Best Practices for Analyst-Consultant Conferences

Transcript for Best Practices for Analyst-Consultant Conferences

Blair Pleasant: Hi, this is Blair Pleasant, and today’s podcast is a follow-up to one we had recently about analyst and consultant conferences. Most vendors have annual conferences where they invite the analysts and/or consultants to update us about their products, direction, strategy, and so on and tell us about their latest and greatest. Some of these events are focused on just the consultants or analysts, some are combined, and some are even combined with channel partner events, which gives us a good opportunity to chat with the company’s reseller partners.

Today we are going to talk about how several of the analysts and consultants on the call view these events; what our expectations are, and some best practices. Joining me today in addition to the UCStrategies experts are Byron Battles of the Battles Group; Melissa Schwartz of Schwartz Consulting and John Thompson of Thompson-Ross and Associates. They are good friends of UCStrategies and regulars of our UC Summit.

I will start off. As an industry analyst when I attend these conferences, I like to hear a high-level overview of the company’s business; how things are going financially and an update on sales in terms of products and regions; an update on go-to-market and marketing and other general company business. But then I like the bulk of the sessions to really drill down more on product updates and roadmaps. I like when there are panels of end-user customers so we can talk to them and hear about what they see as end users, and also I like to hear from channel partners and hear what they have to say about the vendor’s message.

One of the most valuable parts of these conferences is the one-on-one sessions with the execs and others to give us an opportunity to really drill down on the areas that are most important to us. As far as best practices, I think most companies are getting it by now, but there really needs to be good Wi-Fi access throughout the entire event and also lots of chargers so we can plug in our laptops and tablets. Also, provide us with the Twitter hash tags for the events so we can tweet about it. Many times there are NDA discussions, so if something is NDA or confidential, please let us know about it before we tweet about it and not afterwards.

Now I am going to turn this over to the rest of the folks here, so Steve Leaden, you’re a consultant, so let’s start with you from the consultant perspective.

Steve Leaden: Thanks, Blair. As you mentioned these events definitely target your analyst/consultants. Some of these events actually also include the value-added resellers, the VARs, and in some cases even includes the enterprise customer community. What I’d ideally like to see are separate tracks for all four, which can be in some cases more difficult than easy to speak to. In a worst case scenario at least have the analyst and the consultants together who I think have at least a lot of common ground and in general keep the VARs and the enterprise customers in separate venues. The reason is really simple – we as analysts and consultants get a lot of information, especially NDA-type information and vision, that maybe the enterprise customer doesn’t really need to see at least immediately. On the VAR side there is that whole kind of pitch cycle that goes into the value added reseller community. I think the tracks are definitely separated and if we can look at that, that is one thought.

Most of these (events) have some kind of floor where you can go see the products and meet with some of the channel partners as well as some of the third-party partners for integrating into the manufacturer. It is an opportunity to go see those particular partners on the floor and get more information. As you mention, there’s always an NDA involved, and I think a really good suggestion would be to differentiate NDA from the non-NDA for analysts and consultants in particular. For the analyst community we would know at least what we can write and cannot write about from an article blog, white paper, point of view; and then from a consultant’s point of view what can we share with our end-user community and our customer base.

As you mentioned, too, you mentioned products and services so it is always good to surface on what is near term, what is current in the offering, and what are futures. Really, the key benefit to all of us here as analysts and consultants, we as industry influencers can become more aware of the products and services and can really provide greater insights to the enterprise community at large, to our customers as well as awareness in the industry as analysts.

For the manufacturer it’s a huge opportunity for them to create new relationships and actually strengthen existing ones as well. Of course, Blair, as you know, as large as the UC industry is, it’s still a cottage industry to this day. People move around and at some point when you’ve been in this industry for a while, it is somewhat amazing how many people you really know.

A couple of quick recommendations here: always talk about the vision, always look for a two-way forum to discuss with executives like you had mentioned. I always find that fascinating where we can have those kinds of smaller venues with the executives and we as consultants and analysts can provide feedback to them. In fact, my key takeaway really would be to figure out how you can take this input from us and really use that strategically for product placement, product differentiation for your company’s message, as well as how to improve and incentivize your VAR channels. Again, there is a lot that can be done at these conferences. Blair, back to you.

Blair Pleasant: Okay, thanks Steve. Jon Arnold, I know I see you at a lot of these conferences. What are some of your thoughts?

