3. Building the bridge to Sales
4. Executives sponsorship
5. Training the Sales organization
6. Identifying analyst opinion relevant to Sales
7. Communicating to Sales
8. Handling inbound service requests from Sales
9. Measuring success
10. Rapid response process
11. AR budget and headcount required
12. Rollout phases, starting with a small pilot
13. Calendar and milestones

Bottom Line: Every AR program looking to implement an AR-Sales Partnership should develop a plan. The effort put into developing this plan should be proportionate to the impact of the analysts and the AR resources available.

Question: Do you have a formal AR planning process? If you do, how will you incorporate the AR-Sales Partnership into it?

This post is part of a series about building the AR-Sales Partnership Program. In addition to this series, there are a number of posts with tips and tricks about preparing Sales for dealing with analyst influence on deals.

1. AR-Sales Partnership [part 1]: It’s not about pushing out reports
2. AR-Sales Partnership [part 2]: Building the bridge to Sales
3. AR-Sales Partnership [part 3]: Creating the plan
4. AR-Sales Partnership [part 4]: Rolling out a pilot program for a small group
5. AR-Sales Partnership [part 5]: Edu-marketing to executives and sales reps
6. AR-Sales Partnership [part 6]: Action items to launch a project

Are you intrigued by the idea of a strategic and practical AR-Sales Partnership program? SageCircle can help. Our strategists can:

• Assist AR and sales teams develop an effective and practical AR-Sales Partnership program
• Conduct targeted and succinct training for sales teams that provides only the critical skills and knowledge needed - not “nice to know” info that is not relevant to busy sales reps
• Act as a “life line” when on-demand advice is needed on a critical sales deal that is being negatively impacted

SageCircle’s AR-Sales Partnership Plan Builder workshop is designed to help AR develop a detailed plan based on best practices quickly and eliminate wasted effort associated with the “reinvention of the wheel.” The workshop is a structure engagement complete with tools that help AR hit the ground running. Leveraging our research and experience as AR managers working with sales, we have a library of content, training and services that help vendor sales teams use positive commentary or mitigate negative commentary.

To learn more contact us at info [at] sagecircle dot com or 650-274-8309.