by Christina Neill
June 3, 2020
Analyst insights are single important pieces of analyst commentary that can have a major impact on your AR program.
When you collect insights, you can create a library of information that can make answering the questions you hear every day so much easier. You’ll know definitively: What does an analyst, or analyst firm, think of us? When does the next MQ/Wave kick-off? How does the analyst see the market changing? And is that good for us?
But in order to collect insights, you have to know where to look for them. Here are four places we turn to first when we build insights-driven AR programs.
When you’re looking for analyst insights, a great place to start is with the notes you’ve already taken. Or, if you’re in a new AR role, review the notes that your predecessor (hopefully) has left.
Skim these and highlight anything you feel has relevance. There is no right or wrong, just start looking for nuggets of intel and feedback that might help you have a better understanding of where you stand with analysts. Look for their opinion on your market, offering, or competitors and the logistical information they share about their research and travel plans. Once you’ve highlighted this information, extract them from the notes, and organize them in a way that can be easily referenced later. If you’re curious about how to do this, we plan to share an example of this and provide a tool for our community at our next webinar – we invite you to join us!
Analysts hide important clues about your market, your offering, and your competitors in the evaluation reports you’re mentioned in. Take a read through your last Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave and then read it again. Look for differences in how they describe your offering versus the other vendors. Pay attention to capabilities that are frequently mentioned as strengths for leaders as this could be a sign of market momentum. If possible, review the scorecard from last year to see if any weightings changed. Write these clues down and add them to your list of insights.
To really understand where you stand with analysts, ask them! Perception audits can be conducted via formal surveys (viewed as written inquiries by analyst firms) sent to analysts to assess how they feel about you and where you stand compared to your competitors. Each firm has a different process for how they conduct perception audits, but when completed, they can give you a wealth of information that you can use to inform your program and your business.
Every analyst interaction has the potential to give you new and useful insights. Transform your notetaking practices to capturing insights on intel and feedback. This will enable your ability to inject value into the business and elevate your own delivery in the AR channel. In your next interaction, take note of insight-worthy comments from the analyst and add this information to your insights collection. Continue with this practice during each interaction to build your robust library of feedback and intel.
Analyst insights are everywhere, but it’s easy to cull them from the notes, research, and perception audit data you compile just by running your regular AR program. To guide your process, ask yourself these questions when considering if the information constitutes as an insight:
Once you have a body of insights collected, you can analyze your findings to discover where you need to take your AR program next and what feedback needs to be shared with internal stakeholders. Insights allow you to review – and possibly revamp – your AR strategy by giving you a window into perception trends across multiple sources.
In our next webinar, we’re going to share more about our process of collecting and organizing insights. Join us on June 17 to learn more about this easy technique.
