Anticipate Relevant Outcomes Through New Media – It isn’t difficult

Engaging with analysts brings in a variety of expectations. The most common and easily anticipated outcome is a positive report on the service provider; ironically not a balanced report. Any negative will be viewed as a potent explosive, and every effort will be undertaken to dilute or soften the ‘blow’. The truth however remains, unchanged!

With the pervasive forces in the ecosystem indicating how the Airbnb’s and Uber’s are now changing the dynamics of the game, every other exec would like to draw an analogy to these enterprising, gutsy organizations. The fundamentals of their success remains applicable here as well – Engage with stakeholders and set the right expectations in countries of operations.

A lot of these are easier said than done. All the theories that apply for firms to be successful in this and the next era – the mantra of Collaborate, Cooperate, Cohesiveness have already been successfully used with analysts by several service providers. These remain the critical must-haves of success when building meaningful relationships with analysts.

Leverage effectively – the platforms are right in front of you

Several opportunities today exist when AR professionals wish to leverage relationships with analysts that cover multiple businesses. The basic ‘R’s will continue to remain invaluable – Reports, Recommendations, References; but new mediums bring forth enormous opportunity; such as leveraging Twitter elaborating how useful you found responses to the Enquiry.

Or write a brief post on LinkedIn, appreciating the refreshing insights received during the analyst breakfast session – which was handy for your SBU head. Or retweet the purchased report, with relevant bite-sized comments that would be useful for everyone in the industry. Several of my recent learnings have been through retweets that brought essentials data points to my table instantly. Don’t let twitter handles be the prerogative of the Corporate ‘social media team’, don’t let these remain dormant with pithy facts – but get them activated to make it much more interesting, nugget-driven and refreshed.

Not just for external folks, but aim and repeat for internal stakeholders as well. Your internal communications team would be more than happy to partner with you and provide the necessary support for mailers, creatives that can be extremely powerful for several leaders. Every firm would have platforms such as yammer, news bulletins, messenger boards and so on. Don’t forget, it will also be a huge educative process and get rousing support for all the efforts and acknowledgment received by analysts. This results into a huge cascading effect – which in turn brings out even newer, unheard of customer success stories, innovation undertaken by a bunch of reticent geeks in a store room, a novel approach for a faster go-to-market, a new solution that needs validation which you could take to the analysts, and so much more.

You pay analyst firms for these anyway, why not use the services. Analysts will love every such single opportunity that you take to them. They thrive on such instances, and thereby you’ll build a stronger bond and quicker recall.

AR teams have to doggedly, and consistently take multiple steps to ensure they reach audiences with a simple and a non-overwhelming approach. What needs to be done is to move up from the stereotype platforms and go on a war footing leveraging new mediums. You will have critics who will not support or haggle, but once you strengthen your lasers with adequate substance, the organization’s engines will rev up to support all your initiatives and be willing to go out of the way to support your efforts.

Wouldn’t it be a stronger reinforcement yet again, which reflects how AR takes every trending element available and get the maximum return on time investment – when implemented simply and effectively?

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Suyog Shetty