This is part 2 of a two-part post. The first part contains general tips for Magic Quadrant briefings, applicable to any vendor regardless of how much contact they’ve had with the analyst. This second part divides the tips by that level of contact.

Richard Stiennon’s UP and to the RIGHT, which provides advice about the Magic Quadrants, stresses that preparation for this process is really a continuous thing — not a massive effort that’s just focused upon the evaluation period itself. I agree very strongly with that advice.

Nevertheless, even AR professionals — indeed, even AR professionals who are part of big teams at big vendors — often don’t do that long-term prep work. Consequently, there are really three types of vendors that enter into this process — vendors that the analyst is already deeply familiar with and where the vendor and analyst maintain regular contact (no client relationship necessary, can just be through briefings), vendors that the analyst has had some contact with but doesn’t speak to regularly, and vendors that the analyst doesn’t really know.

Tips for Vendors the Analyst is in Frequent Contact With

In general, if you have regular contact with the analyst — at least once, if not several times, a quarter — a briefing like this shouldn’t contain any surprises. It’s an opportunity to pull everything together in a unified way and back up your statements with data — to turn what might have been a disjointed set of updates and conversations, over the course of a year, into one unified picture.

Hit the highlights. Use the beginning of the briefing as a way to summarize your accomplishments over the course of the year, and refresh the analyst’s memory on things you consider particularly important. You may want to lay out your achievements in a quarter-by-quarter way in the slide deck, for easy reference.

Provide information that hasn’t been covered in previous briefings. Make sure you remember to mention your general corporate achievements. Customer satisfaction, changes to your channel and partnership model, financial accomplishments, and other general initiatives are examples of things you might want to touch on.

Focus on the future. Lay out where you see your business going. If you can do so on a quarter-by-quarter basis (which you may want to stipulate is under an NDA), do so.

Tips for Vendors the Analyst Knows, Without Frequent Contact

If the analyst knows you pretty well, but you haven’t been in regular contact — the analyst hasn’t gotten consistently briefed on updates, or been asked for input on future plans — not only do you want to present the big picture, but you want to make sure that they haven’t missed anything. Your briefing is going to look much like the briefing of a vendor who has been in frequent contact, but with a couple of additional points:

Tell a clear story. When you go through the highlights of your year, explain how what you’ve done and what you’re planning fits into a coherent vision of the market, where you see yourself going, and how it contributes to your unique value proposition.

Have plenty of supplemental material. Because the analyst might not have seen all the announcements, it’s particularly important that you ensure that your slide deck has an appendix that summarizes everything. Link to the press release or more detailed product description, if need be.

Tips for Vendors the Analyst Doesn’t Really Know

Sometimes, you just won’t know the analyst very well. Maybe you’re a new vendor to the space, or previously been too small to draw attention from the analyst. Maybe this space isn’t a big focus for you. Maybe you’ve briefed the analyst once a year or so, but don’t really stay in touch. Whatever the case, the analyst doesn’t know you well, and therefore you’re going to spend your briefing building a case from the ground up.

Clearly articulate who you are. Start the briefing with your elevator pitch. This is your business and differentiation in a handful of sentences that occupy less than two minutes. The analyst is trying to figure out how to summarize you in a nutshell. Your best chance of controlling that message is to (credibly) assert a summary yourself. Put your company history and salient facts on an appendix to the slides, for later perusal. Up front, just have your core pitch and any metrics that support it.

Pare your story to the bare essentials. Spend the most time talking about whatever it is that is your differentiation. (Example: If you know your product isn’t significantly differentiated but for whatever reason they love you in emerging markets, sweep through describing your product by comparing it to a common baseline in your market, and conceding that’s not where you differentiate, then focus on your emerging markets story in detail.) If your differentiation is in your product/service and not in your general business, focus on that — you can assume the analyst knows what the common baseline is, so you can gloss over that baseline in a few sentences (you can have more detail on your slides if need be) and then move on to talking about how you’re unique.

Be customer-centric. Explain the profile of your customers and their use cases, and make it clear why they typically choose you. Resist the urge to focus on brand-name logos, especially if those aren’t typical or aren’t your normal use case. Logo slides are nice, but they’re even better if the logos are divided by use case or some other organizing function that makes it clear what won you the deal.

Ensure you talk about your go-to-market strategy. Specifically, explain how you sell and market your product/service. Even if this isn’t especially exciting, spend at least a slide talking about how you’re creating market awareness of your company and product/service, and how you actually get it into the hands of prospects and win those deals.

Provide a deep appendix to your slide deck. You should feel free to put as much supplemental material as you think would be useful into an appendix or separate slide deck for the analyst’s later perusal. Everything from executive bios to a deep dive on your product can go here. If it’s in your presentation for investors, or part of your standard pitch to customers, it can probably go in the deck.