How CMOs Can Leverage Analyst Relations To Drive Growth
Joely Urton, Senior Director Analyst Relations at Splunk & Lauren Vaccarello, CMO at Salesloft, pull from their own experience to describe how the AR and CMO relationship can impact your company's reputation and how you can leverage it to your advantage.
[MUSIC]
>> Welcome to another episode of
Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
Today, I am joined by two special guests,
two old friends, first, Jolie, how are you?
>> I'm good. How are you, Ian?
>> I am wonderful,
excited to chat with you today,
and Lauren, how are you?
>> I am so good.
I am so excited to be here with both of you.
I have been looking forward to this for
a very long time.
>> You and I get to sit in the cheap seats and let
the master tell us how things are done,
as is always when we're hanging out, Jolie.
>> It is. I like to tell everybody and anyone who
listen in people who won't listen,
that everything I learned about
analyst relations I learned from Jolie,
and I'm so excited to be here with her again.
>> Oh my gosh, and I feel the same way about you, Lauren.
Everything I learned about Demand Gen and the demand curve,
I learned from you.
I use that in my running of the AR program every single day.
>> All right, so let's get into it today.
A little bit of a different episode for us.
We're going to be talking about
analyst relations, how it fits in with demand,
how it fits into marketing,
how it fits into a CMOs repertoire here.
We'll look at AR both from Jolie's perspective as
one of the world's experts on AR,
and then we'll also look at it from Lauren's perspective.
Dare I say the world's expert on it, Jolie?
>> Okay, so to get into it first,
what is analyst relations and how do you think about it?
>> So analyst relations is a strategic function that ensures,
at the end of it, it ensures that companies are assessed fairly accurately,
and that the best way possible by the industry analysts that
advise end users or budget owners of technology solutions.
>> Yeah, and why is this so important?
Why is what the analysts say and think and write about so important,
especially for enterprise and B2B technology?
>> The analyst relations is really,
it's an important function in that you're really hitting all the audiences
that you should be for a company, no matter what size or
maturity of the business that it's in.
So if you think about public relations as primary mechanism for
creating big marketing moments or big newsworthy moments in market,
but that's more of a one way from company to the world.
And then you think about investor relations as having that two-way dialogue
with investor community and really helping them to understand
why, how should they be valuing your company and why you matter in the market
and why you're worthy of that investment.
Analyst relations is that third pillar and
an just as important pillar that allows you to really get your differentiation
for your portfolio and why and how do you value that for
the end user customer clients.
And the way you do that is through analysts that their whole job is to write
about technology and evolution of that technology, why it matters for the
customer.
And I think that's by working with the analyst group,
you're really getting a scalable impact to getting your solution,
your differentiation and why should that matter for your target audience.
>> Lauren, how should a CMO think about AR and
how it fits into your marketing repertoire?
>> Great question.
If you are a B2B marketer with the technology solution,
analyst relations is one of the most important and
one of the most strategic functions that you will have.
I think about it as, again, as Jolie said, this is this two-way communication.
How are we working with analysts to help understand, define and scope the
category?
And this is potentially your company helping define and
scope what a category is, where do you play, where do you buy, but
also getting these really critical insights from analysts to come back and
say, this is who your target audience is.
This is actually what they care about.
This is what they're buying.
This is why this matters.
And then you could take that information, you work with your product
organization,
and you're getting that to help you build better products,
products that people want to buy, and will have a bigger impact on the company.
So it is, you can use analysts to help influence your internal strategy.
And then you're also communicating with them of where you're going,
how your company is evolving, because the same way that we are getting insights
from analysts show our thousands and thousands of technology buyers who are
relying on these analysts, relying on their reports to understand what's out
there,
what matters, and what's going to really propel their businesses.
I think that's more important than ever these days, because I think you live
this
everyday as a CMO, that the buying world has gotten more decentralized, right?
Yeah.
So it's not that just IT is spending money on IT investments.
A lot of IT decision making is happening across the company,
from the sea levels on down to lines of business.
And of course, ultimately IT will have to implement.
So things have gotten complex.
All the more reason why I think customers and buyers of technology are
turning to analysts, because analysts make things complex,
things, complex concepts simpler.
