How to Choose Industry Analysts Who Drive Results for your Business

The Enchanted Quadrant to the Rescue!

Investing energy in the right analysts is the difference between wasting time and skyrocketing the awareness of your company.  There are about 10,000 analysts  in the world but most are not going to influence your market. Analyst relations will pay off handsomely when you choose the right analysts and build strong relationships. To help you decide who to focus on, I've created The Enchanted Quadrant of Industry Analysts.

The EQ, as I like to call it, measures individual analysts in two dimensions:  Their level of influence on your market and their sentiment towards your business. I’ve used some of the world’s better-known “analysts” in our example EQ: 

In order to use this tool, you need to first define a list of relevant analysts.  This is based on a lot of research and experience, for which you may want to engage an analyst relations expert.   

Once you have that list, you prioritize influence. Influence is a combination of 1) coverage of your space, 2) important evaluation reports they might produce,  3) whether buyers in your space read and consult with them, and 4) how frequently they write overall.

At Schaffer AR, we have an intricate scoring system based on these factors.  We rate the analysts relative to each other on the influence dimension. Since they are all relevant to some degree, the scale goes from Highly Influential on the top right to Less Influential on the bottom right.  Lay them out on this axis.

Next, we rate their sentiment on your business compared to competitors.  If the analysts consider you about the same as the competitors, the sentiment would be in the middle.  Much better to the right, much worse to the left.  If they don’t know you at all, consider them in the far left for now.  We base sentiment on scores we gather from individual engagements, written research, and annual perception audits. Lay them across from left to right.  Lowest sentiment on the left, highest on the right.  

That gives you a visual representation of the analysts across the four quadrants.   

• Top right = highly influential and highly positive.   Golden.

• Top left = highly influential but negative.  Ouch.  You need to put more work into the relationship.  You’ve got problems to solve and opportunities to gain.  

• Bottom right = lower influence and positive.  Nothing wrong here, but you may have hit the law of diminishing returns. Nurture the relationship to maintain the sentiment, but don’t overinvest. 

• Bottom left = lower influencer and negative. Be very careful about investing in analysts in this quadrant.  It will take time and energy to change their perception. Make sure they’re worth it. 

  
  

Laying out your analyst relationships in this form helps you develop individual engagement plans that move the analysts from where they are to where you want them to be.

Our annual engagement plans look at the analyst from these lenses:

• Quadrant: Position on the graph

• Sentiment:  Score used to plot them on the graph.

• Relationship: The quality of the relationship

• Beliefs:  What they like, what they think is weak and needs improving.   

• Actions: What they actually do. Include you in an assessment? Rate you positively? Cover you in any other way? Recommend you to prospects?

  
  

We take a snapshot of these lenses at the beginning of the year, define a goal for each by the end of the year, and lay out the engagements we need to have during the year, and the actions the company needs to take to make this change happen.  Here’s a simplified view:

By evaluating the relationship and value of the analysts, and making subsequent engagement plans, you have much greater control over the outcome of your analyst relations program.  And therefore your budget, resources, support and career. 

Follow these steps and you’ll watch real analysts join Bruce Springsteen and Quentin Tarantino.  The upper right of your Enchanted Quadrant will become very crowded with influential analysts who think highly of you. 

Need help with AR? We’re always available to chat about the possibilities for your business. Set a call at calendly.com/schafferar.

Read our overview and best practices for Analyst Relations.

About the author

Robin Schaffer leads Schaffer AR, an analyst relations agency supporting B2B tech vendors, especially startups and scaleups.

Robin is a prominent voice in the analyst relations community and the author of Analysts on Analyst Relations.