Running Afoul of Industry Research

James McGovern, an outspoken enterprise IT blogger, recently outlined his latest frustration with software vendor sales tactics. His candid post offers an example of how good industry research can go bad in the hands of some vendors. Let’s take his beef with security software vendors.

Mr. McGovern is frustrated with security software vendors pitching SOX compliance as a reason to buy. To him, it’s cliche. Fair enough. Yet, I’ve seen several research studies linking enterprise security with compliance, and IM security with compliance, and so on…

For example: a February 2006 pulse of Fortune 1000 Information Security organizations by TheInfoPro found that outbound content compliance “seems to be getting significant interest with 9% of study participants engaged in pilot activities and another 9% with near-term deployment plans.” [Tekrati news story]. Analyst Richard Stiennon also examines compliance within current security hot spots in a recent post to his Threat Chaos blog at ZDNet. By contrast, analyst Mike Rothman deemed compliance a red herring in the security market at his Security Incite blog.

Now, if I worked for a security vendor, I might have highlighted these freely available research findings to my sales and marketing teams, urging them to update the company sales tools and call scripts. And therein lies the danger. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these research findings. There is, however, great danger in using them out of context. Each analyst finding is based on looking at specific market segments from a defined point of view with a specific audience in mind.

At least two morals to this story. First, acquire analyst consulting time — otherwise known as advisory or inquiry time — when purchasing industry research. Use the time to make sure your marketing and sales people understand how the market researchers intended their findings to be applied. This is just as important as letting product management use the time. If you’re drawing on free research, follow up with the authoring analyst before you take the goods and run with them. Deal with the fact that some will give you free follow up, perhaps through blog comments, while others will rely on some paid consulting time to help feed their kids.

Second, consider incorporating blogs into customer and prospect sales intelligence. Blogs are a new frontier ripe for customer research. Don’t blow the entire blog research budget on tracking your own company’s reputation or trying to guess competitor moves. Instead, allocate some funds to analyzing customers and prospects through blogs. You’ll be able to plug smarter data into your customer/market profiles.

Taking these steps may not avoid infuriating sales targets like Mr. McGovern every time. They can, however, greatly improve the odds of presenting a compelling value proposition.