And then they help sort of cut to the chase in terms of if you're looking
for a particular solution, who are the top three vendors, you should be
considering who should be, what should be in that RFP that you want to do a
bake off on, and then how should they be thinking about the success of that
solution for your business?
And then when you're negotiating with a vendor, what are the common terms or
average price?
So it goes a full gamut from, do I have a problem that I think it's all the
technology?
And then if so, who should I look at all the way down to your procurement team
can negotiate in and trying to get the best terms?
100%.
And it's the, I'm always in the sort of the two seats as the CMO.
There is the, I beat in my team includes analyst relations.
So we are working with the foresters and the gardeners of the world to help
define and scope what the category is.
I'm in such an exciting market where it is not, so it hasn't been around for
20 years and it's set in stone.
So we are defining what sales engagement and revenue intelligence is,
what the future of this technology is.
So we're in this super cool place where we're working with analysts on
defining what this is, understanding what customer needs are.
And then there's the other side of my job that me as a customer of the
gardeners and the foresters and the IDCs of the world, where I'm a buyer of
technology and when I'm trying to figure out what technology I'm going to buy,
whether it's me or my IT team, we're going to analysts and saying,
you know what?
We're considering ABM solutions right now.
This is what I think I know.
What don't I know?
What advice do you have?
What are you seeing in the market?
And we can go to them and get their perspective that then on the buyer side,
I then ask better questions.
I understand the market better.
So it is this incredible sort of two way street.
And as a sitting on both sides, it's important to sort of leverage both sides
of the
equation.
I always like to say everything I know about AR, I learn from Jolie.
And when I think about, and sorry, and I'm going to do your job on this one,
I was like, but I want to ask questions.
I'm trying not to ask questions.
So Jolie, when you think about analyst relations, there's participating in
existing categories and there's category creation.
And I got to work alongside Jolie as she has worked on creating categories at
box.
And I say that as a poor, his category is plural.
And I would love to ask Jolie, like, why do you create categories?
How did you do it?
It definitely is one of the most fun parts of running AR programs is when you
are
lucky enough to be teamed up and working for a company that, that is early
enough
in its company's journey where you are truly disrupting the status quo.
You are challenging the incumbents that are in the place, which was the case
with
Fox circa 2011, 2012, 2013 is, you know, when they first came on board and they
had this modern way of what the analysts now called digital workplace.
But back then there was no word to describe what we did.
And what we displaced was the what was there before, which was the Microsoft
SharePoint, which is a very dominant form of file sharing and a drive that most
like a shared drive for departmental content sharing that was happening in the
market and Fox offered a very unique and a very different way of solving that
same problem.
They were doing it at a time.
It was very unique because this idea of the technology only being for company
technology services to be only provided by IT, that to be sanctioned.
We all have to use company issued devices, all that sort of assumptions about
how
you provide IT services for your employees was being challenged through
consumerization of IT, the shadow IT.
A lot of these things were very new sort of constructs that were coming through
And so the fun part about working in that context for analysts relations is
that you can really, you know, you can, you really are on the same sort of
playing
field with analysts in that they learn as much from you as a vendor, kind of
seeing things for the first time.
And then they help you put these terminologies and constructs in place to help
their end user clients that may not recognize that disruptions are happening
in the marketplace.
And then they put words and terms and ways of thinking into place to help bring
those ideas to the masses, the masses of buyers that you want to go after.
Netnet for Boxes is that our CEO Aaron Levy really did not like all the
existing ways in which he just firmly believed.
And the reason I was hired is that he firmly believed that we were truly in a
new
category. We didn't want to be judged by the old category in the way, the
functionality that they provided because it was not the better way.
We offered a much better way at a much more economic price value point.
It took us several years, but we ended up creating a whole new category
run enterprise files, you can share, which ultimately became a evaluative
report in the form of a Maggartner magic quadrant and forced away.
It took several years, but we ultimately got there and we got to just create
the whole RFP, the customer requirements, how you should be evaluating that
technology and making the case for considering this new way of working.
And that was super fun.
And eventually that became digital workplace and became one of the arsenal
in your digital workplace portfolio.
So, Julie, there's different phases of where a company is at.
And that's what Lauren was talking about there, where there's someone who is
trying to establish like a new category that needs to help like build that up.
There's someone who is in an existing category where they're not at all
being considered by analysts as a company that is anything worth the darn.
