Saw this on Catherine's blog: Forrester's Charlene Li advises not to rely on analysts to ask for briefings.
There are a couple of reasons why [emailing directly to the analyst] isn't always a good idea. First, you're relying on the analyst to have their act together and be able to respond to your request.
After this amusing admission, she also provides some tips for better briefings. AR 101 surely, but always worth having in the back of your AR mind. Norma made similar recommendations a while back.
See also the following posts:
- AR 101: briefing analysts
- Blon-idc and briefing 101
- Redmonk: how to brief analysts
- Is Gartner subtly going pay-to-play for briefings? (update: they're no longer subtle about it!)
- Should vendors institute a pay-to-brief policy?
This starts to look like a body of good practices around briefings... and no more excuses for bad briefings!
PS: we've added links to AR jobs on the left-hand-side-bar.
12 comments:
Best way to get a briefing is through senior sales channels. Analysts in forrester answer to sales. They are inherently arrogant and are likely to ignore you, blow it off at the last minute or miss it all together if your communication is with them only. Get a sales person in there and they will ensure the brefing happens if they think there is a chance you will sign on to their services.
Moreover, pretend you have a genuine interest in buying their services - they will roll out the red carpet for you... you can get away with at least two briefings until they know you're playing games. Then you can drop a few $$$ on them for subsequent briefings, or start playing the same game with IDC, AMR et al - they all fall for the "interested buyer" approach.
Us enterprise customers are paying attention to the analyst camp and are becoming disappointed in the lack of ethics in this space.
We fully expect that when we buy research, all options are presented to us, not just ones where the analyst collected fees from vendors...
Honestly, it's just not that hard to get a briefing. Just fill out the form and give a good reason why that analyst in particular should be interested
thearpro,
i am a well-known analyst and only take briefings from my paying clients and vendors prepared to buy my services. any second tier jo schmo vendor gets shunted to the associate pool to waste their time. all my peers and colleagues do the same. fact of analyst life i'm afraid. soon you'll be briefing with cut price indian analysts over the phone (if you're not already). the industry is dying...sorry to be the purveyor of bad news
Hi Anne O'Nymous,
I guess you've proved James' point.
Somebody here seems to have a serious chip on their shoulder. Former analyst? Wannabe analyst?
A friend of mine who is a Big Firm analyst told me, whenever a vendor dangles the "...and we also might be interested in becoming a client" line, he ALWAYS declines the briefing. At best, accepting the briefing under such circumstances could send the message of "pay for play". At best it sends the message that the analyst is as stupid as the angry Anonymous poster above thinks. He has a standard response, which he asked me to share: "Once you have had the client discussion with Sales, get back to me about a briefing, whether or not you decide to buy. We don't want there to be any confusion that a client relationship is a way to buy briefing access".
OK, so that is one analyst. Are there analysts at other firms dumb enough to fall for that carrot? Maybe, but anybody dumb enough(and unethical enough -- remember the old saying, you can't scam an honest man) to fall for it twice isn't smart enough to be an analyst, IMHO.
you just missed the point completely. We get our sales people to qualify the potential would-be briefer - i.e. "what is their budget, who else do they buy, what are their needs" etc., then make a decision on whether it's worth an hour of our time to meet with them. The whole purpose of having sales is to intelligently suss these guys out and not fall for the obvious "we might be interested" bullsh*t. Having said that, most vendors worth their salt will buy a portfolio of analyst services, so if they do not buy, then it's likely that we're not good enough...
>you just missed the point completely.
Is that the 'whiff' of rapid back-pedaling that I hear?
>We get our sales people ...
"We"? You know, you're really not fooling anybody.
Sorry but lets be clear here - the fasted way to a briefing with Forrester is to contact a sales person and at least suggest you may be interested in signing up.....
Reality - period.
Gartner and IDC same....
Thanks for talking sense here. The only person fooling themselves is that anonymous post who thinks there is an ource of objectivity and morality left in the analyst business. It's pay-for-play 100% these days. Any thoughts on Yankee Group anyone? Hear there are lots of departures recently...
Actually I don't think that blanket statement that "its 100% pay for play these days is accurate". Though I do think the boundaries are somewhat more 'sqiushy' than Duncan accepts.
What I do think is accurate is that the analyst influence dynamic is changing. In my own area of interest (ECM) - CMS Watch and Burton are probably the two most important analyst firms now as they are genuinely independent, but more importantly driven pretty much entirely by report sales and related consulting to buyers not vendors - and they are very successful!
Likewise I (as an ex-Ovum analyst) have been very suprised indeed by the 'success' of my blog ( www.doingitbetter.blogspot.com ). I did it simply to have somewhere to write to when I left Ovum. But now it has taken on a life of its own, and is a highly referenced source of ECM thoughts etc - I also get just as many speaking invites, briefing requests as I did when at Ovum....Not planned - but happening nonetheless...
Boutiques and blogs seem to be the future of industry analysts. No doubting the Gartners and IDC's will continue to be big businesses but they have competition now that is much trickier to tackle.
I find it curious that Charlene Li believes she can conduct a worthwhile briefing session in 30 minutes. Moreover, she seems to have the attitute that these are for the sole benefit of her asking the supplier some generic questions. Isn't it her JOB as an analyst to listen to suppliers and have a deeper discussion than what she believes she can have in 30 minutes?
Also - 30 requests per week? C'mon! If each analyst set aside 6 hours per week to have 6 1-hour briefings, all suppliers would get their airspace and the analyst would get some decent education on the market. From some of the reports I've seen these days, most of them need it -:)
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