Analyst Rant

I am a little frustrated and I thought I'd share. Industry analysts are driving me bananas! Here's the deal.

One of my clients recently got their Series B funding, much of which is going towards marketing and sales. We now have an analyst budget, and want to evaluate a variety of them for potential contracts. At the same time, of course, we want to introduce the company and its technology to them, as these folks are writing reports, getting quoted as "experts" etc.

Now, in order to actually talk to an analyst these days, you have to jump through some major hoops. First comes the zillion question "request for briefing questionnaire" which you email (or fill out online) and hope that someone, somewhere reads it in the next 2 months. Of course, we have done our research and id'd those analysts we think most appropriate and requested them specifically.

Then Forrester's "briefing center" comes back to us with "no time in schedules" -- for the next 2 1/2 months -- for all of their 5 analysts in the area. I guess they don't want new clients?

Gartner is a major pain as well. Even if you are a client paying $40K a year, you still can't actually call your analyst. In another case, one analyst reamed us for emailing him (spam!!!!) a press release in his beat area (!) so we called and his voice mail said he rarely checks it and to email him. ARRRGH.

I have had a Gartner analyst say -- get in touch in November and we'll talk. Well, I can't actually email them or call them. In this case, my client wasn't yet their client, so I had to go through the questionnaire process again (never heard -- the system kept "losing" the request according to the person I *finally* got on the phone.). In the meantime, the CEO of my client thinks I am an idiot as I can't seem to arrange a meeting that was REQUESTED BY THE ANALYST!!!!

Then there is Yankee. You now have to talk to a sales person before you are allowed to request a briefing. You have to listen to their pitch before you get to climb Olympus and talk to the ever-quoted Zeus. Yet, the other day, we got a plaintive email from a Yankee analyst who is registered for a conference we are producing asking if we were sure he was on the list, as no one had requested a briefing from him. But, if you go directly to analysts, in many cases the result is, "Go straight to PR jail, you idiot!"

Then I get in touch with networking poobah reporter* at networking poobah magazine. He states," for coverage I need to talk to an analyst you have briefed and a customer." The analyst, the outiside industry expert, who generally only talks to you if you pay them and if they deign to talk to you. Something is wrong with this picture.

Now, not all analysts are terrible, and many of them are quite nice and helpful once you actually talk to them. But the scheduling system is ridiculous.

*I know this reporter and what he wants, but I have to tell the client I contacted him and got this response -- preferably, I have an email directly from the reporter stating this, which I can forward, as client doesn't believe that THEIR product wouldn't get coverage with no customers. Sigh.

Comments

[Michael]

At least you have an interesting job. i had a hard time understanding half of that!

[SageOne]

Analysts suck. Hate dealing with them. They that that their sh*t doesn't stink and that they walk on water.

[Jeremy Pepper]

First, congratulations to your client for Series B funding.

Never was big on Yankee, but maybe it's because I always giggle and think "Yankee, Go Home" and other bad lines from Red Dawn and other types of war movies.

My personal favorite is IDC, although they are now pusing sales more. Blah. I just want to meet and greet, to at least let the analysts know what my clients are doing in their respective spaces.

But, I digress and the new "web scheduling" system bites, and the only way that they try to book appointments. I stopped working with some firms, unless I have a contact there that I can bypass the systems.

Damn, this is too good a rant for just the comments section. I'm reposting on my blog :-)

[James McGovern]

It always suprises me that reporters for various industry rags always prefer to quote analysts instead of customers themselves that use the technology. Furthermore, I would think they would be interested in quoting those in the know including book authors on the topics they cover.

I am not only an author but a well-positioned person who works for a prominent Fortune 100 enterprise and figured my phone would be blowing up with people wanting to get quotes. This simply isn't the case.

[James Governor]

RedMonk is trying to change things. we'd like to talk to you about analysts and how hard it seems to be to talk to them. in light of meta gartner merger things are set to become even harder

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000404.html

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000407.html

http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000409.html

[ARonaut]

Your analyst experience is interesting, have talked to Gartner "vendor relations" police?