So just getting to be considered is important.
And then there's trying to be in the top right unless there's, I guess there's
other stages within that, but are those kind of the big three or what do you
think there?
I think that's pretty good.
I will say as an AR pro, it's always fun when you're going, try to meet the top
three
and try to maximize your position of the top right.
But that's not for every company.
For some companies, maybe if they're early stage, then maybe just being named a
cool
vendor and a Gartner report, that's good enough for that year as you mature.
And at the end of the day, you have to have a sustainable business that is real
And because at the end of the day, the industry analysts reflect what is
happening
in the market.
So if you are driving demand, you are getting customers and you're getting
them in a visible way, then you will show up, particularly as B2B company.
How big of a market does there need to be to get considered by vendors?
How big of a category need to be or to get to consider by analysts?
These days, 10 years ago, I would say you would have had to be a certain size
and a certain scale of a business before you would get attention from the
analysts.
Analysts world is changing a lot, just like we are all experiencing roll shifts
and
the role of a CMO, the role of CPO, the CRO, it's all evolving and the role of
analysts is evolving as well.
So I think there's a much more of an appetite these days and it's more bifurc
ated.
I think for certain markets, there are like infrastructure as a service, for
example,
like that game is done.
Like it's Amazon, it's Microsoft, and maybe you'll have some regional providers
but there's a clear dominant gold standards that most companies are going to go
after.
The big three, Google being like the, really the distant third, it's really AWS
and
Azure and Amazon, I'm sorry, GCP for the third.
So like in those types of more mature markets, where it's clear, the breakout
leaders, and then you might have some special needs in the regions or different
requirements that you may have.
But for other markets like Lawrence, for example, this whole space that she's
trying to create category clarity or create a whole new category because there
's
nothing that exists today.
There's a much more of an appetite for the analysts to engage with earlier
stage
companies than there have been that I've seen in the past five years.
And like when you say earlier, say like, how is that?
Okay, I just raised 50 million bucks early.
Is it how many customers you have?
Is it that you're doing something cool that your technology is cool?
What catches the ears and eyes?
I would contend that no matter how small you are, like series CD, E stage,
you should consider having that function, even if you're getting support
through a AR agency or even if you can't afford the headcount.
So you'd have to hire in a contractor or through AR consultancies and of their
number of them these days, it's not going to hurt you.
I think he could only benefit you.
That's what I say as a someone who's been in the
profession and wants this field to really evolve over the years.
I would take five years ago or even nine years, nine-ish years ago when I got
hired at Fox, it wasn't very typical for a series D company to hire a full-time
pretty experienced director level AR leader.
I think that really is the kudos to Erin Levy on understanding the importance
of the super influencers who can really help have a scalable impact
and helping tell your story.
So really it's to Erin that I got hired.
But at that time, it really wasn't that well established.
Most air functions were established just around the IPO or post IPO stage
when you start to build a very regular rhythm and you particularly if you're
in a B2B space, you want to make sure that you're getting your share of voice
with the analyst community.
So it was more IPO, just post IPO that you would hire this function.
Usually as a part of a comms function, which is whole another thing.
I've talked to Lauren about don't put it on the comms.
It's not usually doesn't work out that well.
If your company is trying to quote unquote create a category around something
where there is nothing and analysts aren't looking at that space or you
think it needs to be redefined, it seems like you have to invest in having
an AR person, right?
Like how else would you shape those analysts?
Like how are they just having their CEOs talk to them?
Like how else would people be doing it?
So analysts relations is one function.
I would think that you have to have multiple different parts of the
organization working on it.
Because number one, I think when you're trying to create a new category,
because there's nothing that exists.
First of all, is there a large term?
Is there a large term?
Do you believe that there's a large term total there, the rest of the market?
And where are you going to get that?
Tam?
Do you get that tam simply through a demand generation strategies or are you
going to get it from existing markets?
Are you going to get it from existing markets?
Because you're such a better alternative, you can make that case that you're
better,
you're more economical, you are a better way.
And it's that latter part, you have a huge tam.
You can clearly see that huge tam, which was in the case of box because they
were
going after an existing market.
And then they were also going after a brand new buyer types that were,
because their initial go to market strategy was the freemium.
So freemium in the enterprise was never done.
I think box was one of the first enterprise B2B company that really used
that tactic.