Jon Arnold: Thanks, Blair. I will add a couple of pieces. One of the things that I notice at these events, on our pre-call Art Rosenberg asked, “do they understand how our needs are changing?” I think there is actually something important there to bring up because I have certainly been to my share of events where the hosts...they don’t quite know what all of us do as analysts. Some of these companies are a little new to the game and are just figuring out what we do. For those who don’t think in terms of blogging and tweeting and social media, those are the events that we get sometimes, there is not that broadband coverage there. In a lot of ways, our most valuable role is sharing some of that public information in near real time. Some of the vendors have not quite figured that out yet, but they’ll get there.

For us, that is important and the more you go to these events year after year, the vendors do start to figure that formula out. It is also, just to be fair, there is not a set format for how these events cater to our communities. What I mean by that is some of these events are analyst only, some are analysts and consultants. I have even been to events that had industry analysts and financial analysts together, which is a very interesting mix; totally different objectives and messages have to be managed and digested. Then there is also the media, and I have also been to events where the media and analysts are grouped together. The expectations differ there because we have different conversations, we have different agendas. We are not there for news stories, the media are. The hosts really have to fine-tune that sometimes because the messages can be generic across the board and we don’t necessarily always get what we want.

One more thing about that is some of the events that have done a very good job have offered up executive panels where the analysts get exclusive time in a group setting with the execs, and have hashed through their roadmap and asked some of the tougher questions. I am sure all of us have been to those events where you go through that and then you are in a regular session with an executive roundtable and they are saying almost exactly the same thing. It kind of wastes our time a little bit if you don’t vary the content very much. That’s something I think the sponsors of these events get a feel for over time, but we always have to remember that we are generally a pretty small population in mix for these events. Some do a better job than others of catering to our needs, and those are the ones that I tend to get the most out of because they are listening to us and they recognize the value of what we do. I think it’s pretty safe to say across the board not all the vendors understand that or are willing to cater to that extent.

Blair Pleasant: Thanks, Jon. Okay, Marty, how about giving us some insights from the consultant point of view.

Marty Parker: Sure, Blair. The things that I value most in these conferences is that the vendor be clear, accurate, candid and specific as to the current state of their business and the future options. Generally, I find that they have great difficulty doing that because they are unwilling to be candid. They are unwilling to say what really is working today rather than spending all their time talking about the glories of their future plans. The problem with the glories of the future plans is that they are unpredictable, they are not commitments, a customer cannot count on them. The only way to be sure you can count on something from a vendor is to get it in writing in an RFP and make it part of a contract. Then if it does not get delivered, there is a liability on the vendor’s part to deliver it in some other form.

In the end I love to have the information, I like to see their vision of where they are going, but it’s not very helpful back on the street as a consultant, because I cannot rely on that. I cannot say to the customer, “well, they said this was going to happen so let’s just put it in.” All I can say is, I believe they are going to do this based on what they said so let’s put it in a request, an RFI or RFP request to the vendor, and get something back in writing.

I also prefer that they don’t combine the conferences, however, what I realize is the consultant community is seen by many of these vendors as not big enough and perhaps not influential enough to form a separate conference. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why consult liaison programs and even CLP Central are essential to our business so we can go get the specifics we need when we need them. But when you mix the analyst and the consultants, the vendors are compelled to focus on the future story because they’re trying to get the forward-looking impact on the market and for sure, the value of their stock is a hundred times more important than all the orders the consultants in the room can sponsor in a single year. They’re going to focus on that and therefore it goes back to my first point, it will tend to cause things to be much more future oriented and less candid than I would prefer they be.

In terms of what I like at these conferences, I agree with the prior comments that when there are exhibits that are staffed bythe product and engineering teams with enough time to go get one-on-one with them and dive into the products as to what is really here and what is coming, that can be very, very helpful. I do spend the time in those spaces when they are offered.

On the other hand, what I do not like quite so much is the vendor spending all their time bashing other vendors. Do they think we don’t know what they other vendors are doing? That really is an insult, I think, to both audiences, consultants and analysts. Usually I am sitting there taking notes, and okay, that’s what they say, but that’s not what is true about the other vendor, so they are distorting the truth or they don’t know, I don’t know which...but either way it’s an embarrassment to the vendor and an insult to the audience. I prefer that they stick to their knitting and tell what they’re doing and where they plan to do and how much money they are going to spend on it, and what customers are using it, how difficult it is to implement and so forth, rather than spending their time bashing the other guy. You don’t get taller by making the other guy shorter. That is my thought about it and I welcome these opportunities. I appreciate that the vendors have them and invite us, and I hope that somebody will listen to the podcast. Back to you, Blair.

