Winning Over the Toughest Influencers with Kirsten Newbold-Knipp, FullStory

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Relevant analyst, what end user companies our customers are companies like segment, Sendoso, Salesloft, VMware, but also in Retail Gap, Lowe's. Who's covering the topics that those companies are interested in. I need to become friends with them. I need to build relationships with them. One of my tricks in helping convey get onto a Magic Quadrant was showing the analysts our data. Research analysts want to comment things from a perspective of data and let's say that your application in my case we were covering logistics software, transportation logistics and the pandemic had just hit and what was happening. You couldn't get packages delivered to your house on time. We had all of that data and what we were able to do is parse that data in different ways and give exclusive access to some of the analysts. And it worked. So so know what's in it for them. Be relevant. I need some traction. You need some traction. Let's get some traction.

Hey, what's up innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries and disruptors. This is your Traction podcast host Lloyd Lobo. We're a community of over 100,000 people just like yourself on a mission to help you get the methods, the money and the madness to explode your business growth. Featuring stories and tactical advice straight from those who've done it before like Shopify, Twilio, Asana, and many more.

Excited to talk to you today. Excited to be here, visiting you from sunny Austin, Texas and talk about something that is near and dear to my heart. Some of you, if you saw Param's session from UiPath earlier today, you may have seen him flash up a slide that included Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forester Waves. How many of you saw that? Yeah, how many of you have ever had the fun, fun benefit of trying to be in a Gartner MQ or a Forester Wave? Ooh, a good little benefit. Some of you haven't. One of the things that I'm excited to talk to you about today is why it should be on your mind and why you should think about it before I jump in again. My name is Kirsten. I lead marketing at FullStory. We're a digital Experience intelligence platform. And what that means is we give you insights about your users, how they're engaging with your applications, your websites so that you can improve their experiences. So similar to what Anna was just talking about, right? Knowing their needs at the time, being empathetic to them, that's what we do. And I won't talk about fullstory today. Love to talk to you about it over cocktails. But what I will tell you is some of the experiences I've had along the way both at fullstory and at other companies doing the type of work that moves markets with analyst relations. But why should you even think about talking to me about this? Not only have I been in marketing for 20 plus years, Anna and I were exchanging jokes about how old we feel with all of our years of experience. I've helped companies like HubSpot with the inbound marketing wave. I have helped a company called Convey that you might not know become part of a unicorn brand by becoming part of a Gartner Magic Quadrant. And I'm currently helping to shape the category that FullStory finds itself in DXI. But in between, in that journey, I was a Gartner analyst for three and a half years. So I've been inside the belly of the beast. I know what it looks like, I know the realities and hopefully I will be able to give you some really actionable insights of how you can think about that for your business today and going forward, even if you're not ready to be a unicorn tomorrow. Thinking about analyst relations now as an early part of your business strategy can be very relevant. So I promised five tips, but I'm actually going to give you double. I'm going to give you five myths and five tips about analyst relations. There are so many myths out there, you would be potentially surprised at the things that people believe. And I'll kick off there and we'll move pretty fast. So hopefully you'll get something good. The first myth is that analyst relations this passe. I've had CEOs, peers, folks across the board, they're like, you know what? They don't matter anymore. It's G2 Crowd, it's TrustRadius, it's Capterra, it's all of the sort of digital ratings and reviews and I will tell you those do 100% matter, but they haven't made a Forrester and a Gartner go by the wayside. Now there's context there. If you're selling into the enterprise, you absolutely should be thinking about the classical analysts because people go to analysts, not only to get advice, but also, frankly, to cover their asses. Nobody got fired for hiring Big Blue. Turns out nobody got fired for taking one of the top three vendors in that magic quadrant or one of the top three vendors in the wave. So there's as much to this, that is sociology of people keeping their jobs and feeling proud as there is about whether or not do they give the best advice. Sometimes they give great advice. Sometimes it's stuff you already knew, but. But it allows you with confidence to go to your boss, to go to your CFO and say, here's why I wanna make this investment so they're not passe, I'm sorry to say. Second one, pay for play. How many of you believe that if you pay the analysts, you will be written about? Raise your hands. How many of you have paid an analyst and still not been written about? There's probably some. Yeah, I see at least one hand. So I've definitely worked with companies where they've said, hey, until you pay them, there's