Analyst relations teams often lack internal support. I was surprised when that comment was viewed by 16,000 professionals in just three days, and 21,000 before the week was up on LinkedIn. The audience attracted by a rich discussion on the post, which involved several of the smartest analysts and analyst relations people I know. I wrote Read more about 21,069 reasons why analyst relations needs more than budget[…]
Gartner’s rapid evolution poses three profound challenges for analyst relations managers, and this blog is changing course to respond to them. Gartner’s role-based research, the rapid rise of user reviews and the consequent impact on marketing communications are all immense shifts. 1. Unlimited impact of role-based research. We don’t know what the full impact will Read more about Gartner’s symposium shows three new challenges for analyst relations managers[…]
You’re thinking it, aren’t you? You wonder if paying analyst firms will improve your placement in comparative reports, get you included in other reports, get you mentioned in speeches, and recommended when analysts talk to buyers. You don’t want to insult them, but you want to know. Isn’t it all pay for play? We Read more about Guest Post: How to Pay Analyst Firms for Better Coverage[…]
Professor Efrem Mallach, Kea Company’s research director, has managed Win-Loss Analysis for many vendors. After a recent Gartner blog post, I asked for his thoughts. Best practice win-loss At the best-practice provider, writes Mallach: “our WLA program was totally separate from sales management. We promised sales reps that their data would remain confidential. Once word Read more about Efrem Mallach: Win-Loss Analysis must be separate from sales management[…]
What have Box, Dropbox, Nest, Evernote, Cloudera, Palantir and Instagram in common? They were all designated a Cool Vendor by Gartner. So, what happened to the Cool Vendors? We identified over 1250 tech companies that were nominated as a Cool Vendor by Gartner. We surveyed some of them to evaluate both the impact the designation Read more about Gartner’s Cool Vendors says winning boosts sales[…]
IT megavendors should see their loss of the ‘Powerhouse’ label as a more than a shift in rhetoric. Many analysts think the emergence of cloud solutions is eroding their market power. For a long time, high technology analyst firms used to discuss the powerhouse vendors. These were colossal firms, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. What Read more about Will the “Powerhouse” vendors survive?[…]
Over the course of 2014 Kea Company hosted a series of webinars on the topic of Sales Enablement. Robin Schaffer and Andrew Reed discuss how to get your Sales Enablement programme going, and share ‘war-stories’ from their own extensive experience. […]
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant can have a powerful impact on IT vendor sales cycles – anointing some vendors as a prime candidate for a sales opportunity while denying other vendors even a chance to bid. In order to exploit positive placement on a Magic Quadrant and mitigate negative placement, vendor sales executives need to work with AR to prepare and train their sales teams on certain basics about the Magic Quadrant. […]
Over the course of 2014 Kea Company hosted a series of webinars on the topic of Sales Enablement. In this edition, Bram Weerts and Dave Eckert go in-depth on why Analyst Relations professionals should put in the effort to set up a Sales Enablement programme. […]
No story can be instrumental unless it is first and foremost entertaining. That’s the message I took away from a conference held by the Creativity Marketing Centre (@CreativityMktg) at ESCP Europe (@ESCPeurope), the world’s first business school, at its campus in London last week. The event brought together some of the most impressive academics working on Read more about Like Pike Place? Influencer marketing needs to be more entertaining?[…]