Advisory Insider: 9 Reasons AR Should Think About Their Relationships with Advisory Sales Teams

If you are in AR and you don’t know (or don’t care) what motivates advisory sales people – and what they have the authority provide -- you are missing out on a lot of value

Before Quantum, AI/machine learning, big data, cloud, social media, mobile devices, client/server, object-based development (but after punch-cards and COBOL), I was a consulting partner for an early generation advisory services firm.  In the early 1990’s, I remember a business trip where a sales colleague said something to a VP of marketing that fell flat with her, but left an indelible impact on me.

“At our firm, research is vendor-independent.  Every analyst is vendor-independent.  The CEO is vendor-independent.  Our ombuds and governance teams are vendor-independent.  The only person in our company who is not vendor-independent and is solely focused on your value is me.”

The client let that pearl slip by without comment or curiosity.  She never probed for what that meant or how it could help her.  In my 30+ years in the advisory services industry, at 5 different firms, I saw it every day.  Salespeople fighting internal battles for their clients that AR teams never knew or witnessed.   Sales working with internal stakeholders to the benefit of their clients.  Bottom-line: AR teams that are not aware of how their sales teams are empowered, incentivized, and motivated are missing major value opportunities in their advisory firm relationships.  If you better understand the advisory sales process (and sales’ empowerments) you will know what you can ask for and how you can accelerate value.  To be clear, this does not imply quid pro quo (spend more get something special).  The salespeople I’ve experienced are interested in steady, predictable, long-term relationships where AR teams advocate for them as effectively as sales advocates for AR/clients.

Advisory firms have grown remarkably in size, scale, scope and complexity in the past decade.    Forrester revenues have doubled.  Gartner has tripled.   IDC is growing impressively.  Smaller firms are emerging with frequency and capturing accelerating levels of attention and investment.  In parallel with revenues, the major firms have dramatically grown their advisory, consulting and product portfolios.  For the big advisory players, this means that bureaucracy, administration and inspection has grown proportionate to their scale.  Where vendors once had a small handful of key analysts to engage, they now have dozens or hundreds in their orbits.  Where once vendors had a single support contact, client partner, consulting partner, etc. to support you, there are now dozens of people engaging your firm. 

But only one member of this growing cast … your sales executive … is your dedicated advocate.  Only one person stands apart from rigid vendor independence protocols.  While advisory sales work within strict business ethics rules, they are the only resource inside the advisory firm who is solely focused on driving value specifically for you.  And if AR teams knew just how much leverage, influence and leeway sales had, they’d be far more curious about how to work with them more closely.  So let me help you peer behind the curtain a bit.

This blog outlines 9 things that your salesperson, and your salesperson alone, can do to drive value.  Analysts are not empowered to help here, nor can others in client services, consulting or even corporate management.  Some are simple value adds that you may not be leveraging.  Others are pieces in a more programmatic and strategic approach to drive relationships that the salesperson can trigger on your behalf.  

1)      Proof of Concept (POCs) Access – Advisory firms are building more robust and segmented offerings for IT vendors with products targeted by business size, industry, geography and executive role.  These offerings are often disruptive to the workflows and engagement models that AR often prefers and can generate friction in AR/Advisory Firm relationships as advisory firms aim to work more directly with business stakeholders with or without AR. POCs are a judo move that AR can leverage to assess the value of these new offerings – and more importantly – get access to and begin relationships with new analysts whose expertise can help your executives.  It is a way to pressure test new offerings with your firm.  POCs provide you and your executives with a true customer experience prior to buying and also open new relationships with analysts who are focused specifically on your critical business imperatives.   Think of the POC is a sharply focused trial where you will have access to content, tools, benchmarks, models and advisory sessions with analysts.  It is a way for you to really judge the value and potential impact – with a side benefit of initiating new touch points and contacts whether you ultimately buy the services or not.  It’s a no-lose scenario and your sales team is solely empowered to nominate POCs. 

2)      Content Trials – Prior to a POC, or when a full POC is not needed, viewing and engaging the base research content is helpful.   This may take the form of a published research piece or even an out-of-service inquiry (i.e., with an analyst outside your current contract entitlement).  This can give you a sense if the next step (e.g., POC) makes sense, whether the depth and focus is compelling for your executives and can also serve as a first step in a relationship with new analysts.  Only your sales team can facilitate this access.   

3)      Fortified Inquiry Sessions – When an AR team engages via its contracted services there are significant entitlements to content, tools, benchmarks, data, events and inquiry.  But access is neither limitless nor unbounded.  There may be research initiatives or analysts/teams that are outside the entitlement.  However, there can be legitimate reasons where an inquiry would benefit from additional participation of vendor executives and/or additional analysts who are not part of the current contract.  In these instances, your salesperson can advocate for exceptions and extensions.

4)      Special Product Exemptions – As advisory firms launch more targeted and tightly defined solutions based on role, industry, and geography, certain legacy offerings have been deprioritized or retired.  Other products may be sales-restricted based on company size, geography or area of focus.  However, some of these solutions may contain the coverage, analysis and expertise you need.  They might also represent the optimal economic value for your firm.  Your advisory sales team can work with product, licensing and leadership to build defensible business cases for an exemption that saves money, broadens access and provides compelling points of view. 