no point in engaging. You only get coverage if you pay. Not true. What is actually true is you pay for access. And just in the same way that y' all paid to meet up with people today, where you're building a relationship, you're getting more connection, you're understanding what's relevant to them. You can read their research, find out from them what questions their end user customers are asking them, and that gives you more contexts so that you and your software company can be more relevant to them. Having been an analyst, what I can tell you is the firewall between paid vendor clients and research analysts is super thick. It is super thick. At Gartner in particular, they're very proud of that. And I have even gone through what is called the ombudsman process, where a vendor that was a paying customer did not like their placement in a magic quadrant. We had three calls. It was with lawyers. We held our ground because our analysis was firm. Just because they were a paying customer. We weren't going to change our perspective because we had the data to back that up. So it is not pay for play in the classical sense. It is pay for access. And there's going to be. When we get to the tips part, there's going to be a time when your company gets to a certain size where it makes sense to pay them. But there's a lot you can do within the analyst relations world without paying any money just by investing time. So we'll talk a little bit about that. It's just like pr. You should have your PR agency run your analyst relations strategy. Please don't do this. Having been an analyst again, if someone just pitches me and sends me things that are like press releases, it really was felt demeaning to me and it didn't feel relevant, right? They weren't thinking about my coverage, they weren't thinking about how I worked with end users. As an analyst. I got paid to do research, right? I wanted to go really deep. I wasn't just going to write a story because it was a blip in the news or a funding. Analysts really write based on end user demand. One of the customers that I had that ultimately I couldn't make happy when I was an analyst, she was trying to get written about and she had probably five or six different phone calls with me trying to figure out the right angle and would we write about this, would we write about that? And I had to have the tough conversation with her that essentially said, hey, the space you're in, it is well understood, it's commoditized and nobody calls us to ask questions about it, so why would we write about it? We write things that drive value for, for the end customer. If the end customer is a CPG company or a finance company or whatever, right? Not a tech vendor. And it took a while and they were frustrated. But my feedback was as soon as you are investing in things that are innovative, differentiated, or we're getting questions about them, you are in a space that has great diversity and need. That's when it actually becomes relevant. So think about that as you evaluate where and how you might engage with an analyst. And don't have it be run by pr, ideally run it by product marketing or product folks that are really close to your strategy and folks that can have a deeper and more meaningful conversation. Next one is that it's tech centric. So a lot of us, if we're building software brands, a lot of us are thinking about, hey, the analysts, all they do are magic quadrants and waves. That's about 20% of their research. 20%. The other 80%, it's best practices, it's tips, it's budgeting, it's how to, it's how to hire. It's all a variety of things, right? We full story, we're in the digital experience intelligence category. That is for product managers. So the folks who write about product management, they're not just writing about analytics for product management, they're writing about how to hire a cpo, how do you structure your team, et cetera. And, and so putting yourself into the mindset of what the analysts are and understanding again, hey, what's the breadth of their coverage? How could you help? If they're writing about how to hire great chief product officers, could you put them together on an interview with one of your customers that's a chief product officer, and both give them some value? And P.S. underlying, you're giving a little influence, right? You're sharing the story of your brand along the way. That is really important to understand because their bread and butter is isn't tech vendor research is a much wider array. It just so happens that is definitely one of the things they're very well known for. Last one. This one's my own. And it's fun mostly because every time I told people I was a Gartner analyst, they're like, oh, wow. Ooh, you get on stage a lot, you get to travel all the time. That must be so fun. It was fun. It was fun. Probably for me, the most fun part was getting to talk to a bunch of different customers, end user customers, vendor customers, solving problems. It's the closest you ever got to being an analyst. Sorry. Like a consulting company and being able to really give great advice. The challenge, though, it can be a grind, right? You're like Back to back, 30 minute calls every 10 seconds. Analysts are humans and for me personally, one of the biggest grinds was I would give advice that never got taken. And you sit there and you're like, so as a builder, I had to go back to startups because I love to build things and it was a great experience to have been there. But it's not as glamorous as it seems. So sometimes if you're like, oh, high and mighty analyst, they're just humans, just like everybody else. They're