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

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 market ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 an ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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' op ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 d ...Read More