Blair Pleasant: Thanks, Marty. Michael Finneran, I believe you sometimes wear two hats, sometimes you are a consultant, and sometimes you are an analyst. So what is your perspective on these events?

Michael Finneran: I only have one observation, Blair, and to echo Marty, I do appreciate the lengths vendors go to to help keep us advised. But there’s just one phrase that drives me nuts which is when they say “as you already are aware” and then go on to make some arcane observation about a ridiculously complex product that is only identified by a bunch of meaningless letters and numbers. I’m a specialist; I have to track a lot of different vendors. Now maybe everyone else in the room knows what they are talking about, but my guess is they are just being polite. If they could just spend 30 seconds and cover the basics. “This is our large-scale enterprise offering; this is our SMB product; this is our hosted solution.” Otherwise, I usually am confused hopelessly for the first day or so until I finally catch one of their folks on the side, pull out my notebook and say, “Okay, let’s define some terms” Then I get the idea of what they are talking about. Besides that, I think they really go out of their way to provide information to be helpful. Of course, I always like a good demo; that really hammers it home for me. Blair, back to you.

Blair Pleasant: Okay, thanks Michael. Art Rosenberg, I know you go to a lot of these events as well and sometimes you actually watch them virtually if you cannot make it to the physical event. That may be something you want to talk about also.

Art Rosenberg: Yeah, that is a problem, because I am sure everybody has scheduling problems, where to go and spend their time and there are different things that come in the way. Lately unfortunately, for me my physical health problems have gotten in the way of my traveling, so I wasn’t able to go. All of a sudden, I don’t know what’s going on except in a few cases. I think that it is time to practice what we preach, if you will, to make things as virtual as possible so you don’t necessarily... I mean it would be great to be there, I’m not knocking that at all. But if you cannot be there, what is offered as second prize? It could be information that you could sit in and listen to or you can get the information and video – anything that will help to do the job even if you are physically not present. Especially in making contact with the right person if you have questions. Just make believe that we want to do the same thing, except we do not have to physically be there for whatever reason. I think that would be a big help and the technology is certainly aimed in that direction, so why not exploit it?

Blair Pleasant: Thanks. Let’s hear from some of our guests today, Byron Battles what do you have to add to the conversation as a consultant?

Byron Battles: Well as an independent consultant, I agree with virtually everything that has been said so far. I think for me personally, I like being with the analysts in some common sessions because in many cases my clients will ask me what is going on or how are these companies ranked. A lot of times, certain nuggets that I pick up from the analysts presentation are useful in conversations with user clients.

One of the areas that was mentioned earlier was a candid dialogue of the advantages and issues of products and services with a give and take in particular with product managers or subject matter experts. Many times the executives and the senior management are doing a one-way broadcast of “here’s what we do, here’s where we are going, and here’s why you should use our products and services,” as opposed to having any sort of dialogue. That dialogue part is really important for us because we have to know much more than just the high-level direction of products and services.

One of the other areas that has been important for me is at least having the opportunity to network with partners to some degree, try, seek out, and meet regional or local partners with whom we might be working on – either current projects or future projects. One of the biggest challenges that we have is not necessarily the technology because most everybody has good technology and that’s kind of the tablestakes for any project, but not everybody has consistently good partners in VARs. It’s important for us to know which ones are the good ones and which ones are maybe not so good and make sure we get those on the projects that we are working on so that we can get a good workable solution and post-installation support from those partners. That’s a very important part for us. Otherwise, panels with case studies and customers that have actually put in the solutions are always useful because they tend to be pretty candid and will answer questions honestly and forthrightly.

For the most part, I like to see some interaction with the analysts; I like to see the case studies and the interaction with the customers and the users and then also have a chance to network with partners and subject matter experts.

Blair Pleasant: Okay, thanks very much. John Thompson let’s hear from your perspective.

John Thompson: As I said in the last podcast, I think one of the big advantages to me of having the consultants and the analysts together is their focus is more strategic and ours is more tactical. I do think we learn from each other. I think we sometimes get insight that we would not get in a pure consultant conference. I do like the mix.

