To industry observers the situation seems clear: changes taking place in IT buyer decision processes require corresponding changes in how vendors deal with influencers, such as the industry analysts. However, the changes in tech decision-maker processes have been gradual and have varied greatly by market. Plus, critical aspects of buying decisions remain hidden from external view. As a result, few in tech marketing are aware of the extent of change taking place in their customer decision processes. Even fewer are thinking about how best to map the new realities to Analyst Relations programs.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with 3 of the people who are not only thinking about it, but translating their observations and ideas into practice: Evan Quinn, director of Corporate Analyst Relations at HP; Jennifer Bartolo, vice president of IT Influencer Relations for SAP; and Debashish Sinha, vice president of Marketing for HCL America.
They are pioneering analyst relations for the next decade. You can check out my initial notes in our newsletter, The Influencer.
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No high tech influencer program is complete until it addresses sourcing and vendor management executives. You may think that this group of people is buried deep in your customers’ accounting departments, removed from actual decisions. You may think of them more as gatekeepers on properly filled out forms, credit checks, and other accounting records. Not so. These executives wield enormous potential for influencing computer, software, service and device vendor selection, pricing, Ts&Cs, and more.
The current economic condition makes this an ideal time to take a hard look at sourcing advisors and vendor management executives. Check out the insights one group shared with Forrester Research CEO George Colony.
Take a little of our Influencer50 advice: don’t limit your knowledge of these influencers to what you read in a market research report. Get out there and identify them. Then, engage with the ones who matter the most to you in each of your markets.
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If you sell technology, you already know that sourcing advisors figure prominently in your influencer ecosystems. Have you ever wondered how they manage to get into your accounts in the first place?
Most likely, they’re getting to your customers and prospects through word of mouth referrals, vendor referrals, or direct sales. That’s according to a new study on the sourcing advisory business by Phil Fersht, AMR Research analyst and blogger, and Ed Nair, Global Sources (part of CyberMedia India Ltd.). The survey finds sourcing advisors get as many business leads from vendor referrals as they do from their own direct sales efforts.
In other words, sourcing advisors obtain the lion’s share of their business through influencer marketing (word of mouth, vendor referrals).
This helps explain why sourcing advisors are such a disruptive and persistent force during a decision process — they walk in with networked authority.
The study is free and well worth a read, despite the dubious title and tagline — “The Definitive Survey of Sourcing Advisers”, the first ever study on…. (Phil, you ought to know better.)
Hat tip to Vinnie Mirchandani.
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