I want to point you to Vinnie Mirchandani’s Deal Architect blog, for a clear and refreshing narrative on analyst influence in the real world.
Lately, there has been a growing emphasis on industry analyst influence — how to influence analysts, how to measure analyst influence, which analysts to influence, what analyst influence matters, etc. The implication is that influence is a major part of the analyst business. I disagree. I contend that influence — and its ugly cousin, message testing — is not the point of the analyst business. At best, influence is a by-product of a successful analyst business.
I’ve always maintained that vendors profit the most from the industry analysts by making them part of fact-based decision processes throughout the vendor company. That means tapping the right analysts to participate in decisions and discussions within the right parts of the vendor organization and at the right time.
I wonder if we’re reaching a point where there are two types of vendors: those who value analysts as part of ongoing business and operations decision processes, and those who value analysts as part of marketplace influence and spin.
Bringing in external advisors — analysts, consultants, integrators — is always messy.
But so is devising vendor-analyst relationship programs based solely on multi-tier, dynamically weighted, bifurcated, theoretically validated models of analyst influence mojo.
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