humans that have a pretty big microphone. But there are a lot of ways that you can engage with those humans and their microphone to help build a relationship and build a brand that will help your company grow. So those are my myths. Now we're going to move on to the tips, five of them, relatively easy to remember. And you'll find some things reflected in here that hopefully make sense based on what you just heard. So the first, and I think this is maybe the most important, and for those of you that are CEOs in the room, please listen because your heads of marketing will be so grateful if you hear this first one. It's about expectations. You must manage them. You must manage your own expectations. You must manage your board's expectations. Expectations, analyst relations, and trying to build something in the world of a very, very tough audience. It is a marathon. It is a long marathon. I was talking to Abram Badre, who is the founder of Terminus, if any of you know of the ABM category, account based marketing and someone had said to me like they were like an overnight success. Abm, it's just here, it's a category. I was like, I remember I was a marketer. I was watching this. I don't think it was overnight. Let's find out. Two weeks ago he chatted with me and seven years from his first Flip the Funnel event to the time that Gartner did a magic quadrant on abm. It is because what the ABM category of folks, right? That was like six or seven companies, demand based, $0.06, et cetera. They were all investing in the category that was abm. The analysts don't write about it when it's brand spanking new. They actually might write about something as a cool vendor or an emerging technology. But it is a long journey to get to the place where Parham was talking about with magic quadrants and waves. So know that for yourself, right? Even if you think you are disrupting or creating a new category, it is a long journey to get that recognition in the public markets. You need to be really excited about some of the milestones along the way. A couple other things to mention. If you're in business to consumer technology, it is a little bit tougher. It tends to be a lot more B2B that gets covered by the analyst community unless it's ad tech or double sided marketplaces. So if you're a pure B2C this information may not be as relevant to you. But if you are a B2B ad tech or something that is really sold to an enterprise in some way, then the analysts are super relevant. As we mentioned again, it's not pay to play, it's pay for access. So you may find that someone will say oh just pay him 100 grand, we'll get this report written. The one exception I will say is that Forrester, this is important to know. Gartner does not do any sponsored research. You cannot pay Gartner to get a report full stop. It is purely merits of how they deem the coverage. Forrester will do a paid report, but it is, it's still a very structured process. You can buy either custom research, right? They'll go out and do a survey on your behalf. Be prepared to manage them very heavily. Because it's not just say it and they will come. They need a lot of management on it or they can do what's called a TEI report, which is a total economic impact study. Those are actually really great. Those are the only kind of if you will pay for play items that you can have and you're essentially buying the stamp of approval of their brand. But it's still not going to evaluatively say your company is better than another. It will simply say, here is data that we found about this company. So there are a couple areas that you can do that. But again, this is really all about managing expectations and thinking about what are the timelines and milestones you want to look at. What does success look like? And expecting that it will take some time. And over time you will have more conversations, perhaps get more mentions, perhaps eventually have the opportunity to be in one of the larger reports. But again, just because you think you have a category doesn't necessarily mean they will. Helping them see it helps, helping them see who you compete with. And maybe one of the, in this one side tip, one of the things that analysts hate most, we don't have any competitors, okay, so why should I care? If you're one of a kind and there's nobody else even doing something remotely like you, then you're not a market. You're just a single solution looking for a problem. You might want to frame it as, hey, while there are no direct competitors who do exactly what we do, these are the two or three areas where we are taking, spend where we are helping consolidate where we are. You have to help them frame it and understand it because there always is. Sometimes it's do nothing, at which point, right, it's not very important and sometimes it's a direct competitor or an alternative. And those are things that you want to do. So set expectations, manage them internally, manage your own, because it is a marathon. The next one is relevance. And this is one I mentioned in a couple of different ways as I talked about the myths. How are you relevant? Knowing how you're relevant to an analyst is super important. Every analyst, be they Forester or Gartner or IDC or some of the others that I don't know as well, they all have a coverage area and in their coverage area they actually cover a lot of things. In fact, probably not. It's a little known fact, but I can certainly share. While the G2s and trustrators of the world are grabbing at the heels of these players, some of those players, Gartner, Forster, they're losing some talent. That means analysts