Best practice at analyst briefings: less common than worst practice

There’s always a lot of interest in best practices for analyst-vendor briefings. Sadly, everyone has their own partial view, and sometimes it’s hard to work out the things that work right for you, but that might not work out for someone else. What works in Canada may not work in China (as we’ll be discussing next month), and what works for communications may not work in semiconductors.

That means it’s always very valuable when people try to draw out their own experiences. It’s always interesting, for example, to company the analyst take with the spokesperson’s experience.

In this document, Ron Exler from the Robert Frances Group gives his take, outlining a number of strong tips. It’s certainly worth paying attention to, as Dave Stein has pointed out.

Donald Taylor, on the other hand, gives a humourous and ironic take on the spokesperson’s often wrong-headed perspective. I especially liked this: “Check Technorati for the latest hot buzzwords and apply those to your product/company. Hot terms right now? SaaS, gaming, social networking and Britney Spears. An ideal product would link all 4 of these.”

Sadly, Donald’s comments seem the most ‘on the money’ to me. Over several years, I’ve seen little or no improvement in how effective companies seem to be in their first attempts at briefing analysts.

For that reason we’re running a free call this month, on Thursday June 20, on selecting and preparing spokespeople. Drop us an email if you’d like to join the call.

Duncan Chapple

Duncan Chapple is the preeminent consultant on optimising international analyst relations and the value created by analyst firms. As SageCircle research director, Chapple directs programs that assess and increase the business value of relationships with industry analysts and sourcing advisors.