And that was a just tremendous legion initially,
that tremendous legion engine for them.
And so they're going after this sort of credit card transactions,
departmental purchase buys through R&D, heads of R&D, heads of HR, heads of
marketing that the traditional buyers did not tap into.
So when you have situations like that in which there is a clearly a huge tam,
you can make the case through your execution.
You can make the case in which you're approaching the go to market a little
differently.
That's when I think you need to invest in that AR function.
Like these different things need to come together.
Now, you probably work with a lot of startups.
If that's the case, I don't know that you need an AR person.
You mentioned there are a bunch of AR agencies out there and that may be the
case where you leverage an AR agency to help you and to help do some of the
work.
And then you have a program manager internally or someone going into to help
do that, but really needing this strategic function is a lot of what
Jolie described.
And there are some phenomenal AR agencies out there.
Like I've worked with the skills connection and have had great sort of
success with them and past lives and really knowing if you are out
sourcing some of your AR and you're looking for an agency, knowing what you
want to get out of them and knowing where you want to leverage them is critical
Yeah.
Is knowing what you want to get out of them sometimes, should I even be
investing in this in the first place?
100% and it is especially if your company is new to AR, you may think to
Jolie's point, I'm an incrementally better version of Slack and based on that,
I should be hanging off the magic quadrant on this.
And this is my perception of the world.
And this is just going to be easy.
And you may hire a phenomenal AR agency to come in and to have that
hard conversation with you that says, that's actually not real.
And you are not going to be there and let's reset expectations.
Also, they may be able to say, if you want to be there, this is what you
have to do to get there.
And they will have the external expertise.
And from my perspective, a great external AR agency will have that hard
conversation with you and will not blow smoke at you and say, no,
no, you deserve to be this.
I'll be like, you know what?
No, you don't.
And to get there, this is the functionality you're missing.
These are the customers you're missing.
You can get there, but it's not happening today.
Yeah.
So that's what they would say.
They would say, Hey, you need to add these features and functions on
to your platform.
Yeah.
And you need to go get XYZ type of customers, number of customers.
And then here's the strategy you need to do to get there.
And like you need to have these relationships.
And that's sometimes you need that external force to be able to go and do that.
Not all of us can have Julie.
Yeah.
So the good AR consultant would do an assessment and they would do an
assessment of where you are because every company is at a certain stage in the
maturity cycle and they're going to be at a different point in the curve.
The framework that I really love is Jeffy Moore is crossing the chasm.
So where are they really are they in that early adopter, tankler stage?
And that's who they're catering to.
Or are they like on the precipice of going mainstream with the mainstream
buyers?
And sometimes what the company thinks they're going after, and especially you
guys all know, because you've worked with startups, like things could change.
Your target audience may be the tankler and then you may go more mainstream as
your service becomes more mature.
You go through that whole technology adoption cycle and really for the AR
function
to thrive, like you want to be on the cuff, like you have to be in that sort of
mainstream or close to mainstream stage in order for the analysts to really get
value out of having those interactions with you.
And for you as a vendor to get value from those analysts conversation, so it's
worth your while because at the end of the day, the companies are going to,
they're
going to want to have revenue.
They're going to want to have customers.
They're going to want to go after progression on that team that they're going
after. And that's how investors really value your business.
So no matter what stage you are, I would contend whether using a consultant or
it's a matter of when you're making those trade off, I have $100,000 I could
use
towards this, like a digital campaign, different tactics that I could use.
You really have to think about like, where am I going to make some of these
resource bets?
And there's maybe an easier way to, depending on where you are, there's maybe
an easier way to like start to get exposed and have start to get those that
sort of
chest trusted advisory or conversations that really helps you really see where
you
are today and where you want to go.
And that might help you with the timing about when you want to invest with the
actual headcount hiring.
Yeah, this year is the year of ROI, right?
Like we all know that, right?
This is the year of ROI.
I'd like to get into the ROI of having an air function.
And like, Lauren, I know that part of this for you as a CMO has been reading
the
tea leaves and saying like, why are we losing deals right this second?
And then also why are we going to lose deals a year from now, two years from
now
because this is an investment.
And I think that's one of the things that people's probably get wrong with.
They are is like not really understanding how this is going to help you win
deals.
Cause that's ultimately what it is, right?
