Managing vendor references

Analyst types that are not focusing on the vendor landscape only, regularly want to talk to end user organizations to verify some of the vendor claims, learn from real implementers the good, the bad, and the ugly about someone's product, service, support, etc. Those reference calls are an integral piece of evaluating vendor offerings, as they go beyond advertising and marketing blurb, screenshots of products, high-level demo materials, and the popular death-by-powerpoint approach.

However, it's interesting how difficult and time-consuming it often seems to be to get a vendor to communicate a reference's contact details, even (or maybe particularly) in the large and mega vendors. I would have thought that there is some kind of internal program by which customers that make a good reference story are managed somehow. Apparently not so. Now, I don't expect AR or marketing folks to pull those customer contacts out of their hat, but I would think there must be something more efficient than starting from scratch everytime some analyst wants to talk to one of the vendor's customers. Ideally, there should be a database of referencable customers (by product, by service, by region, etc.) and the appropriate contact details of the spokesperson. Doesn't sound like rocket science to me, but it would dramatically speed up the reference process, if AR had access to that sort of a database. Thoughts, anyone?

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Vendor briefings: Do more with less

Interesting reactions from self-proclaimed analyst relations professionals at Armageddon and Gartner Watch about the new 30-minute (default!) briefing length at Gartner. Those fellas don't seem to be participating in a lot of briefings. Otherwise they would know that many of those are incredibly boring for the fact that the vendor folks don't brief, but preach. I won't name any names here, of course, but in countless incidents the vendor spokespeople spend 20 minutes alone on trying to explain why companies are considering technology (the ever-popular SOX or Basel II references), tell us about market trends, and simply fail to understand that the analyst typically knows these things. If not, that analyst's half-life is going to be very short.

That mistake is mostly made by smaller companies, where some VP or Director of Marketing is doing his (or her) run-of-the-mill pitch that would be equally used in any sales opportunity. So they go on and on about stuff that we have heard a million times already, have zero value to an analyst, and simply waste time. It's particularly annoying if those briefings are conducted via WebEx, because the analyst cannot read ahead through a slide deck and tell the vendor to skip to slide 32 (out of 55 or whatever) because they seem more relevant. So the briefing drags on and the first half hour is very content-light.

Vendors that do it very well (and keep an ongoing relationship with the analyst) spend two or three minutes on chit-chat ("How was the vacation?" or "Our baby started to walk last week."), then run through a few figures (e.g., last quarter revenues, number of new customers, etc.), and not more than 10 minutes after the call starts jump right into the product update, demo, or discussion.

So, Poor Old Joe, I'm afraid your conclusion blows up in your face.

The basic conclusion is Gartner needs help on how to conduct meaningful briefings <grin>.

Wait a minute... Who needs help? Last time I checked the party that conducts the briefing is the vendor and it's in the vendor's own interest that the briefing is meaningful <bigger grin>.

BTW, I'm currently running through a whole series of vendor briefings for an upcoming magic quadrant and, what do you know, every briefing lasts 60 minutes. So, when I believe that there is more ground to cover than 30 minutes would allow, absolutely no problem going the full hour.

Bottom line: I see a lot of benefits of 30-minute briefings:

• Vendors have an incentive to concentrate on the important topics
• Scheduling is easier, because 30-minute slots are easier to find
• There are more briefings with more vendors