As someone who’s spent decades in the analyst relations field, I’ve observed a growing disconnect between how analyst services operate and what today’s technology buyers actually need. This was the focus of a March 2025 webinar I hosted with Susan Tonkin from Wrike and Patrick Lethert, where we explored how analyst firms can better serve the entire market spectrum in today’s rapidly changing landscape.
The Enterprise-First Challenge
In our discussion, we identified a fundamental problem: analyst firms have largely oriented their business models around serving large enterprises, both as research consumers and as the vendors who sell to them.
Susan Tonkin highlighted how “analyst firms tend to focus on the largest vendors. More time is spent with the largest vendors and with the largest buyers.” While firms make the playing field level with free briefings, Susan noted that “larger vendors in the space pay for extra time, right? They buy strategy days. They buy fancier subscriptions.”
I’ve seen this first-hand in my work with vendors of various sizes. The “rich get richer” phenomenon means the giant vendors own more and more of analysts’ attention. As I mentioned during our conversation, “If you’re only a $5 billion company, you’re hardly in the conversation anymore. Because the $50 billion companies are owning the conversations.”
Patrick Lethert shared a telling example from his experience: “We were in a budgetary situation and forced to cancel some marketing programs and one very major analyst firm was a casualty of that specifically because they only speak to the biggest of the big.” His company’s product was “a market leader in the mid-market, but we weren’t as competitive with the hexagons of the world at the very top.”
The Information Gap
For mid-market buyers, this enterprise-first approach means they’re often operating with incomplete information. Susan explained that when mid-market buyers lack fancy subscriptions, “they’re oftentimes getting their information from vendors. So they’re seeing another lens on the market as well… that information is then filtered through yet another lens, which is through the vendor lens.”
Patrick detailed how this creates dependency on problematic alternative sources: “Obviously there’s a lot of it out there, but most of it suffers or at least potentially suffers some issues around credibility and objectivity.” He described review sites with cherry-picked testimonials, vendor-sponsored content, and “pay-to-play” analysts producing what he aptly described as “words for hire.”
I think of this in terms of Gresham’s Law: “When there are fake coins in circulation, people hold on to the real ones. They don’t spend them. So then all you have is the fake coins out in circulation.” While much analyst content behind paywalls is excellent, the most freely-accessible information isn’t always the most reliable.
The AI Complication
This challenge is becoming even more acute with the rise of AI. Patrick raised an important concern: “As less credible and less objective information proliferates and the great information that is created by some of the analysts is behind paywalls, all of your AI models are going to become more and more dependent on the information that is publicly available.”
Susan observed how this dynamic could reward more rigorous analyst firms: “The firms that are producing real detailed content will be sources for AI to go look at and synthesize if they have access to it. But the firms that are really just “top 10″s, “top project management tools”… probably are not going to be as meaty of sources for AI.”
The Mid-Market Opportunity
Despite these challenges, we identified a significant opportunity. The mid-market represents an untapped resource for analyst firms and a chance to create more value for the entire ecosystem.
Susan eloquently explained why mid-market companies are particularly valuable: “Their needs evolve faster. In the mid-market, sometimes mid-market companies are a little more willing to try the cutting edge stuff, to do some experiments and see what works and doesn’t.” She added that mid-market companies are “a little more willing to be a case study… and share what they’re doing.”
Patrick reinforced this point: “A lot of the cutting edge technology… is not going to be necessarily implemented by the global organizations who have long and intricate processes. It’s going to be the smaller and the more nimble organizations that bring that cutting edge technology in and validate those use cases early on in the game.”
As I pointed out, “We’d like to think Gartner dominates, but Gartner dominates the high end enterprise. It dominates in the global 500, it dominates in the Fortune 1000.” This leaves a vast swath of the market underserved.
A Path Forward
Based on our conversation, we believe analyst firms need to rethink several aspects of their business model:
Content accessibility and pricing: Susan suggested “ungated content” could reach more people: “Taking that out from behind the form reaches more people. It’s the same dilemma we have as marketers… but you get to more people when it’s ungated.”
Content relevance: As I mentioned, “Analysts need to start writing differently, and they’ve got to produce different content that is more aligned to what mid-market people want.” Susan suggested firms could “publish more of the inquiry insights data… how often they’re seeing certain topics come up, how often they’re seeing vendors mentioned.”
Engagement models: Susan proposed “a version for mid-market companies where you fill out a form… and they send you some things to read… and maybe there’s a 30-minute phone call at the end of it, and it has a much smaller price tag.” Patrick cautioned against making these services too automated, advising firms to “avoid making this as low touch and as automated as possible.”
Interactive tools: Susan highlighted how “subscribers have access to those type of things, but maybe those don’t get down to the mid-market buyer.” Patrick added that “the idea of content that is interactive even if it’s interactive on a lesser level in the transactional or non-subscription world is a huge opportunity.”
ROI analysis: Susan noted ROI information is “often there to fill in some data by someone who’s proving to the people with the purse strings… so here is some data and it’s backed by a third party.” Patrick observed that analyst firms are “so much better suited” to provide this type of content with credibility than vendors creating their own calculators.
Creating a Virtuous Circle
What’s particularly exciting about this opportunity is the potential to create a positive feedback loop. As I explained, “More clients equals more revenue… You get more feedback so the quality of your research is improving. Your research is being used more, so you’re realizing what is working, what is not working. All of that produces more insight, and then more insight multiplied by more readers equals more influence.”
Susan shared how Frost & Sullivan, her former employer, realized this potential decades ago when they “shifted the business model and added the Frost awards to reach the marketing budget that they were not reaching.” She noted how “the Gartner Magic Quadrant is largely driven by vendor marketing budgets” and that “it’s a very lucrative market to get out to all those mid-market marketing budgets as well.”
Patrick highlighted a practical aspect of this opportunity: “What’s really interesting in all this in terms of working downstream is that the content and the research is being done. We’re not talking about creating new processes. We’re really talking, in many cases about just packaging information and solutions differently.”
Looking Ahead
The analyst industry has tremendous value to offer, but its current business model restricts that value to a small portion of the market. By embracing more inclusive approaches to content, pricing, and engagement, analyst firms can expand their influence while better serving the full spectrum of technology buyers.
As I concluded in our discussion, “Anything that we can do to move analyst firms an inch forward gives them momentum that allows this virtuous circle to develop.” Patrick agreed that broader reach would help the AR people “be able to demonstrate value at the executive level in the organization,” while Susan emphasized that “democratizing that, making it available to more people might be a really great way to reach that new audience.”
The technology buying process continues to evolve rapidly, and the analyst firms that adapt by embracing a more inclusive approach will remain relevant and valuable partners in that journey. The potential rewards are substantial: more comprehensive insights for buyers of all sizes, greater market influence and revenue for analysts, and more strategic guidance for the entire technology ecosystem. That’s an outcome worth pursuing.