It's a pipeline accelerator, but it's also, are you just going to get selected
thing and that can feel very binary.
Oh, a hundred percent.
And if you are a CMO or a CEO and you're thinking, okay, I put a dollar in, I
get
X amount of dollars out.
So I'm going to invest a hundred thousand dollars in AR and I'm going to get a
million dollars of directly attributed revenue.
And this is how I'm going to measure the success of my AR program.
And I'm going to turn it on today.
You were living in a world that does not exist.
And analyst relations is different.
Yes, there'll be some pipeline of revenue that might be directly attributed
to the magic quadrant download on your website.
But that's not the point.
And part of what a CMO needs to do is both deliver on pipeline and revenue for
the business today.
So we hit the numbers today and it's also our responsibility to ensure the
long-term growth of the company and analyst relations.
Yes, we'll help today, but it's also going to set you up for success tomorrow.
It will be the thing that when your sales person is going in on a call and you
are the clear leader in a farster wave, it will make his or her job so much
easier.
Here is the third party proof.
We are head and shoulders above.
Here are the reasons why.
And you know what?
It may or may not show up on a deal report and you can't just do that one to
one.
It will be that.
It will be the conversations you are not in the room for when behind the scenes
the buying committee is discussing, should I buy this product?
Should I not buy this product?
If you are selling technology to another business, especially in the enterprise
you better believe those conversations are happening.
I worked with a CIO years ago that any time I'd want to make a big purchase and
it would go off and it would be my budget and everything would go through.
And it would be a six or seven figure purchase.
The first thing he would say is, can I see the magic quadrant or the wave on
that?
And he would just want to sanity check it.
And that's not going to get tagged in any CRM.
It will be ROI positive.
It is going to impact the revenue of your business.
And it's also going to set up the long term growth of your company.
If you can help shape, create, be part of that and you help growth up high that
way.
Like it is the long term win for everybody.
There's three things that those people are going to ask about is like, Hey,
are our competitors using this thing?
Do the analysts think this is, is this a industry leading like platform or
product?
And what are the ratings say on like G2 and places like that?
Right?
If those three things are aligned and you have a good sales rep, like that
deals going to close, right?
A hundred percent.
And I feel so fortunate to be in the position that I'm in where I can't even
remember.
And this is terrible.
How many quarters in a row we have been like the number one leader in G2 for
sales engagement.
We have the best responses for user experience for customer service.
And we are one of the leaders in the forest or wave.
And when our wave came out, I was so proud of the team for the placement.
So we've got the crowdsource G2 team, the crowdsource G2, where we have so many
great, direct pieces of user feedback.
We have this incredible validation from analysts.
And then we also have this just like teams and teams of happy customers.
It is the ultimate situation, I think every company and marketer wants to be
part of.
So Lauren, like that's really what you want, right?
Is that I wish the ROI for AR was as clear as some of the parts of marketing
in which you have readily have what pipeline and pipeline data that you can
show.
It's not that clear cut.
But as you said, it is a super strategic.
And then at the end of the day, in a year in which cost optimization, you want
to
hold onto your renewal base.
You want to make sure that you're in every deal in which you have a legitimate
shot of getting, which is this year, right?
Kevin, come off of 2022 of the macro environment with inflation being so high
and with all the uncertainty and everyone's focused on the bottom line, the
credit
line is not readily available capitals, like not cheap anymore.
So we're in a macro environment in which like you, we want to hold on to the
customer, our existing install base, we want to ensure that we're in the all
the
appropriate deals.
Like if we have a legitimate shot at winning that new net new customer, you
want
to be in that deal, right?
And that's where I think the analysts can help because so much of like, you
realize when they come to your website, they've been to 12 other places and had
multiple other conversations before they even went and searched and typed in
your company name in Google.
This is all that pre before you start engaging with your sales force.
It's cramming the foundation and making the best case for why they should be
considering you and why you are the best.
And at the end of the day, this is a year which the buyers want the short thing
They want the insurance policy.
They want the short thing.
They have no room for failure or not meeting their goals.
So this is in a way, like I always think AR really shows up even more.
So you need it more in a down cycle than you do an off cycle and you need it
more
when you've got a demand engine that is working.
You've got a pipeline that's like super healthy and you're on an uptrend and
because of all these other macro.
