Getting Your Startup in Front of Industry Analysts
You’re at the point where you know why you need an analyst and influencer strategy, and you know the kinds of analyst firms that are out there. Armed with that information, it’s time to figure out how you can get in front of the analysts that cover your company’s space. The two primary methods are vendor briefings and inquiries. Let’s start with vendor briefings.
Vendor Briefings
Of the two methods, vendor briefings are the one you’ll use most often. Briefings are free to conduct, meaning you don’t have to be a paying subscriber to the analyst firm. (Side note: if an analyst is charging you for a briefing, hide your wallet and find a more reputable firm.) Briefings are free because they provide analysts with the thing they crave most: information. Every area of IT is changing rapidly, and analysts work hard to stay on top of the latest shifts. Collecting the latest product and market developments from vendors helps them in this effort.
Because they are free, briefings have a few drawbacks:
Analysts aren’t obligated to accept the request. If your briefing topic isn’t interesting to them, falls outside their core coverage area, or you’ve already spoken with a given analyst about the topic, they’re likely to decline the request.
There is no NDA in place. This is understandable since the purpose of a briefing is to inform. If you shackle an analyst with NDA’d content they can’t use, there’s no point in them taking the briefing. If you want to share content under NDA, you’ll need to do that in an inquiry. (Depending on the firm, you can request they handle certain content shared in the briefing under NDA for a short period of time, like 45 days. However, this condition may compel the analyst to reject the briefing request. I never took briefings with NDA’d content.)
Scheduling a briefing can take weeks, or months. Oddly, no analyst firm rewards their analysts for taking briefings, so the number of spots analysts reserve for briefings are extremely limited. If you have a release coming up in, say, a quarter, you’ll want to schedule your briefings slots immediately.
Information only flows from you to the analyst. If you want advice or you want to ask the analyst questions, you’ll need to book an inquiry. Sometimes you can sneak in a follow up question as a response if an analyst asks you a question, but this isn’t guaranteed. I’ll touch on this this below.
Founder Questions on Vendor Briefings
How often should you brief analysts? At least twice a year, ideally in advance of major product launches. This gives you a chance to react to any feedback they might offer before you launch. Even if you don’t include their feedback, saying you’ll take it on board is a good way to curry favor with the analyst. Also, you need to stay top of mind for your analysts. They’re inundated with briefing requests from dozens or hundreds of companies, so they’re liable to forget your fledgling company exists. Bi-annual briefings are a good reminder.
How long is a briefing? Most are thirty minutes, so you need to move quickly through your content. Sometimes analysts may allot forty-five minutes, but hour-long slots are increasingly rare. Structuring your vendor briefing is the topic of a future article.
What kind of content should I prepare? A deck, either PowerPoint or Google Slides. Also, I can’t emphasize this enough: send your slides to the analyst before the briefing. Many analysts keep their notes in your deck and they share them with their colleagues. If they don’t have your deck at the start of the briefing, who knows where their notes will end up? I’ll have another article about how to structure your briefing deck.
Can I show a demo? This depends on the analyst. I hated demos during briefings because they took too long. If your product or feature needs a demo to explain it, make sure you rehearse and stick to a tight timeline.
Can I ask the analyst questions during the briefing? In general, no. Getting advice is what analysts get paid for, so they’re not in the business of advising non-clients. Even if you are a client, it’s unlikely the information flow will become bi-directional during a briefing. However, there’s a way around this. If the analyst asks a question, you can often slip in a question after your answer. Suppose the analyst asks about the types of use cases you’re seeing in your customer base. After you respond, you can ask if that aligns with what they’re seeing in their clients. It feels organic because it is, and analysts love to talk and love to educate, so you can sometimes glean a little intel from them. (As an analyst, I’d always let early stage companies ask me questions during briefings. It was a way to build a sales pipeline when they eventually raised enough to afford a subscription.)
When should I start doing briefings? As soon as you have paying customers.
What kinds of questions should I expect? Like demos, this depends on the analyst, but questions around product roadmap, competitive situations, staffing and growth, international expansion plans, customer trends, and technology details.
Where do I request briefings? Here’s a list.
Inquiries
Membership, like the old slogan goes, has its privileges. The core privilege of an analyst subscription are inquiries. This is where analyst/client interactions blossom into an advisory relationship. Inquiries are your opportunity to ask questions, challenge positions, test messaging, and share data. Unlike briefings, inquiries are bi-directional between you and the analyst.
But inquiries are more than just advisory. Each interaction is your opportunity to influence the analyst by sharing customer stories and highlighting important data. These types of influencer operations are long-term investments and won’t yield results right away, but it’s important to maintain a steady cadence of inquiries with your core analysts with a goal of influencing the influencer.
Founder Questions on Inquiries
Who from my firm can join an inquiry? Typically, the only people from the client company allowed on an inquiry call are seat holders. (Subscriptions are assigned to specific people, not the overall company.) Note that I said “typically.” As an analyst, I didn’t care if 14 people showed up on a call. It wasn’t my job to enforce their contract. That’s the account executive’s job. If you bring a bunch of people to the call, you’ll get an “out of compliance” nastygram from your account executive, but they don’t have much leverage to discipline you. That said, don’t abuse the subscription. If you want to bring in a product manager once in a while, that’s likely fine.
Are inquiries NDA? Yes! Everything you share with an analyst during an inquiry is considered NDA.
Can I masquerade an inquiry as a briefing? It’s sneaky, but you can absolutely do this. You must submit questions as part of the inquiry request, so submit questions around topics like message testing for a new product, or wanting to know more about a given analyst’s research agenda for the new year, and so on. Then present what you want to present and ask for analyst feedback. FYI: You may need to submit your materials early for the analyst to review them.
Wrapping Up
Briefings and inquiries are the main ways you’ll interact with analysts. Each has a different purpose, and each comes with a different level of investment. Start with briefings and, as your startup grows, make targeted investments into firms that offer the best opportunity to influence coverage in your company’s space.
As always, if there’s something you’d like me to cover on analyst and influencer relations for startups or have a question, drop a comment or find me on Twitter.