5)      Turbo-Charge Conference and Events – The conflicting forces of rising recessionary pressures and post-Covid travel freedoms are making the task of driving face-to-face meetings for AR teams at advisory events more difficult.  Advisory firms are reacting two ways: (1) Fewer analysts are being approved for travel due to economic uncertainty (not Covid) and (2) those that do travel will be most heavily focused on CIO/Buyer meetings (not vendors).  The result is less availability for AR teams who want face-time for them and their executives with analysts.  Your advisory sales team can work on driving meetings, meal meetings, post session quick touches, cocktail meetings, etc.   They have access to the calendars, analyst administrative assistants and have personal relationships with analysts to help.  They also may have access to complementary passes or tickets for executives who may only have a day or two to attend.  AR cannot do this alone.

6)      Lead analysts – For vendors with broad and complex market participation where myriad analyst teams are engaged across a wide array of research domains, a compelling argument can be made that a Lead Analyst is warranted.  Lead analysts provide an overview function that helps make research points-of-view consistent across multiple teams, provide fact-based inputs to individual research efforts and provide AR teams with a research contact who can help make the right connections in the face of accelerating change in analyst coverage areas, team alignment and research deadlines.  To be clear, this analyst remains steadfastly independent.   But they do play a critical role in ensuring coverage and advisory activities have a consistent approach and point of view.  For vendors, it provides an incredibly efficient single-point-of-contact when cross-market, cross analyst, cross team research is underway.  And while your advisory sales team cannot name/appoint a Lead Analyst, they are responsible for nominating and building a defensible case for research consideration.    

7)      Executive Briefings – Regardless of having a Lead Analyst assigned or not, for those large and complex vendors participating in multiple markets and domains, an annual executive briefing is incredibly beneficial to both the vendor and the advisory firm.  These on-site meetings typically include multiple senior executives from the vendor, multiple analysts, analyst managers and senior members from the corporate leadership team.  It is an opportunity for vendors and advisory firms to share visions of the future, share market insights and discuss strategic directions. These sessions are not designed to frame business commitments.  It’s not an opportunity for the sales team to present a proposal for services.  The key benefit is that these sessions build stronger cross-organizational relationships when the vendor and advisory firm are not under the intense pressure of a contract negotiation, specific research initiative or erupting research issue.  Advisory sales both nominates vendors for these sessions and project manages the planning and execution of them.

8)      AR Planning and Strategy Sessions.   It is always a wonderful opportunity to have an analyst participate in or speak to your AR teams as you develop your AR and go-to-market strategies.  But as noted earlier, there is pressure on analyst time/budgets that results in fewer opportunities to do this.  As a start, your advisory sales team can help advocate for analyst participation.  But there is a lot more they can do.  Sales teams that are invited to participate in your meetings can share things like analyst interests outside their work, executive profiles of corporate leaders, profiles of analyst managers and overviews of the obmuds organization.  These are key building blocks for a better relationship – and all incredibly valuable to have in place before flare-ups occurs.

9)      Analytics and Value Measurement – “That which is not measured cannot be improved.”  William Thomson Kelvin was a 19th century physicist, but his observation about measurement applies to the AR/Advisory Sales relationship today.  What is the value of AR?  Is it the location of the vendor in the Wave, MQ, tracker, ranking or list? Is it the revenue impact of an advisory firm’s recommendations to buyers?  Is it the spend influence of analysts?  Is it the depth and breadth of coverage?  Is it the number and intensity of vendor usage and the improved go-to-market decisions made based on that engagement?   AR teams, the executives they support, the analysts they engage and the advisory sales teams that support them often have different visions for what is and is not value in the relationship.  They often use different statistics for how value is gauged and communicated.  But your advisory sales team is the one with the broadest and deepest access to data, tools and analytics to baseline and benchmark value impact.  They have direct access to usage, engagement, coverage, business imperatives, etc.  Your sales team has the expertise to interpret and present the findings.  When AR teams and sales teams work together to define value and how it should be measured, they can develop programs to improve value.

These 9 areas are not written into the job description or areas of responsibility for most salespeople.  Excelling at one or all of these won’t result in a salesperson getting a great review, raise or bonus.  They are also not typically part of the formal relationship discussions between the AR teams and the advisory firm, nor are they part of the service agreement/contract.  But any or all of these can raise AR performance, contribution and value.  Executing them programmatically can markedly differentiate AR value and effectiveness from other go-to-market investments or from the efforts of other vendors.  They initiate new relationships, new access, and new insights.

Opening up these avenues of value doesn’t require more spend.   Increasing contract size is not a prerequisite to a salesperson advocating for the AR team in any of these areas.  In all the sales teams I’ve participated or managed, the belief is that greater exposure of capabilities, increased levels of interaction and broader engagement levels with executives will ultimately lead to optimal spend.  This is how sales is measured.  My experience is that salespeople welcome – even more, crave – a relationship with AR where strategic discussions across these 9 areas are foundational to the relationship.  Sales wants recognition of its role as a peer to AR and an opportunity to demonstrate value in partnership with AR. 

This is the third in a series of blog entries about Analyst Relations best practices from a perspective rarely discussed … namely from a (former) sales insider of major IT Advisory firms.  IIAR, KCG and ARinsights all provide meaningful insights and perspectives, but all are missing a key perspective.  Namely, how to leverage the only insider advocate you have in the advisory firms you value.

Below are quick links and overviews of the other blogs I’ve written:

The first blog covered the impact of recessionary pressures on analyst firms, how they react and what it means for IT vendors.   Substack Link: (Your AR/Influencer Strategy Is Not Ready for 2023 (substack.com))

The second looked at AR mindsets and revealed a gap in thinking and a blind spot for better aligning with analysts and influencers – namely strategic selling skills.  Substack Link: (For AR Leaders, Strategic Selling is a Blind Spot (substack.com))

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