But I honestly think when your business model is being questioned by the
investors,
when you're having a tough time, when you've got a competitor that is like, but
900 gorilla in the enterprise space, sometimes when Adobe or Google enters
into your market, it's usually the sign, like they take
monetization that's setting into that market, right?
That's when you want the analysts really articulating your value and the reason
to select you.
The old adage of no one ever got fired for going with IBM.
We all want to be in that position.
We all want to be that kind of short thing.
And how are companies going to know who the short thing is?
How are they going to know what your safe bet is?
A lot of times it's what are the analysts say?
And now we have things like G2 to say, what are the analysts say?
Okay, what's real?
What are the customers saying?
And then you call customers of those companies to find out what's going on.
Agreed.
Jolie, I'm curious.
Talked a lot about the importance of AR, hopefully convinced our listeners to
at least
think about it, if they don't have AR yet.
But how the heck do people get on the page and how the heck do people get into
the
top three?
How did people get number one, like sales loft is all the time?
I think the important thing is to just make you sit down with the business
owners
and really figure out what it is that you want out of the AR program.
So at the end of that year, what do you think you're going to achieve?
And a lot of executive focus on the Gartner Magic Quadrants, the maybe the
market share numbers, if they're already in the market or the oyster waves,
maybe
some of their other marquee reports like the hype cycles or the cool vendor
type
reports, those are great.
And if you're on those and you're a top three, then you've made it, but there
is a
whole gazillion lot of fork that will go into before you can even get there.
So I think really, first of all, it's figuring out what it is that what is your
business, what is your play in that market?
What is your unique differentiation and really just getting some of that basic
product marketing, one on one stuff, nail down.
And then you should probably set some goals that you can achieve within a year.
And that usually starts with what I call the analyst setting.
So like in the world of demand, Jen, you probably have this concept of you're
going to go after bigger pool. You're going to go after a big pool of analysts
that are in adjacent markets that are somewhat, has some attributes of the
market that you are in or that you aspire to create.
In the case of box, even though we didn't have a market of our own, we wanted
to
create one around this content collaboration space.
So we went after content management analysts, collaboration analysts, even
mobile app dev analysts, just because we had a mobile native mobile app that
was
out in the Apple store that was very popular.
And that was a game changer for bringing us into the enterprise.
So we went after a bunch of adjacent analysts and just started talking to them.
And of that, we filtered through that list to a smaller group that we were
going to bet on for that year with a specific goal in mind.
So we started with like, let's say 40, I'm just making this number up, but you
start with like 40.
You have those early conversations.
This is what I called targeting.
So from that targeting, you then build like what's akin to your ICP, your
ideal customer profile, because that's ideal analyst for a file.
So you might kind of look through and shift through a bunch of different
market coverage analysts.
And then you might hone in on a few because they're showing interest because
they have the power and authority to maybe do something for you.
Maybe they own a particular market report.
So you build that list and then you have, you put a specific goal in mind.
You want to be a cool vendor in this space and you're going to really like
talk to that analyst like every, let's say you're going to touch that
analyst every other every month, say.
So and then you build that engagement plan, which the engagement plan is
probably what in marketing you would think of different vehicle and different
tactics.
So when you think, when you do account based marketing and you are going after
a certain type of a customer and you build the destination site, you have email
nurture, you have webinars, you have different content and vehicles, you want
to bring them into both the physical and virtual events, but you build that.
So that's how you think about the engagement model.
You build that engagement plan, you execute consistently.
You make sure that different executives are brought into those conversations
and
you're orchestrating all of that because it's not the same person in.
So you're orchestrating this interaction, which to me, like is very much like
an
AVM motion.
You've got this ideal customer profile, ideal analyst profile that you're
going after.
You are building a plan for, I want to talk to this analyst about the value of
open standards.
I want to talk to this analyst about the next time I'm going to be talking
to them about why you need that and why is a significantly better way.
Then maybe like another moment, you're going to be talking to them about your
customer when that you just had, but you build that sort of topical and you
build that out and then you run it in an ongoing campaign.
And then at the end of the year, you assess yourself and did you get to where
you thought you were going to get to?
And then you do it again.
And then your goals are going to be loftier and bigger the following year.
I love what you just described and having like AR is AVM and putting those
things together.
