First 60-Day Roadmap for a Newly Hired Analyst Relations (AR) Professional

I’ve had multiple conversations with Analyst Relations pros starting new roles this month (congrats all of you!), and it got me thinking about all of the things smart AR pros do in those first few months to set their new programs out on the right foot (feet?). 

If you’re in a new AR role, or perhaps building out your first Analyst Relations 30/60/90 Strategy - read on for my top 6 priorities for your early days.

Priority 1: Set your North Star and Get Alignment

If you've ever read this blog before, you will quickly guess that your North Star is NOT going to be counting meetings/briefings/total analysts influenced. Instead, consider something along the lines of “using analyst influence to help this company sell more stuff, faster and more easily.” 

A North Star like that might take the form of working with analyst firms on ROI content, prioritizing waves and MQ placement, or helping half a dozen critical analysts crisply articulate exactly which buyers you are (and are not) perfect for in the market. Done right, that’s a North Star that senior leaders across sales, marketing and product will all buy into - and having this clear and aligned from the start of your tenure will keep you out of the weeds and focused on delivering real value to the business.

Priority 2: Map the Key Players

The beauty of a simplified North Star like the one above is it makes it easy to distill exactly which analysts are truly key players worth spending significant effort (and executive time) with. These will be the folks directly speaking with your buyers on a regular basis - writing major evaluations of your space (if they exist), adjacent ones (if they do not), or the key trend and best practice pieces that your buyers consider must-read content. Note that these folks may or may not reside at Forrester or Gartner - it’s all about who your buyers actually trust.

Now that you’ve found them (probably 5-10 of them, max, unless you have a dozen different products and buyer personas), create a simple slide that highlights them. I like a red/yellow/green of our relationship strength, a sentence or two of detail about what they think about us or have written recently, and whatever we know about their upcoming research. This may be the only AR slide you need for the c-suite (please delete the ones about how important AR is - I promise your executives are aware already).

Priority 3: Check for Fires 

Perhaps obvious, but don’t miss this one, and it probably belongs in week 1. If there’s a critical evaluation that’s about to happen, you’ve got to be ahead of it, and your window to actually engage with the analysts before blackout periods may be quickly closing if you don’t have a solid handoff from your predecessor. Do a quick audit of all coverage of your space and adjacent spaces going back two years to get a sense of what might be repeating soon that you should know about. Your account reps will be eager to help with this assessment as well, so you might start with reaching out to ask them about upcoming evaluations while you…

Priority 4: Audit your Contracts and Budget

It may take a bit of unraveling to understand what your contracts cover - especially given that these major firms change their vendor license structures on what seems like a quarterly basis. A baseline contract contains a number of seat licenses allowing research access or live analyst engagement (sometimes only certain types of research or analysts) From there you can add on specific time with the analysts in the form of advisory days, special projects like economic analysis, or content licensing. 

As a part of this audit, make sure you understand whose budget each of these activities fall under - it’s not uncommon for content marketing to fund content licensing while individual departments are cross-charged for their own seat licenses, for example. This is also a good time to remind your account reps at the major firms that they should be keeping you in the loop about their conversations in other parts of the business (virtually every consulting client I work with has joked about how bad their reps are about this). 

Priority 5: Build your Study Plan

The best AR folks seek to understand their corporate strategy, including go-to-market and differentiation, competitive landscape, company momentum and customer stories. Being well versed in these things gives AR pros the context they need to get the most out of analyst engagements, and arms them to consistently add value to the analysts they are engaging with.  Here’s a checklist of resources to get you started:

• Recent writings from your key analysts 

• Past major evaluations (understand how the organization reacted to these)

• Any recent recorded briefings

• Recent sales meetings (see if your company uses Gong or the equivalent)

• Product Marketing Pitch Decks and Customer Case Study resources

• Your most recent year of investor calls, as well as those from competitors

Priority 6: Your Networking Plan

Analyst Relations is the ultimate team sport, and your success will be built on your relationships with others across your business. In addition to the executive leaders you aligned with on your North Star above, here are a few unexpected folks you’ll want to get to know over your first few months:

• Head of Investor Relations - for public company AR folks, you can help with market sizing and TAM, they’ll want to ensure everything you’re sharing is fair game

• Whoever runs your win-loss survey - the ultimate way to show which analysts are influential is to ask your buyers. 

• The Customer Experience Team - Your CX team can help you understand what concerns analysts may be hearing from customers, and they are a great source of potential promoters and references for evaluations and review sites.

• The Data Wranglers - folks in sales, product, and revenue operations who can help you answer detailed analyst questions and tell a great data-grounded momentum story.

• A Great Sales Engineer - You'll want an expert on your team who understand's the buyer's perspective and is calm under pressure - find one in this org.

In Conclusion: 

Starting anew in Analyst Relations is much like laying the foundation for a building — the initial groundwork determines the structure's future stability and success. As you navigate these first 60 days, remember that the point of this profession is to deliver value, not meetings.

Stay laser-focused on your North Star and good luck out there!

Upward (and to the right)!

-Elena