Repositioning your ‘dot’ on a Gartner Magic Quadrant does not happen just because you have a great product or service. It takes information, a plan, Analyst Relations execution and avoiding mistakes.
Over the course of 2014 we hosted a series of webinars on the topic of Sales Enablement. In this edition, Bram Weerts and SageCircle co-founder Dave Eckert go in-depth on why Analyst Relations professionals should put in the effort to set up a Sales Enablement programme.
Of course they do. Didn’t we just manage to convince the first 50 customers to buy our solution? Yes, you did. But now ask yourself what the reasons for closing those deals were. What were the parameters involved in getting your customers to evaluate the products in the first place?
In a world that is dominated by “push-advertising” and that includes an overwhelming choice of products and services that need to be evaluated by the buyer, it is increasingly hard to find ways to stand out from the crowd. According to many studies we are now facing a world that is so saturated with advertising…
Analyst consulting days (aka SAS or strategic advisory service in Gartnerese) have a high risk/reward profile for vendor analyst relations (AR) teams. We often receive questions from AR practitioners asking why AR would want to spend the money on an analyst consulting day.
In any business environment the phrase ‘best practice’ sooner or later comes up when people are talking about planning, execution and measurement of business activities. According to Wikipedia “a best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark….
Analyst Relations (AR) programs typically do not have sufficient resources (e.g., spokespeople bandwidth for analyst interactions, AR headcount, and budget) for the tasks at hand. Kea Company see underinvestment in AR pretty much across the board regardless of market (e.g., services, software, or hardware), geography, size, or stage of maturity.
For this Coffee Talk we spoke to Eva Hörtrich, Senior Manager, Global Analyst Relations at Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications).