AMA: Atlassian Head of Core Product Marketing & GTM, ITSM Solutions, Daniel Kuperman on Analyst Relationships

As I mentioned in the other answer, even if your market does not have a comparative report such as a Wave, Quadrant, Marketscape, etc. it doesn't mean you should not engage with an analyst firm. These reports typically come out for markets at a certain maturity stage and by engaging with analysts early, you can ensure they have your company in their radar as they start thinking about such a report. Especially important for companies in emerging markets are the early days of forming analysts' opinions about the market itself. By giving them information about your product, the challenges you are solving for your customers, and how other players are performing, you can establish credibility with the analysts which will be very helpful down the road. 

The MQ, or "Magic Quadrant" report is what Gartner calls their comparative report for specific markets. Each major analyst firm has their own comparative report (Wave, Marketscape, etc.). The existence of this type of report indicates the maturity of the market and number of vendors addressing it. If your market does not yet have such type of report, you have to continue influencing the analysts by: - hosting quarterly briefings with them to showcase new capabilities of your product and the new customers you closed; - scheduling regular inquiries (every other month, or quarterly, for example) to go deep into their latest report or discuss specific market dynamics; - sending them an email when you publish new customer case studies outlining the customer challenge and how your solution is solving their problem; - helping analysts gather data for an upcoming report, which generally involves introducing them to your customers. I have been in this situation a couple times and by continuously engaging with the analysts, we were able to help form their opinion about the market, and also helped them focus on specific areas of that market which we thought were more relevant. As you do this, you will be well positioned to engage in a comparative report such as a MQ, Wave, etc. when it does get created. 

First, start with what you already have at your disposal, which will likely include: - written customer case studies or success stories - requests that customers have made in the past about product features - support requests that came into customer support The other easy action you can take is to talk to the sales reps at your company, and ask them: - Why do we win deals? What are customers looking to solve when they purchase our solution? - Why do we lose deals? What are customers not finding attractive about our solution or what is the competition doing better? Odds are you have a lot of customer knowledge around the office, with customer support, sales, product, and other teams. Part of better understanding your customers is also to just talk to them directly, although this would take more time to accomplish. When your sales team closes a deal, make a point to fup with the customer and ask them questions about why they purchased your product, what alternatives they researched, etc. Do the same for the deals you lost, asking for the sales rep for an introduction. If your company is in the PLG, self-serve mode and you don't have a sales team, you will have to go straight to the customer, reaching out to them and asking for a few minutes of their time.

A customer advisory board should be an imyportant source of validation of product vision and roadmap, but not the only one. The best customer advisory boards have a good representation of key customers that can help you better understand market dynamics, buyer personas, and market conditions. This advisory board can also help validate future product ideas by giving you a different perspective. That being said, this board will likely be a very small representation of the total population of your market. In addition, you have to ensure that this board does not only represent customers that you currently have, but also those you want to land in the future. In sum, you should definitely take their advice in consideration, but weigh it with other data points including analyst firms, competitive dynamics, and your own future vision for the product and the market in general. 

You have to establish a cadence of updates for different assets, which will vary based on how they are used and your market dynamics. Personas don't change often, so revisting them every 6 months might be enough, but if you are on a competitive market it may require a quarterly or more frequent update of competitive battlecards. The important thing is to establish a schedule for revisions and set time aside for updating those materials. Another part of your process should be communication to the sales team and others that might use them. Depending on how drastic the update was (e.g. minor edits vs major overhauls) you will also want to have different ways of notifiying the team. A Slack message about a minor update could be good enough but you probably want to do a full enablement session for major revisions that could impact a sales person's abilty to deliver the message or close a deal. In sum: 1. Identify 'expiration dates' for all your assets 2. Establish a cadence for the revisions and updates 3. Block time on your calendar to work on the updates 4. Agree w/ the sales teams and others on the best way to communicate those updates

While briefing decks may vary, I believe there are a few key elements that you should consider to make it a 'kick-ass' deck: - company overview - solution overview - competitive landscape - customer proof points - demo - Q&A First, you start with an overview of your company. You don’t need to tell the entire founding story and should focus on the key facts to tell the analyst how long you’ve been in the market, how many employees you have, how much revenue - if you can share - and key markets you operate. You basically need to give the analyst a good idea of who the company is and how big of a player you are in the market. -> Note: if this is not the first briefing to the analyst team, you may skip this part unless something significant (e.g. new executive team, new offices, etc.) took place since the last briefing. Then, you go through your solution and here’s where you want to talk about what problem you are solving for what particular persona and market and how your product can uniquely solve that particular problem. This then leads you to discuss how you see the competitive landscape and why your company is better or different or why you think other vendors in the market are falling short. Then, you showcase a few customers as proof points about everything you just said. This is to show that is not just you saying you are good or better, you have customers that back you up. Now that you have told the analysts why should they care, is time to show them your product in a live demo. Here you want to avoid going too deep in specific features and toggles and make sure you highlight not just the overall user experience but show the capabilities that make you unique and support the story you just told. And last, leave a few minutes for a Q&A. The briefing is typically a one-sided afair, in which you talk and the analysts listen but they may want to dive deeper into different product areas or something you showed them. Make sure to pace yourself and rehearse the briefing with the team that will be supporting you.

First, establish the goals for your analyst relations program. Think beyond the placement of your company in a 'Magic Quadrant' or 'Wave' type of report, and identify additional KPI's, such as: - number of mentions in analyst reports - increased number of customer inquiries - increase in analyst reports about your market or category - etc The right metrics will depend on your company's stage (pre-seed, early stage, pre-IPO, etc.) and goals for the AR program. Make sure to communicate the goal and the KPI's to executive stakeholders and send our a summary report every quarter. 

Review site such as G2 and TrustRadius are slightly different from the traditional analyst relations program as these companies don't require the same types of engagements. While you need to keep analysts engaged with briefings and inquiries on a quarterly basis, these review sites require customer input more than anything. That is why in many cases a customer marketing team runs point in engaging with these sites. I don't think that review sites are a complete substitute for traditional analyst programs, but it also depends on your particular market characteristics. For mature markets, they can be a great complement to give customer proof to a placement in a Magic Quadrant or Wave, for example, while for emerging categories they could be your main asset in the absence of a comparative report. 

The key in this situation is to be uppfront with your internal teams and provide them with the right messaging to steer conversations with customers and prospects. The negative placement can happen in a number of scenarios. Maybe a competitor released a game-changing capability that no one else has yet; or there was a major acquisition in the market making a competitor leapfrog everyone else; or maybe there's one area of your product which didn't perform well acconding to analyst expectations during your demo. First, you have to identify the reason for the discrepancy. Was it something under your company's control or completely unexpected? Based on what is the primary reason, you then have to prepare your sales team and others in the organization to address this with customers if the issue comes up. Share an internal communication that: 1. Addresses the results of the report, outlining what is the current placement and how it changed from the last time; 2. Guides your internal teams on how to interpret the results and what to tell customers; 3. Outlines a plan for correcting the placement by the time the next report comes out. The right positioning will help give the right context for a customer or prospect and minimize potential damaging effects.

Spending more money with analysts won't guarantee a good placement in a Quadrant or Wave. I've seen companies mistakenly spend money on: - Buying more seats or licenses than they actually need; - Signing up for datasets or services they won't use frequently; - Spending too much money on marketing services such as webinars, custom reports, etc. My general recommendation is to focus your money and efforts on what actually gives you an advantage: - Schedule frequent inquiries and briefings - Create a relationship with the analysts by keeping them aware of what's going on with your company and product - Share customer stories and make introductions where appropriate - Always have the right people on a call with the analyst (i.e. those with the best knowledge of the area being discussed) - Be quick in replying to analyst questions, especially if the question is related to a report they are writting The quality of your interactions with the analysts will count more than the money you spend with them.