have more coverage areas. It's not as dire as in the world of reporting. But it also means that they are spread thin over a lot of topics. And it's really important for you to build a relationship that helps you understand coverage. How do you understand coverage? Well, it turns out that some of the analyst firms, Forrester in particular, they actually publish. What is an analyst writing over the next six, six months? You don't even have to pay for that. You can look that up. You can read almost all the analyst firms, they have blogs that they promote. It's not behind the paywall. Read the blogs of the analysts that you think are relevant to you. See what themes they're going into, find out what they're excited about and then use that to determine who you should be working with. Because at any analyst firm there are hundreds of analysts, sometimes they all look the same, same. So understanding their coverage areas really well is important. And understand they change. A colleague and I, that's another CMO at a competitive intelligence company. We were bemoaning the fact the other day that both of us have had three forester analysts retire in the last six months that covered our spaces. That means we have to start all over again. But that will go to my next point. But it's really important, right? We have to figure out who is the relevant analyst, what end user companies, what our customers are. Companies like segment, Sendoso, Salesloft, VMware, but also in Retail, Gap, Lowe's, who's covering the topics that those companies are interested in. I need to become friends with them, I need to build relationships with them and have my product team build relationships with them as well. So understanding what's in it for them and if you can, if you ever have the opportunity. One of my tricks in helping convey get onto a magic quadrant was showing the analysts our data. So if you think about it, research analysts, they love research. They want to come at things from a perspective of data. And let's say that your application, in my case at this point we were covering logistics, software, transportation logistics. And the pandemic had just hit and what was happening. You couldn't get packages delivered to your house on time. We had all of that data and what we were able to do is make, parse that data in different ways, slice and dice it and give exclusive access to some of the analysts. And it worked. So know what's in it for them, be relevant. Big one investment, really important for this group. If you are early stage, it's okay, you don't have to invest money. Briefings are free. I'm going to repeat it Briefings are free. What is a briefing? There are 30, 45 minute session with an analyst to tell them about what's going on in your market. That's how analysts stay up to date on what's going on. So when you think about analyst relations, don't assume that it is too soon for you. If you know there are analysts who care about the space you're in and who are writing about topics that are relevant to you, request a briefing. Be really explicit about what you're going to share in it. Both of these firms, they have forms online. You request a briefing and they can turn them down. But if you make it a compelling reason, they're likely to want to learn about you. Just because they don't want to not be in the know. When someone says there's a new cool kid on the block, they want to know. Briefings are free. Only start investing when you're ready and be sure to test the product. All of them offer proofs of concept so you can talk to analysts and see if they really are copacetic with you. Second to last. Very quick. One, advice. Accept it. Accept the advice. Analysts are there to give you advice. They're actually a mirror of your market. They talk to your end users every day, right? A lot of folks go in pretending they know it all. And there's a lot you do know. But man, sometimes the analysts do have a gem. Who should you partner with? What M and A might you do? What features are most important? What is the pain your customer is feeling? They have that value. So take it for what it's worth and actually ingest that back into your offerings. And last but not least, bring people with you. This is a team sport. I firmly believe the analyst relations should be led by product teams, product marketing teams. But your CEOs should be part of it. You should have folks, maybe even from engineering. Like, if you have a data scientist who's brilliant and actually good in front of an audience, bring them in. The more relevant and thoughtful people you can bring to your conversations, the more relationships you can develop and the more those people can help you get angles that an analyst will care about. So with 10 seconds left, I'm going to summarize for you. You heard five myths. Please don't believe most of them. There's very little truth to almost any of them. There's nuances. But please do think about how you can manage expectations. Be relevant, right? What's in it for them? Think about your investment. Start with time. You don't have to invest money at the very beginning. You can start with just time and relevance, accept their advice and bring along your team. Hopefully that'll put you on the path to whether or not it's an MQ or a wave, at least a great relationship with a B2B analyst who can help your business thrive and help you become a unicorn like UiPath or Fullstory or the like. But that is all I have for you today. Love to chat more with you about analyst relations and anything I can help with after the sessions.

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