At last week’s workshop “Launching an AR-Sales Partnership Program” we had a number of insightful questions. We posted one item already about getting feedback from recorded sales training but here is another that came from a participant.
We were suggesting the use of inquiry as a way of asking analysts about the influence they have in your market space. Questions such as “how many short lists did you review in the past week (month)?” are examples of ways that a short inquiry can be used to approximate the impact on sales. However, what if you don’t have a contract and cannot do an inquiry?
We always suggest that inquiry access with your key (tier one) analysts is a requirement for AR teams. But with the current economy and associated tight AR budgets we are hearing of some teams that wind up without all the desired contracts. So how do you pose these questions without inquiry?
Most analysts will reply to well-placed and appropriate questions during a briefing (note: this has been a problem with Gartner analysts – we suggested a workaround in the SageInsight sent to client “Schedule inquiries the day after briefing Gartner analysts to deal with the ‘no questions during briefings’ issue”). We always suggest that you have prepared a sequence of general questions to go with every interaction of any type. These of course include such things as “what research are you working on next?” or “what interesting thing did you learn at the XXX conference”. Placed in context you could also ask about the kinds of questions that IT buyer clients are asking or places where the market might be changing. This gives you the rationale to ask questions that would give you insights into the influence this analyst has in a particular market.
While having inquiry privilege is the best approach you can be creative and still get some information.
Another potential resource is the analyst firms’ account representatives. They might collect the information for you to build the relationship for potential sales. Of course the “price” you might pay will be having to field multiple phone calls from the sales representatives once they do you this favor. However, this might be worth it to get data that you can use with your executives.
SageCircle Technique:
- Have a list of questions prepared for every analyst interaction – of any kind
- Make impact tracking an ongoing activity and document the data you obtain
- Evaluate your analyst lists regularly to ensure you are focused on the analysts that are most influencing your customers and prospects
We will answer some of the other participant questions in future posts.
Questions: Do you have an easy feedback loop from your sales teams? How do you assess the impact of analysts on your sales deals?
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