How To Deal With Analysts: #3 Know The Analysts

If you visit Analyst Profiles on Tekrati, you will discover that there are over 3000 technology analysts serving the IT industry, working from 380+ analyst companies. The mathematics suggests an average of about 8 analysts per company. So this means that despite the Gartners, Forresters and IDCs, most analyst companies are small boutique operations consisting of a handful of analysts.

AR professionals know how the larger analysts companies work (and if they don’t they shouldn’t be working in AR). However, even if you didn’t know, you could easily work it out. If you have a large number of analysts, you have to organize them so that they specialize in specific technology areas. They can then earn revenues according to that specialization by producing research, writing white papers, doing consultancy or whatever.

So if you represent a company that has, say, a CEP product, you can find out who you need to talk to in the larger analyst companies simply by ringing them up and asking. But with the smaller companies you don’t even know whether you should be talking to the company at all and if you think you should, then you won’t necessarily know who in the company you need to talk to.

You need to find out!

Bear in mind that what you are trying to find out is; who are the influencers in our IT market?

But how do you find out?

There are one or two companies that act as consultants to advise you how to deal with the analysts. They do training courses and provide databases of information and newsletters; analyzing the analysts. I’m not sure how valuable the services are, but I sincerely doubt the value, unless you know very little or absolutely nothing about the analyst world. Whenever I run into information about myself from such companies it’s off-track and my guess is that it will be the same in respect of other analysts from boutique companies.

So, I’m hypothesizing that you are running AR for a small but promising technology start-up and you want to know which analysts you need to impress. In my opinion you cannot actually buy that information, because no-one I know of specifically stores exactly that information (with the possible exception of some of your competitors).

So how do you find out?

Here’s a novel suggestion; behave like an analyst and research it. Surf your competitors web sites and read their press releases to see which analyst or analyst companies get a mention. Google “your technology area” + “analyst” and also get a Google news feed with those two terms together. Enter your technology area as a search item on analyst web sites. Ask the journalists that cover your area which analysts they speak to about it. You might even ask some of the analysts you know who they respect (some will help, some wont, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get).

And then when you have a list, proceed to create a person-to-person relationship with each of them if you can.

And here’s the point:

Analysts arrive at their own opinions and you cannot stop that happening (unless their opinions are for sale, in which case they don’t really have opinions; just open palms). If one of them concludes that your technology is inferior or that your company is flaky, then you really need the relationship. If you don’t have a relationship with the analyst, you have no chance of limiting the damage from that. You may not be able to change his or her mind, but you may be able to get them to tone down their message.

A long long time ago - around 1989 - I published a report which slammed the Oracle database (version 6, I seem to remember). Oracle marketing staff in the UK weren’t sure how to deal with it, because it was definitely costing them business. What they decided to do was exactly right. They called me in and did their best to forge a relationship with me. They made sure I was briefed on every new Oracle development. After a year or two they even hired me to give the odd presentation.

They neither tried to bribe me, nor to silence me, they just established a relationship and gave me as much attention as they could. They gave me their point of view and I listened. They did not try to argue me into submission.

There is no sense in arguing with an analyst. You may as well try cutting water with a sword.

Note: This posting is one in a series of postings that deals with the topic of dealing with analysts. Click here for links to other postings in the series.