The 6 Key Players You Must Recruit to Your Forrester Wave or Gartner MQ Team
Maximizing your placement in a Forrester Wave, Gartner Magic Quadrant, or similar industry evaluation requires a well-rounded and cohesive cross functional team - most of whom will have other day jobs in addition to their role in the very intense analyst evaluation process.
But getting the right team in place (and the right buy in from their leadership to actually dedicate time to this process) is absolutely essential for putting your best foot forward and earning optimal placement.
In this blog post, I'll discuss the six essential roles you must recruit to your winning evaluation team if your goal is to move that dot upward and to the right.
The Dynamic Demonstrator. I see a lot of companies default to someone in the product organization for this role, but I’d strongly encourage you to consider taking a look at your sales organization to find this player. A great sales engineer marries experience being unflappable in high pressure situations, up-to-date insights from regular customers and prospect interactions (exactly the audience your analyst is trying to write for), and an uncanny ability to whip out the perfect customer anecdote to disarm an objection like it’s their job (which it is).
Note that you may get some pushback from your CRO about pulling an A-player presales resource out of the field - counter this by asking how important they think a winning Wave or MQ will be in future sales cycles… (hint: it’s VERY important)
A Visionary Executive (or two). This is the person who is going to take point on the strategy portion of your briefing, with a goal of effectively communicating your overall vision, financials, product roadmap, and differentiation. Ideally, your Chief Product Officer (CPO) and another executive (CEO, CFO, or Chief Strategy Officer) should be part of the team. Their presence lends credibility and authority, showcasing your company's commitment to growth and innovation.
One note of caution here: Brevity is key! This executive needs to be able to hit their time marker reliably and be open to preparation time and feedback - you can’t afford to have an executive speak for 30 minutes when your presentation plan calls for 10.
Data Wranglers. The unsung heroes of the Wave or MQ process, data wranglers are critical to hunting down quantifiable and defensible evidence that supports all the claims you are making. Typically, you’ll need one data wrangler from finance or sales ops to count things like revenue growth, customer count (sliced by country or segment), and other metrics used to demonstrate your financial momentum. Your second wrangler will come from product and will look for usage statistics and other evidence that best tell your adoption and momentum story to demonstrate your differentiation with real hard data.
These individuals in particular are highly in demand for their day jobs and have other priorities: make sure the CFO and CTO (or whoever they report to) understand the impact this data will have on your evaluation results. Too often I see AR teams not appreciate the importance of these counting functions until late in the response process - and then they are begging for resources at the last minute. Don’t fall into this trap!
The Architect. Analyst evaluations have grey areas and ask about things your product may do under certain circumstances, but not directly out of the box. Your architect is the team member who is going to think creatively and find ways to get to “yes” in as much of the questionnaire and demonstration as possible.
Typically I’ve seen these folks sit in the services organization, customer support, or in product, where they work directly with actual customers to meet their unique use cases through creative implementations and integrations. Both Gartner and Forrester primarily serve large enterprises (often in highly regulated industries) - you need someone who can speak to the ways your company meets these types of use cases in the real world, beyond your marketing content and out of the box product documentation.
The Storyteller. Where the architect is the teammate who gets you to a yes in gray areas, the storyteller is the one who substantiates that you have real (ideally reference-able) customers on the record doing the things that the analyst is interested in. This person will partner closely with the Data Wranglers to identify the best data or stories to substantiate the points you are trying to make throughout your evaluation submissions and materials.
This may be the trickiest role to fill with just one person if you don’t have a customer advocacy team or very strong internal reference process. If you aren’t sure where to start here, head to your sales and customer success orgs for leads on the best internal storytellers and ask them to donate a bit of time to help ensure you’re sharing the most relevant examples.
The Executive Sponsor. I’ve mentioned several times in this piece already that you may have to convince senior leaders to lend you some key players for all or part of an evaluation process to set you up for maximum success. A powerful (and fully bought in) executive sponsor is your key to smoothing that process.
This could be the CMO if that’s where Analyst Relations reports, but ultimately you need someone who can successfully convey to their executive peers how important this evaluation process is and secure their buy in and resources to set the company up for success.
Building the right team is crucial for maximizing your chances of success in a Forrester Wave or Gartner Magic Quadrant evaluation. By recruiting the right players for these six key roles, you'll be well on your way to the Leaders category!
Upward (and to the right!)
-Elena
