At an analyst conference I attended a senior executive from a prominent vendor stood up and addressed an audience of analysts. He noted that his company had not yet decided on how to articulate and illustrate a particular technical idea, so he was going to offer $100 to the analyst that came up with the best solution.

There was a stunned silence from the analysts, most of whom would cost upwards of $3000 per day to help out with such an issue. It was a silence of disbelief. “Did I just hear what I thought I heard?” It was followed by a quiet panic among the AR staff in a desperate attempt to stop the analysts from forming a lynch mob. The incident was contained, I believe, because every analyst in the room concluded that the offer was born of an unfamiliarity with analysts. There was no other reasonable explanation.

The Origin of Analyst Abuse

What that real-life-example demonstrates is that if you don’t understand how the analyst business works and how analysts get their revenue, then you stand a fair chance of unintentionally insulting an analyst – and that’s something you should only do intentionally. I’ve given a fairly exhausting list of what analysts do in this posting. Note that if (like me) you’re an analyst who does most of the things on that list, then you work on both sides of the industry. You are a “servitore di due padroni” – a servant with two masters, which requires all the balancing powers of a funambulist.

The executive in the example probably thought he was dealing with individuals who only publish research on the user side of the industry. But even so, it wasn’t clever. In the early years of Bloor Research, all I ever did was publish comparative reports for technology uses. One vendor, who I’ll not name since the company was acquired, lifted one of my diagrams explaining a software concept, and used it directly in their marketing collateral without attribution, as if it were their own.

I never complained because the company in question had previously hired me to do a presentation and it had also bought reprint rights for a product review we’d done. I was wet behind the ears. What I should have done was send them a big invoice.

Jonathan Swift wrote, “When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.” Well said Jonathan. If anyone violated my copyright now, I’d scream “Rape!”.

Scruples

The fundamental balancing act lies in the interaction between analyst and vendor. The vendors are keen for the analysts to know and understand their products. The analysts treat briefings as occasions for relationship building and selling. You’re selling to me and I’m selling to you. I always attempt to give the vendors some useful opinions or analysis for free and I usually tell the vendor that I expect them to give me business as and when they have analyst work that needs doing.

Some vendors come back in order to get more free analysis and then make promises of analyst engagements that don’t materialize. Fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me.

From the vendor side, it always makes sense to ask an analyst what they research and the kind of work they do. There are many different answers to those questions. And if you know the answers, you’ll know when you’re treading on an analysts toes.

Oh, and by the way, if I wanted to I could have three briefings every day all year or spend 3 months of the year doing nothing but going to analyst conferences. This is true of a fair number of analysts. I select the companies I agree to have briefings with. That means that I really appreciate briefings that are productive and I kick myself for accepting any that are not. If someone is just trying to hit me up for free consultancy, I kick them.

Note: This posting is one in a series of postings that deals with the topic of dealing with analysts. Click here for links to other postings in the series.