If you are one of those Vendors that have seen their Analyst Briefing declined and didn’t have a clue of the reasons behind the decision, here you will find all the answers.

The majority of Analysts receive between 1-3 briefing requests per day, but the same Analysts only attend 2-3 briefings per week each. Wonder what happened to the other requests? They are likely to be declined.    

Here are the top reasons for Industry Analysts to decline a briefing request from a vendor:    

• The vendor has no clear relevance to the Analyst research
• Their Briefing request is poorly worded or unclear    
• The vendor gives no clear reason for an update
• The Analyst is too busy
• The Analyst has already spoken to the vendor recently

Interestingly, the most common mistake that leads to “no clear relevance to [the analyst’s] research” is that Vendors struggle to understand which of the 4200+ Industry Analysts to route the request to. As a consequence, they come across as irrelevant for most analysts and might not be able to reach the one that really covers their technology.

To prevent your Briefing request from being declined by Analysts, ask yourself 2 questions:

1) Am I really targeting Analysts who are covering my Tech Space?

Most vendors look at Vendor Briefings as a B2B event, where a company (the vendor) makes another company (the analyst firm) aware of their product. This couldn’t be farther from the truth: Vendor Briefings are personalized meetings between people. “Briefing Gartner” is not the same as briefing “Analyst X, Analyst Y and Analyst Z”.

For this reason, knowing who your primary, your secondary and tertiary Analysts are is paramount, well before you submit the Vendor Briefing request. Learn How to Prioritize Your Analyst Audience With Tiering.

2) Is my request clear and does it resonate with what the Analyst is focused on?

In addition, briefing requests need to speak about the “outcomes” you provide to your clients, not about your product. Analysts are often very “techy”, but their job is to evaluate you as a vendor, not as a product. Including business insights, outcomes and target markets in your request is always a good practice.

If we get back in your shoes as a vendor, from this standpoint, a declined briefing can be seen as better than a briefing where analysts’ expectations are not met. Indeed one of the key reasons why briefings go wrong is that expectations are misaligned between the vendor and the analysts. To some extent, a declined vendor briefing is a good opportunity to avoid a PR disaster.

Now that you have a clear view on Analysts prospective, here are some tips on what to DO and what DON’T with an Analyst:

Do:

• Be respectful of the analyst’s time. They don’t have much.
• A little research to understand who your Lead Analysts are and their coverage areas. Analysts will prepare by visiting your company website and LinkedIn profile, so we suggest you do the same.

Don’t:

• Waste time educating the Analyst on the market trends, which is their core job.
• Be unprepared and attempt to do a “discovery” call in a briefing.
• Say you don’t have any competitors (if there aren’t competitors, there is no market). 
  

If you want to increase your likelihood to be mentioned in an Analyst report, we don’t recommend you to take this journey by yourself. It is far too easy to end up losing precious time and energy and the risk of burning your reputation is too high.