Analyst Influence: Gartner Conferences
Thinking ahead to Gartner’s Security and Risk Management Summit to be held this year on June 5-7, I thought it might be valuable to publish the chapter from UP and to the RIGHT that provides my advice on how to leverage the Summit for analyst influence. Note, you have to read the book to understand all the marsupial references. :-)
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Summit
Gartner has a large events business. In addition to the massive IT Symposium, covered in the next chapter, they have smaller conferences throughout the year that focus on specialized industry segments. Security, Enterprise Architecture, and the carry over Meta Group Catalyst Conferences are a few of them. Go to www.gartner.com/technology/events to find which of the forty five conferences best serves your space.
Even while I was at Gartner I would recommend Gartner events as the best conference for vendors to spend money on. If, that is, you are targeting the medium to large enterprise. Don't forget Gartner's client base and focus. If you do share a common target market then you will not find another venue that presents such a target-rich environment for prospects. Gartner events are very expensive to attend so only serious IT buyers attend. Few, if any, students show up and there are only a smattering of journalists. It pays to have a booth at a Gartner event regardless of your MQ plan.
But the Gartner event is a valuable opportunity to push your analyst influence strategy forward. Here are the elements of a Gartner conference that you can leverage.
One-on-ones
The dreaded one-on-one space is usually set up in a hotel ballroom with knock down booths arranged in an institutional rat-maze. Dreaded, because every analyst is required to make time for one-on-ones and may face several hours of back-to-back half hour sessions with end-user clients and vendors. They may be dehydrated from the night before. They may be thinking about their presentation coming up in an hour. I have never met an analyst who likes the one-on-one sessions. They are mentally grueling sessions and most analysts try, but fail, to wiggle out of them. With that said, these sessions can be an opportunity to brief the analyst on something that is easier to do in person than on the phone. Whatever you do, make sure you are not wasting the analyst’s time. Do not bring a Power Point to walk through in excruciating detail. A quick demo of a product feature is a good use of your allotted time. You could review a strategy document. Or you could simply take the opportunity to introduce the analyst to a key member of your team. The AR person must be at this meeting. The one thing the meeting should accomplish is to reinforce the tagline or idea that you are working diligently to implant in the analyst's brain. Repeat it in three different ways during the course of the 20 minutes. Yes, 20. Don't take the full 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes someone will be ringing chimes to alert the groups huddled in the cubicles to end their sessions and get on to the next one. Adult musical chairs. You sign up for one-on-ones online before the conference or at the desk outside the room. If you get the last slot in an analyst's schedule, for sure cut your session short. He will be grateful for the opportunity to escape early and head back to his room to chill out before his next duty. I have even had AR people who were particularly sympathetic grab that slot and then show up to tell me they did not really need a one-on-one but thought I could use the relief. I was truly grateful for that gift of 30 minutes.
Sponsorships
Your Gartner events sales person will be glad to sell you various sponsorships. There are the usual Silver/Gold/Platinum slots with signage and special notice on the web page and conference marketing material. There are lunches and dinners to sponsor. You can even sponsor the welcome reception the first night. All of these are large investments. Their highest value is when you are struggling to convince the analysts that you are real. If they continue to think of you as a small startup even though you have grown to 150 people and are doubling in size every year, now is the time to change their perception by sponsoring their event. Don't forget that the investment pays short-term dividends based on the sales opportunities and brand recognition you will be generating with the base of the pyramid as well as the CIOs who attend. Ensure that your sales team is represented in force. You don't want your marketing and AR people talking to buyers, you want your rainmakers talking to buyers. In many cases a single sale to a CIO that arises from a Gartner event will justify everything you spend on the event. Plus you will have acquired a customer who is a Gartner client, someone at the top of the Influence Pyramid. You know what to do with that.
Analyst presentations
Make sure you have enough people present to attend the analyst's presentations. You have to be in the room at every one of these. It is the polite thing to do. This is the big time for the analyst (even more so for Symposium, although not all analysts in a space go to Symposium). They have sweated to prepare a slide presentation. They have rehearsed to ensure an entertaining experience (the good ones have). If they know you are at the show (they just saw you in the one-on-ones or in your booth) and you are not in the audience, what does that say about your interest in what they have to say? How do they know you are in the room or not? You make sure they know. You tell them you are going to make a point of being there. You "bump into" them on the way into the room. Or you are sitting in front, rapt with attention. It is important that the analyst knows you are in the room because you are subtly pressuring the analyst to be polite when he mentions your company or product. He might not include you in his presentation, but he will probably walk through the MQ and your presence in the audience may induce him to mention you favorably, or at least avoid trashing you. If you have done something newsworthy recently he will mention that. If you are an up-and-comer he will mention that. If you have been deemed a "cool company of the year" he will mention it. But if you are not there he may say something snide or demeaning about your company. The last thing you want is for the analyst to lump you in with "the rest of the ankle biters down here in the Niche Quadrant.” If he does say something negative you have to challenge him. In the most egregious cases you could do that publicly during the Q&A. Just write a note on the card provided and hand it in to the proctor. The moderator may not read it aloud but the analyst will see it. Analysts keep all the questions submitted at Gartner conferences as possible topics for future research notes. Don't insult him of course, but challenge his assumptions, support your case. He is keyed up and in tune at this moment. Your message will get through. Or follow up later with an email or a private conversation in the hall. But it is unlikely that he will slam you in public. If he truly has negative feelings about you he will just not mention you at all.
