Maximizing the Impact of Your Major Evaluation Rollout: A Comprehensive Guide
Congrats! After meticulous preparation and countless hours of cross-functional teamwork, you've completed your major analyst evaluation. You've painstakingly filled in each character-limited cell, executed a flawless briefing, and successfully navigated the scorecard appeals. Now, it's time to make the most of your hard work with a strategic rollout.
The aim here is to maximize the visibility and impact of your favorable evaluation, leveraging it to bolster your company's reputation, influence buyer perceptions, and drive sales. Here's a step-by-step checklist to ensure you get the most from your major evaluation rollout.
1. Craft your Press Release: Start with creating a press release to announce your placement. You can start this once your scorecard and write-up are finalized, since the rules of what you’ll be allowed to say are extremely limited. Look for quotable lines within your analyst write-up that emphasize your strengths or unique selling points - these can be powerful ammunition for your press release. Note, if you start this early, be sure to come back and revise in the event of a top score on either axis or a sole leader placement - these are press release gold, but you won’t know about them until you get your Courtesy Preview.
2. Prepare Marketing Collaterals: If there's a good chance you'll want to license the piece, get your marketing teams started on a host of promotional materials. This could include a website landing page dedicated to your evaluation, branded rollout collateral, email signatures, social media visuals, and more. Having these assets ready will allow you to immediately kickstart promotion once you have the analyst firm's citation team's approval.
3. Decide on Licensing: Consider waiting to view the entire evaluation before deciding on licensing. This usually means waiting until your courtesy preview arrives (typically five days before publication). This approach ensures you don't pay to promote a piece that's overly favorable to a competitor.
4. Equip Your Sales Team: Prepare sales-enablement content to help your sales team leverage your evaluation win. This should include guidance on highlighting competitive wins and addressing any potential concerns or low scores. Also, ensure you provide training on the rules for promoting major evaluations to prevent any infractions, such as posting edited versions of the graphics 😬
5. Host a Webinar (Extra Credit!): This one is certainly not necessary, but if you’re particularly proud of your results, consider hosting a webinar featuring the analyst who conducted the evaluation. Inviting a satisfied customer, possibly one of the reference customers used during the evaluation, can provide a powerful, real-world endorsement of your solution.
By following these steps, you can ensure that your major evaluation rollout isn't just an announcement, but a strategic initiative that bolsters your company's reputation, impacts buyer decisions, and drives sales. Remember, the journey doesn't end with a favorable analyst evaluation; it's just the beginning of leveraging that success for your business's growth.
Upward (and to the right!)
Elena
