Juniper Networks is updating its consultant relations strategy to better reflect the role these influencers play in customer decision-making. The new consultants program, under the umbrella of its channel partners program, is aimed “at partners who influence a customer’s buying decisions but don’t actually take part in the sale.”

This is an interesting approach to formalizing and updating consultant relations as part of a sales influencer program. For example, Juniper is looking to the consultants to provide neutral business or industry expertise as part of each customer’s decision-maker ecosystem. They bring in the consultant, or the prospect brings in the consultant. Either way, Juniper formally recognizes and supports the consultant during the sales process. This includes a stated emphasis on protecting the objectivity and independent advice of the consultant.

In a recent article in Business24-7.ae, Samer Shaar, a regional managing director for Juniper Networks explained:

“Independent players like Kallis, General Dynamics, Deloitte and Touche do not specialise in IT solution, but focus on the business concept. The system integrator and alliances come after that. Such an approach provides a business ecosystem that is functional and the neutrality of the consultant is also not lost… This is a trend and will become the next wave although it has not yet gone completely mainstream.”

It’s still fairly rare to see a corporate partners program embrace consultants in this way. Normally, the field organization ends up with the responsibilities — from ferreting out consultants in their accounts to putting together information packets and building relations without any special support from corporate.

It looks like a good approach.

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I attended last week’s IDC Directions09 conference in San Jose, courtesy of IDC in light of my role as an industry analyst watcher and blogger. It was one of the best that I can remember, and I’ve been to a few over the years. The theme, content and speakers were good — but that’s not why I’m giving it 2 thumbs up.

For me, the highest value was professional networking. To a great extent, I credit the relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. That’s not easy to achieve with an audience of 1,000+. The hallway conversations were non-stop. Analyst 1-on-1s were a central attraction, yet there wasn’t hustle for the sake of hustle — no people-to-see-places-to-go pretensions in the air. You could pick out — and get to — faces in the crowd with ease, yet the crowd was large enough to fill the space, even during Nicholas Carr’s closing keynote.

I can’t stress enough the importance of this aspect of any analyst conference for this year and beyond. None of us — well, few of us here in San Jose — see ourselves as Mohammed going to the mountain when we attend these analyst conferences.

Today, we don’t go to these events just to hear analysts present. We don’t want to play powerpoint roulette with our brains. This is an attention economy. We go to mingle with analysts, look them in the eye and take the measure of their company. We go to meet and have intelligent conversations with other attendees. We go to become better informed, and therefore more powerful influencers in our own right. And if there’s some juicy industry gossip sprinkled in, all the better.

IDC understands that.

I’ll be posting more about the event over the next day. Meanwhile, if you can, attend IDC Directions 2009 in Boston next week. Or, catch it in Singapore, India, China, Japan, Australia or New Zealand.

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The annals of influencer marketing have their share of horror stories — influencers who won’t let go of a negative point of view, and won’t stop sharing it. It doesn’t really matter how good your influencer marketing program is. Sooner or later, an influencer will shift from neutral to negative. How will you handle the situation?

In our Influencer50 client work and careers, we’ve found that most companies use 1 of 3 basic strategies when dealing with overly critical influencers:

1. Convert them. Hand down, this the best way to go. It takes lots of thought and work, over a reasonable to extended window of time.

2. Surround them with neutral or positive influencers. The idea is to balance their comments and gradually soften their position. This is about letting influencers influence each other. It introduces risk, yet can pay off. However, take care not to mix attention-craving negative influencers at the same event. They tend to feed off each other or goad each other along. Either way, the result is rarely desirable for you or the other influencers participating in your event.

3. Ignore them. This is the most foolhardy strategy. It’s used more often than you might imagine. I have seen very few cases where ignoring a negative influencer paid off. Ignoring a top influencer does nothing to neutralize their attitudes and often results in increasing — not limiting — their opportunities to discuss your company with clients, prospects and other influencers.

Whichever strategy you prefer, it’s a good idea to plan ahead on how you will handle high-profile detractors.

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You probably think of LinkedIn as a recruiting and job hunting network. It also serves as a valuable backoffice tool for analyst relations, consultant relations, and fully integrated B2B influencer programs.

The price is certainly right: basic services are free, and business upgrades are economical. Plus, the number of profiles keeps growing. As of last week, LinkedIn claimed more than 35 million members in 200+ countries. Finally, the general demographics are a good match.

I’ve been guiding influencers and clients alike toward LinkedIn since its debut in 2003. Used properly, it can boost influencer relations productivity. Over-reliance can run your program aground very quickly.

For best results in influencer identification, use LinkedIn for corroboration and expansion of facts gleaned through other research sources.

The reason is simple: LinkedIn contains user-generated content. Unlike Wikipedia, there’s no team of editors debating accuracy. Fact checking is your responsibility — not LinkedIn’s, not the person posting about themselves.

For best results in influencer engagement, use LinkedIn to find people who can introduce you to your targeted influencers.

Can you use LinkedIn to connect with an influencer you’ve never met? My advice is no, don’t go that way. First, learn influencer contact etiquette and develop a sense of how to interpret — not simply read — the LinkedIn profiles of influencers. You’ll develop a good sense of when you’re looking at a solid opportunity for breaking the common sense rules of engagement.

I’ll continue this thread tomorrow, with a look at how some influencers have been using LinkedIn.

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It’s tempting to think of influencer programs as master plans for turning objective decision influencers into your company’s bona fide fans. The truth is, that’s not a desirable goal for your influencer programs.