I just think is absolutely brilliant and it is the, it's building a touch plan
and it's here's how to engage with these are the messages.
This is how to be really thoughtful about it.
And I loved how you described it.
And I'm literally just wrote that down and doing that and having these
engagements with analysts and then also saying, okay, we're going to interact
with you on all these times.
Now, what are we getting from you and how are we learning from you and how
are we to what you said in the beginning is how are we making this is two way
street?
What's great insights that you have?
How can we feed that back into what we're doing?
And then how can we reconfirm that with you?
There's always brilliant moments when I talk to you.
The best AR program is bi-directional.
There has to be, it's like the best AR program is like dating or marriage.
There has to be in it for both parties, but just one party take.
It's not going to be long lasting.
It's going to be a short playing and you may have difficult conversations.
There may be a time in which like it sounds like Lauren, you're in a forced
away, sounds like you did very well, but let's say you didn't do so well.
And you might have very major disagreements.
You might have some difficult moments in that relationship, but it's a long
term
relationship and it's a bi-directional benefit.
If it's a one sided thing, it's a crash.
You know, it's not going to go anywhere or it's a short playing.
I'm going to have AR as ABM and AR is, AR is marriage.
It is not a short term playing.
We're going to use these now and I feel like I need a Jolie trade market at the
end of them.
Yeah, remember, because in the targeting days, that's like your speed dating.
That's your speed dating.
You're talking to a lot of analysts just to get to the one that you're going to
invest in for the year.
So I call that when you're going to when you're on Tinder and you start going
on
those like that first meeting with it.
And then you build your target list from there for the year.
Love it.
Any piece of advice for someone who's out there that's a marketer that wants to
get
into analysts relations and thinks all this stuff sounds fun.
I was a product marketer.
I thought I was going to be a lifelong product marketer that ended up in
Alice relations.
So I think anyone who is interested in who's got a hunger for curiosity, who is
really interested in sort of future moving, like feature trends and how do
those
trends then translate into how things will change today?
Anyone who's read that my Jeffrey Moore's book on crossing the chasm and I
thought,
oh my God, like I love everything about this construct and I can see myself
reflective here, which was the case with me when I read that book initially.
Should consider analysts relations.
It's a, it's a really fun job in that it's done well.
It brings together that sort of product marketing acumen in terms of like
really
understanding your buyer personas, really understanding the market and why
customers should consider you just being able to articulate that in a very easy
to understand way.
So like that product marketing one on one, it also brings together that sort of
corporate strategy or strategic functions of if I have $100 to invest,
where should I really be making some bets?
And then it also brings strategic communications because at the end of the
day, this is a, like the relationship is a critical part of building this
program.
So that sort of comms or anybody who's in the sort of programmatic, the more
relationship side that, or like market development, I just, business
development,
I should say, like where relationships do matter a lot and who really
understands
that, like it brings together all of those things.
And we also have, we're regularly talking to the CMOs, the C chief product
officers, the chief revenue officers, our CEO.
So it gives us audience and room at the table or see not the table, see not the
table with the senior most executive teams to help using outside in perspective
to help influence the company strategy.
It's a fun job.
I would consider it.
Lauren, any final thoughts here for how how CMO should think about AR?
Yeah, definitely.
So if I think about as a CMO thinking about AR, I think about and would have a
CMO think about AR as a strategic function.
It is not a eight levels down.
This needs to be full.
How are we thinking about analyst relations for creating, building, being
part of this market?
And how am I getting insights and using the analyst relations team function to
get insights, to feed it back into deeply understanding the market and really
for CMOs in general to be thinking about our function, our role and our place
on the executive team to not just be about executing tactics.
Our job is to understand the market, where the market is going, have a
perspective,
have insights, bring that back to the product team, the revenue team, the CEO.
And analyst relations is absolutely critical for getting those insights.
So really thinking about AR and holding AR to that strategic function that it
is
and should be.
I love hearing that, Lauren.
Yeah, likewise.
Thanks again.
And for all of our listeners, we'll link up joys information for LinkedIn and
all
that stuff to follow along because she always has great thoughts and great
stuff
to say.
And of course, with Lauren and the ever evolving amazing work that they're
doing at Salesloft, that's it.
That's all we got for today.
Thanks again.
[inaudible]
[inaudible]