Assuming that all goes well, make sure to jot down some notes on what he said and follow up with a complimentary note later or if you bump into him later at the conference ask him some questions about what he said. Demonstrate that not only were you there, but you were listening.
The booth
Gartner events include a vendor expo area. The booths are usually a standard 10X10 feet or several of those combined. Gartner provides the booth and the usual expo amenities. You bring the signage, products, literature, and tchotchkes. You must have your booth manned by the sales team. The expo is the most target-rich environment they will ever be in. This is not a book on how to sell, but I have seen global VPs of sales completely fail at booth duty. They hide at the back of the booth, schmooze the CEO when she shows up and shoot the breeze with the other sales people. This is inexcusable. Send them to remedial sales training before the event if you have to. Even if they make no sales, if they talk to 100 CIOs in a day, one of those CIOs is bound to ask the analyst what he thinks about your products. That is a success along your path to execute on your MQ Plan. The sales people should be aware of who is attending and they should have made appointments with key prospects on their targeted list (please don't tell me they don't have such a list). They should be busy. Watch them. They will have no end of excuses for not being in the booth. If you are the CEO or VP of sales now is your chance to demonstrate leadership. Show the sales team how it is done. And most importantly, the entire booth team has to ensure that there is a buzz of activity in your booth for that important moment when the analyst passes by.
Keep an eye out for the analysts. Most of them feel (or are told by management) that it is their duty to breeze through the expo at least once. Some of them are unabashed tchotchke collectors. They will have big bags already full of plush toys, notebooks, pens, flashing shot glasses, and USB thumb drives. Don't disappoint them. Have something worthwhile for them to grab. At one Gartner show I saw a vendor give away an iPod to every single attendee that came to their booth. They had a line of prospects that wrapped halfway around the show floor. Not necessarily the best use of their money, but they certainly captured a lot of contacts.
So the analyst walks by. Grab her. Pull her into your booth. Take a picture of her standing with your CEO. And, most importantly, reinforce that seed you have planted in her brain. “Look Allison. See how our product fits in the kangaroo's pouch without disturbing her baby? Do you want to hold him?"
Dinner
If a Gartner sales person thinks she has a prospect on the line or if she has a big vendor client coming up for renewal she will schedule a dinner at a local restaurant with the client and one or more analysts. You might not be such a "whale,” but if you are investing a significant amount in sponsorships and booth space you should try to negotiate a dinner with the analyst. Make sure your CEO is there. It's another chance to demonstrate to her that she is deriving value from all the money being spent. Treat the dinner as a social and bond-building event. Talk up your company of course, but not in a pitch. Instead of saying "we opened an office in the Netherlands" say "I had the most wonderful experience seeing the canals in Amsterdam on my last trip to our new office." You get the idea.
Breakfast
Gartner schedules "Breakfast with the Analyst" at these events. It is an opportunity for the attendees to rub shoulders with the great man (or woman). They are very awkward events for the analyst. He sits at a table with a placard with his name on it. As the table fills up, everyone sits as far from him as they can get. These are IT geeks, remember. They do fine at the evening events where drinks are flowing freely, but an early morning session where they are sitting at the same table with the guy they saw present to a standing-room-only audience the day before is a conversation killer. The best thing you can do is waltz in, sit right next to the analyst and strike up a conversation. Send your best morning person to do this. Talk about anything. Break the ice with the latest news report. Act as social secretary. Introduce yourself to everyone. Ask their names. If you know them, introduce them to the analyst. Ask the analyst questions that elicit stories. Most analysts are great story tellers. Get them going. Try to get the table engaged and the conversation flowing. You are doing the analyst a huge favor. Throughout the rest of the conference he will recognize these breakfast companions and perhaps have more productive conversations with them. Meanwhile ,you will be continuing your bond building.
Hospitality Suites
At most Gartner events vendors sponsor a hospitality suite, an empty room decked out for a party, and there is an evening of room-hopping between each party. The vendors vie for coolest party. There are Vegas-themed rooms with table games, there are ice-bars, there will probably be one with scantily clad women (please do not ever hire booth babes to represent your company. I don't care what your testosterone-soaked sales guys think. It is crass and misogynistic.) There is one vendor who attends the Gartner Security Summit every year and raffles off a fully decked-out Harley Davidson motorcycle. I have advised them that it is time to drop this extravagant gesture. There are better ways to spend your scant marketing resources. The analysts are obligated to visit all the hospitality suites, so track them down and schmooze them. Don't hound them of course, just contribute to their evening. And don't forget to reinforce your inception point: “Want to participate in our raffle? Just put your card in this wallaby's pouch!”
To sum up the Summit activity: just work it. Do as much as you can with the budget you have. The inception point might occur at the Summit in a casual conversation, at the booth, or late at night, when the analyst sits bolt up right in bed and exclaims: “Hey, those guys use marsupial pouches!"