Forrester Research’s Kevin Lucas raises a good question: what core corporate business value can your analyst relations program deliver? His point is that AR programs shouldn’t commit to delivering sales value unless there’s good reason to do so. As logical as that advice may sound, I don’t agree with it.

Analyst relations programs can be designed to deliver on a wide range of business objectives. There’s no reason to shy away from aligning AR with the customer purchase decision process. In fact, that has been the basis of the analyst business — and analyst relations — since the late 80s.

What you can’t do, is bolt sales performance expectations onto an existing AR program. Objectives are fundamental to how you design, staff, fund and measure an AR program.

A legacy AR program — perhaps focused primarily on what’s said during a conference, or improving where your dot is placed on quadrants — is not going to shorten sales cycles tomorrow because somebody issues an edict today.

The magic wand scenario just doesn’t fly.

That doesn’t mean that an AR program can’t deliver sales value. It means that delivering sales value will take time. It will take intention. It will take planning.

Kevin asks a good question. It’s up to each of us to come up with a good answer.

Republished from my Influencer50 blog, Sway.

An application called MrTweet caught my attention over the weekend, mostly due to a discussion on influence initiated by its creator, Steve Ming Yeow Ng. Check out the discussion at the MrTweet blog. 

Two important points from the discussion: 

1. Influence is in the eye of the audience. 

2. No such thing as a universal grade for influence. 

These points resonate with Josh Greenbaum’s comments on influence and popularity,  as well as the mantra shared by Duncan Brown, Nick Hayes, me and the rest of the crew at Influencer50.

As for MrTweet: I’m on the record as a died-in-the-wool skeptic on these kinds of applications. None have given me worthwhile recommendations or insights to date. Now MrTweet is in the hot seat. I’ve followed MrTweet and will share my thoughts once it returns something. As with so many of these social network applications, MrTweet puts an awfully big stake in the ground:

“I’ll suggest to you which influencers and followers you should check out.”     

OK, MrTweet. Pimp my twitterverse.Republished from my Influencer50 blog, Sway.

Duncan Brown raises some good points about the evolution of blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). Blogging is becoming the online publishing platform of choice in many industries, from politics to pharma. This has a couple of implications for influencer programs in 2009.

Top of my list, is that 2009 should see the end of consternation over classifying influencers as “bloggers” or in terms of their other roles in a market or community, be it their job title, employer, profession or expertise.

The crossover point started to become clear in mainstream tech media relations when you could no longer distinguish between columnists and bloggers at ZDNet and other top-10 media networks.

In analyst relations, Gartner brought the point home a few months ago with the launch of the Gartner Blog Network.Trust me, no one is dithering over whether to reclassify Gartner employees from analysts to bloggers.

Sure, some people will be best classified as “bloggers”, just as we still have syndicated columnists from the hardcopy print days. In general though, the confusion over doctor-lawyer-blogger man-thief should die down.Republished from my Influencer50 blog, Sway.

There’s some interesting groundwork being done on redefining long-held ideas about influencers and tech purchase decisions. Two of the blogs I recommend, read and sometimes comment on are Influencer50’s Infuse and SAP’s Everyday Influence. Both use custom models of the tech decision process, and map influencers to each stage of the decision process. The ICT industry analysts are an important component of these emerging influencer models, and figure prominently — though not exclusively — in several phases. Examples include analysts influencing short-lists and validating IT strategies and pricing.

I’d like to see the models extend into the final phase of a decision process: the post-purchase phase. I think of this as the window between signing the contract and getting onboard with maintenance. It’s a delicate stage: as Todd Olson (6th Sense Analytics) said last week, “it’s easy to make recommendations — it’s hard to execute them.”

Historically, the post-purchase phase has been “owned” by sales support and customer satisfaction. Analyst relations has been kept clear of these buyers. Yet, social media is challenging many corporate controls, including customer commentary shortly after signing a contract. A quick look at Twitter, expert communities, and review sites shows how much norms are changing. Post-purchase buzz is becoming a big deal. I’ve got to think that analysts and analyst relations can play an important role here, whether through social media or offline relationships.