I also like the mix of the VARs because much like Byron said, getting to know the VARs and getting to reconnect the VARs that we worked with in the past is pretty valuable. We can also, at times, get some real on-the-street level kinds of information about how a product actually works from a VAR by asking them questions and what their experience has been in this or that aspect of a product. I also think that I agree with John relative to the (connectivity); a lot of these places you go in is like a cone of silence; you cannot get any signal and that really is terrible in that kind of environment. Good wireless and good power support is extremely important.

I like the executive panels; I like the user panels; I think those are valuable to get an understanding from the user perspective why they made a decision and how it has worked out for them. And from a management perspective to be able to ask questions of where they are going. We do also like to get a bit of that future look. If a product is deficient in a certain aspect, knowing that they are aware of that and working on it is reassuring as opposed to not hearing about it or having them not be aware of a shortcoming.

Then the networking with consultants and analysts is invaluable to me. I thought overall it’s a good mixture if you have everything working right.

Blair Pleasant: Okay, thank you very much. Melissa, how about your perspectives on this?

Melissa Schwartz: Thanks, Blair. I want to echo a lot of the things that have already been said. I agree with everybody who said that they like having the analysts and the consultants together. I think that’s a good mix. I like being at conferences where the partners are there, but I don’t necessarily like having the same tracks with them, except for maybe general sessions, because a lot of the interests that they have are in terms of how they make money off of that product, and my interest is more in what the product does and how it best meets the needs of my clients. So while I agree that having them at the conference is valuable, I’m not real thrilled all the time about sharing tracks some of the tracks with them.

I also like having end users at the conference. Because as everybody said, we get a chance to talk to them, see what’s working, see what’s not working, and end user panel discussions are very interesting.

To go back to what Blair said at the beginning, I am too looking for the financials and visions of the manufacturers, and for product updates, and I do like the chance to have a two-way conversation with some of the executives, and to ask questions, and hear answers to other people’s questions in terms of what’s working and what’s not. And to echo what Marty said, candor is greatly appreciated. I think some people are more straightforward than others, and I think that that’s a very, very valuable thing – the ones who are willing to be straightforward with us, to me, get a lot more credit, so I like that.

I get frustrated with presentations that go into great detail of what’s happening in the market. I think that we already know that. I understand setting the stage for what they’re trying to do, but when a presentation’s 90 percent “this is what’s going on in the market,” and 10 percent “and this is how we’re addressing it,” I think it misses the mark.

Another thing that I’ve seen sometimes are schedules that have absolutely no breaks. And that is a killer because we’re still all trying to work, in the middle of going to these conferences, so any time that we have a chance to break and get some of our work done and catch up, I think that’s a huge plus in terms of scheduling.

And then I like demonstrations and hands-on stuff, because it’s one thing to see it on the PowerPoints, it’s another thing to see it working. So I think that any time we can see hands-on type of information, have a chance to kind of play with it, and be more hands on for us, I like that a lot better. Those are just some things that I’d like to add.

Blair Pleasant: Okay, thanks Melissa.

It sounds like we have a lot of good suggestions and a lot of best practices that some of the vendors that do these events can take to heart.

• It looks like we all like the fact that there is a lot of value from combining in the analysts and consultants; we get to hear from each other and we do add value to each other. However, since analysts are more strategic and consultants are more tactical, we should have breakout tracks and sessions so that the vendors can cater to these different types of perspectives throughout the sessions.
  
  
• I personally really liked the conferences where it’s mixed with the resellers but as a couple of people brought out, it is important to have separate tracks because we do have different perspectives. Let’s get together during meals and for networking but the sessions need to cater to our individual needs a bit more.
  
  
• It sounds like we all really like the exhibits and the demonstrations and being able to have one-on-one demos and really being able to drill down and ask questions.
  
  
• Be candid and clear, let us know what is going on now versus what is in the future.
  
  
• Let us hear from the customers.
  
  
• Let us have access to the executives.
  
  
• Don’t bash your competitors.
  
  
• Let people attend virtually if needed.
  
  
• It’s all about networking, I think that’s really the key. We get to meet with you, you get to meet with us, we get to share ideas and learn from each other and all move forward together.

To the vendors that do have these events, thank you very much, they are very valuable to all of us and we get a tremendous amount of value out of it and we hopefully you also get value from having us attend these sessions and you get to hear our insights and what we have to say, and we also tweet a lot about it. All-in-all these events are very important and valuable to everybody, so keep up the good work and hope to see you at these future sessions.

Thanks very much, everybody.