2024 has started with a bump for Gartner and Forrester, whose investors are anxious, and for many others. I just said farewell to CCGroup and now look for new clients and opportunities alongside exciting projects at SageCircle, LLC. This new reality forces us to do more with less. With each issue of my LinkedIn monthly newsletter, I want to give you a snapshot of what I’m working on – and encourage you to get in touch if you’d like to work with me.
Gartner & Forrester struggle to capture their value
One of the biggest mistakes AR people have made is equating analyst influence with whomever Fortune 1000 CIOs spend their advisory budgets. Analysts create a huge amount of value, but analyst firms only capture a minority of the value they create. On Tuesday, SageCircle founder Carter Lusher (who is also looking for a new role) and I will discuss the news from Gartner and Forrester’s recent results.
Helping AR teams to fix bottlenecks
For more than five years at CCGroup, I ran dozens of outsourced AR programs. In almost every case, they could double their impact through solving key bottlenecks. I’m now consulting with AR programs to make the same changes.
A classic example is just not addressing the analysts’ information needs. Looking at the recent Analysts Advocacy Survey, for example, I see analysts hungry for more information about go-to-market and ecosystem strategies.
One other example is simple project management tools. I am a huge fan of ARchitect and Spotlight OZ, but I can’t afford either, and even if I did, they lack essential project management features found in Asana, Microsoft Planner or Monday.com.
Customer feedback, proactivity, trust, and understanding are common hurdles for more mature programs.
Ian Scott and I will speak about the five key bottlenecks at a webinar on February 29th. To register, book your seat at: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a75aa27f-dbad-493f-ab4b-feda7f7f2c68@d98df7c0-89e7-46f8-b7ab-72fe1f6d821f
This will be the first in a series of “coffee talk” sessions I’m hosting. Please take this poll to help decide on the next topics.
Launching a mastermind group
I have offered to start a mastermind group service for the Association for Analyst Relations Partnership. Initially, we’ll look for five to six active Association members to start the first group. If we have more people, we’ll look to open up new groups. Each group will meet weekly for three months. That means each session agrees on the topic for next week, and each member contributes his or her insights and pain points.
I’ve spoken to several people about the idea and possible topics for discussion are:
- Getting a better deal from your Gartner renewal
- AR’s role in commissioning and licensing analyst content
Please message me or Jasmine Richardsto find out more.
Understanding analyst impact on M&A
I spoke with Sophia Furber and Alexandra Santos about a study of 103 M&A professionals on analyst impact on M&A. Click here to access the recording. It was great to do that a day before discussing the Informa Tech reverse takeover of TechTarget, which a few people really misunderstood.
Looking for work?
Although I’m looking for a full-time role, I’m also available to help if you are looking for either employment or if you’d like to work with me on a project we can deliver together through SageCircle. Don’t be shyif you want to speak.
Blog co-authors wanted
I’m writing a blog with a high-level outline of tasks for #analystrelations in the #MagicQuadrant process. I hit a bit of a wall with it. Want to help me out? Read more here and get in touch if you are interested. There are some other topics in the queue too, based on development sessions I led recently at CCGroup.