So, where will the industry analysts figure in this new world of post-purchase buzz? To what degree will they influence the post-purchase phase? What are the opportunities and risks for analysts? for analyst relations?

I’ve started my summer reading early this year, with a round of books on social media and influencer marketing. Please speak up, if you can recommend other books in these areas.

Groundswell - Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. “It’s a book by two Forrester analysts with practical, data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies like blogs, social networks, and YouTube. Featuring 25 full case studies, a complete road map for social strategy, and data from around the world.” - excerpt from the book microsite

The New Influencers - A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media, by Paul Gillen. “The New Influencers is a book for corporate marketers and executives who want to understand and engage with the vast new channels of influence that are emerging online.” - excerpt from the book microsite

Influencer Marketing - Who Really Influences Your Customers, by Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown. “The book demonstrates clearly, authoritatively and with numerous real examples Seth Godin’s widely accepted view that it’s ‘useless to advertise to anyone except connectors with influence’… For all those involved in marketing and sales this book will be an essential analysis of how to identify who has influence, how they apply it, and how you can turn it to your advantage.” - excerpt from the book microsite

I was on hand Tuesday evening when the Churchill Club served up drinks, dinner, and a panel on “trends in trust and influence” among business leaders. The panel, much like the apricot chicken on skewer, was interesting because of its notable contrasts, sitting side by side:

Richard Edelman (Edelman) spoke about the dramatic shifts in public trust revealed by the 9th annual study, “Edelman Trust Barometer 2008.” He touched on several findings. To paraphrase a few: We trust social peers (”people like me”) the most, followed by NGOs and businesses. People have far less trust in their governments than a year ago, except in Asia. The most trusted media channels are the ones used the most: newspapers, television news, and business magazines. A digital divide exists in trust, tied to differences in emerging and mature industrial economies. He also shared his personal views about how these trends in trust affect advertising, the news business, corporate spokespeople and corporate reputation.

Dr. Robert Cialdini (ASU, Influence At Work) emphasized that trust is a participative sport. Do something about it. Learn how trust works, when it works, how to build it through listening and language. His research indicates that trust is based on a personal history of repeated contact. (This reinforces Edelman’s findings on the most trusted media sources being the most frequently used). Yet, in many situations, we have only moments to establish initial credibility. Learn to master the opportunities.

Chris Kelly (Facebook) and Katie Hafner, (New York Times) each mined their employer’s high profile experiences in breaking faith with loyal audiences for kernels of truth about trust. Both were candid enough to acknowledge that the way forward at their company entails as much trial-and-error as grand design. Mistakes will be made. Both agreed that a rapid, genuine response from the top helps speed the repair work. Hafner was put off by some of Edelman’s advertising and Cialdini’s influence tactics, on the grounds of manipulating trust. She was politely rebuffed, either unable or unwilling to deliver a knock-out punch.

Anastasia Goodstein (Ypulse) spoke to the nature of trust among online youth. Her research finds them less cynical, less fearful, more open, more creative, and more experimental than any other generation online today. They trust popular online environments. For example, they don’t question whether social networking sites, gaming sites, branded content sites, etc. are protecting their personal privacy and the content they post — unless they’ve been burned. She pointed out the need for companies to acknowledge this unique window of trust and act responsibly.

I came away with several conclusions.
1. Each generation judges online reputation differently. What is horrific to one generation may be anecdotal to another.
2. While the specifics about who we trust are constantly evolving, the underlying mechanics of why we trust are fairly constant.
3. Stock and industry analyst reports still have very strong credibility overall as information sources. By contrast, blogs — and most new communications channels — still have very weak credibility overall, except in certain countries.
4. “But” can be a powerful word.

You can order a CD or video of the event from the Churchill Club. Also, check out the Edelman web site, for a free podcast of Richard Edelman and Laurence Evans discussing the report, Edelman Trust Barometer 2008.

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.