Valuable influencers maintain a high level of objectivity. Some call it integrity. Others describe it as independence or ethics.

Whatever label you prefer, compromising it is a surefire way to dilute the effectiveness of the influencer. Once that happens, there’s no turning back. They play a lesser role in every decision making process because their viewpoint is clearly skewed toward your company.

How do you structure an influencer program to achieve good relations without compromising independent thinking?

A few of the best practices we share with Influencer50 clients:

Do assign senior people to managing relationships with your top influencers. These people should be knowledgeable about your company from a business perspective, in addition to having more tactical knowledge about your products, services, partners and competitors.

Do empower your relationship managers to engage key players across the company with your top influencers.

Do not aim standard marketing – including advertising, PR, collateral, direct marketing, events, or demos — at your top influencers.

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Your top competitors are as influential with your customers and prospects as you are. This raises an interesting question: how can you leverage competitors as part of your influencer marketing program?

One proven tactic is recruiting influential staff from competitors.

Another tactic is getting competitors to talk about your company in a positive way. To do this, you want to focus on how the competitors’ employees feel about your company. You want them to worry.

You want them to worry enough to acknowledge your company as a top competitor.

The key here is providing them with information that warrants some worry. It could be your growth rate or client wins. It could be your momentum in the market — attracting partners, entering new markets, establishing thought leadership, speaking at conferences, or other areas where you beat them to the punch.

Don’t give away too much information at one time. Pick a few powerful points. Work those points.

Meanwhile, begin tracking what your competitors say about your company. Find out by asking customers, prospects, partners, or other influencers. Again, don’t limit the conversation to products, services and pricing. Look for what’s being said at the company-level.

Then, adjust your proof points — and your touch points within the competitors — as needed.

Competitors are intent on influencing your buyers. Why not make the best of the situation? Put some of that competitive influence to work for you.

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It’s easy to fall into thinking that focusing on the top 15 or 25 or 100 influencers in a given market is a good idea for every company. That’s not necessarily so, unless you can vet their influence with decision-makers for your product or service in your market.

Mack Collier points out a good example: his experience with the “Pepsi 25″ campaign. Pepsi had targeted Mack and 24 other high profile bloggers with 3 deliveries of cans showing the evolution of the Pepsi logo over 100 years, right up to the latest logo. Most of the 25 bloggers were happy to blog about Pepsi and it’s logo. By contrast, Mack said:

I mean on one hand I appreciated the effort that Pepsi went to in sending these materials to me. Obviously they send the cans and promotional materials to myself and 24 other people because they thought we were ‘influential’ in the social media space, and that we would blog/twitter/podcast about this promotion, and hopefully in a favorable light… Now the problem for me is, I know I’m not influential to Pepsi drinkers, cause I don’t drink Pepsi (Dr Pepper here. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?).

He goes on to suggest that his spot in the Pepsi 25 would have been better used on a loyal customer — someone who would have behaved as an evangelist out of love for the Pepsi product. Someone connected to others who also would talk about Pepsi and encourage purchases, and so on.

Pepsi 25 hit a dead-end with Mack.

As Duncan says, it’s not about influence, it’s about influence with the right people.

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Marketers tasked with building online communities learn quickly that size matters. Which would you rather aim for: building one community of 50 members, or 50 communities each with one member?

Odds are good you’ll go for the one larger community. It’s a matter of survival, isn’t it? Your professional reputation, job security, and next quarter’s budget may hang in the balance.

Yet, when you design an influencer program, your focus shifts to the other end of the scale. Your goal becomes building 50 communities of one.

Influencers have their own networking patterns. An influencer program taps into those existing patterns as a way to join the conversation and meet the influencers.

If there’s no opportunity for influencers to converge naturally, an influencer program can step in and create a group. This might take the form of a council, an advisory board, or an exclusive networking dinner held in conjunction with an industry event.

Either way, the group is not the end goal. It’s the individuals within the group that matter.

The goal is building 1-to-1 relationships with influencers in the group, so that they get to know your company and want to talk about it.

In the world of influencers, 50 communities of one will outperform one community of 50 every time.

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It’s going to be a tough year to stay current with influencers.

Under normal circumstances, Influencer50 research puts the attrition among a company’s top 50 influencers at about 20 percent per year. That means that in a 12-month period, 10 of the 50 will have changed jobs.

It doesn’t look as though 2009 will offer normal circumstances. I would expect that rate to climb. Large and mid-sized companies are reducing headcount, and consolidating through mergers and acquisitions. Small businesses and independent contractors may be forced to bridge lean sales by hooking up with larger companies.

It’s a good idea to keep a closer eye on the top 50 influencers in each of your markets. Watch for new voices rising up, established voices tuning out, changes in focus.

Remember too that influence is not necessarily a real-time activity. Decision-makers tend to remember an influencer’s opinion long after obtaining it.

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An influencer program can be a powerful asset in countering sales objections. Here are a few well-proven tips from our collection of case studies:

1. Compile and prioritize specific sales objections. Don’t accept generalities at the outset. You can generalize later. Start with clear, articulate objections. Get a good sense of frequency, too.

2. Identify external influencers who have both the credibility and the message to address each sales objection. Remember, your focus is finding 3rd party influencers with credibility in the eyes of your customer decision-makers. The “right” influencer is one who has the credibility and already has the counter-argument to the sales objection.

That’s an important point and it bears repeating:

Your role is to find the right influencers — not to manufacture them.

3. Design appropriate vehicles for capturing influencer counter-arguments and conveying them to decision-makers as objections arise.

It’s straightforward and sheer common sense.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

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