We all know building relationships with analysts doesn’t happen overnight. But, it’s important to remember that it also doesn’t happen without thoughtful and purposeful actions. While it’s a common best practice to prepare before analyst interactions, we believe it’s equally as important to debrief after them. The feedback and nuggets of insight we learn from analysts during interactions like inquiries can help us make momentum towards our ultimate goal with the analyst – if we disseminate and distribute the insights accordingly.

Debriefing after an interaction is an important step in being strategic with your analyst engagements. A debrief gives you the opportunity to determine whether or not your objective was met, share immediate feedback to your speakers and executives, and ensure you’ve documented the appropriate next steps. Doing all of these post-call tasks helps ensure forward momentum will be made – but only if you make the time to do these.

What makes a great debrief?

To maximize efficiency, we believe debriefs should be formulaic to save time and to set a predictable precedent for those on your team. Great debriefs include:

• A high-level summary – First, record a brief summary about if your intended objective was met and the analyst’s sentiment about the interaction.
• Key learnings and takeaways – Next, record more specific information about the analyst’s reactions to your key points, any new changes to the analyst’s point of view, new intel about the analyst including their research scope or their upcoming planned reports, and the analyst’s responses to your questions.
• Follow-ups – Make a note or to-do list of anything new that needs to happen because of this interaction. This includes any requests from the analyst, anything you think needs to be unpacked with more fidelity, and any opportunities to engage in upcoming research.
• Speaker feedback and coaching – Flex your feedback skills by providing positive commentary around your speaker’s delivery, tonality, approach, connection with the analyst, etc. to reinforce their experience helping with AR. If applicable, you can also include coaching opportunities to improve next time.
• Closing – Wrap-up your debrief with any last thoughts that you feel are pertinent. You can also ask a question to elicit a response from your speakers and stakeholders to increase their engagement with AR. Asking for their reaction can be a great way to help them feel included in the AR strategy.

Using debriefs to be more effective… and efficient

The true power of a great debrief lies in the recipients’ perceived value and actionability of the debrief. If you draft a debrief and realize that the key learnings and follow-ups are mostly tied to AR initiatives that aren’t applicable outside of your team, exercise discretion and don’t send your notes to execs and stakeholders.

However, if you determine that the key takeaways, analyst feedback, or closing question would be valuable for your product, marketing, or sales teams you should always send those notes their way. Following a repeatable debrief outline makes customizing the material for each stakeholder easier – send them the parts pertinent to them, and save the rest for your records.

When you’re getting ready for your next interaction, half of the preparation, if not more, is already complete by just re-reading your debrief from the last interaction. A great debrief gives you the context you need when refreshing your memory in preparation for the upcoming interaction. Save yourself time in the future, by taking an extra step after each interaction to jot down your debrief.

We know drafting a powerful debrief isn’t the only step you can take after an analyst interaction, but we think it’s a foundational one. What debrief tactics do you use to make the most of each analyst interaction? Leave a comment below or shoot us a question!