Pattern Finder

Vendor Oops #4: Not Saying What You Do Upfront

This is sort of "odd but true"--in the course of a briefing, some vendors take forever to explain what they do.

There are three reasons for this:

1. They Go for PR Speak: For example, early on in the briefing the vendor will put up a mission slide that says, "XYZ Corp. leverages Web 2.0 technologies across multiple channels so that companies can deliver the right information to the right people at the right time." In other words, a mission statement full of PR babble. OK, all the buzzwords are there, but what does it really mean? XYZ Corp. could be selling social networking; or an RSS server; or a search engine; or a tagging engine--the list goes on. So the vendor thinks it's clear--but the analyst is going, "Huh?"
2. They're Familiar with What They Do and Figure You Are Too: This vendor assumes what they do is self-evident, and dives into the technology without setting any context: "Two weeks from now we're announcing version 4.2, which adds semantic analysis to the Enterprise Server."(OK, but since I'm unclear on what you do, I don't know whether that's good or bad.)
3. They Get Around to It Half an Hour Into the Presentation: This vendor often starts with a history lesson ("XYZ Corp. was founded in 2007 in Sunnyvale"), moves on to management depth ("200 total years of experience in document management products), talks about customers (attempting to win the prize for the most logos that can be squeezed on a slide), announces the new product features, and eventually gets around to saying, "So that's why we we're so good at entity extraction." (Finally!)

The issue here is the vendor needs to quickly set context for the analyst. This may be the fourth vendor briefing of the day, and things are starting to blend together; the analyst may have been writing a deep dive report on a competing technology and needs a signal of, "And now for something completely different." Saying by slide three, "We're XYZ Corp. and we do this [in plain English]" suffices.

When I worked at Aberdeen Group, Bob Moran and I would keep track of how long it took a vendor to clearly say what they did. After the briefing, we'd close the door, sit down, and grouse, "Well, that took 10 minutes; at least it was better than last week's record holder, which was 18 minutes." I remember in one briefing I couldn't contain myself, and eventually said, "Pardon the interruption, but it's now 25 minutes into the briefing and you still haven't said what you do." Stunned silence from the vendor, and then a hesitant, "Uh, we offer an easy-to-use data mining product for marketing professionals." "Oh, OK. You should have said that up front. I've spent the past 25 minutes trying to figure it out."

It's simple. Say what you do. Up front.

Vendor Oops #3: Not Sending Me the Presentation

Cover via Amazon

I don't get it. Vendors will go to great lengths to brief me on their new product release, and then neglect to send me the presentation after the briefing. It's sort of like the "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner"--they run for miles, and then refuse to run the last 10 feet to cross the finish line. This happens probably half of the time (yes, I keep stats). The causes are several:

• It's Finished Two Minutes Before the Briefing: Some vendors figure they'll send the deck before the briefing (not a bad idea), but it's never ready beforehand because they're always in tweak mode. And then after the briefing they forget that they didn't send it.
• They're On to the Next Crisis/Analyst Briefing: They finish the briefing, heave a sigh of relief, move on to the next call, and forget to send it.
• Paranoia About NDA Violations: Some vendors don't send a deck because Legal has told them this prevents non-disclosure violations. So the company will go through the slides during a web conference but refuse to send the actual deck. (Uh, apparently Legal has never heard of screen capture software.)  
• Incompetent PR People: During the briefing the PR person swears on a stack of bibles that he or she will send me the deck--and I never see it.

Sending along a presentation to the analyst is an important thing to do, because we are the ultimate "information overload" group. Literally, I have had a vendor presentation on a Monday and by Wednesday I can't remember what it was about. Some weeks, I'll have eight vendor presentations, some back to back. Trust me, they all blend together after awhile. And I've asked around--all analysts have this problem. We depend on our notes and the vendor presentation as mental crutches. Take away our crutches, and we don't do so well.

So, if you're a vendor, send along your presentation. The analyst will thank you because you've made his or her job easier. 

Vendor Oops #2: Not Giving Me Contact Info

About a quarter of the time, I have a vendor briefing and I never get any contact information from the people I talk to. It's not a huge deal, because if I have a later question I can always go to the vendor web site and call the main phone number or send an e-mail to [email protected], but it's not optimal.

First, it's an extra step or two, so if I have a general question that several vendors can answer I'm inclined to call someone whose number I have. Second--a somewhat embarrassing admission--I don't always know who I talked to. At the briefing, we get on the phone--sometimes several people are on cellphones without great reception--and the PR person says, "And here is Sam Xyzertizhw to talk about WhizBang's great new product." No title is offered, I'm not quite sure if I got the name right, and it turns out I didn't when I try to follow up: "May I please speak to Sam Xyzertizhw?" "We don't have anyone by that name here." "OK, how about a Sam in Marketing?" "No, I'm sorry, sir." "Hmm, OK, thanks, for your help."

PR folks often don't give that information out because they want to be the conduit between the analyst and their client. By interjecting themselves in the middle, they can prove their worth: "I scheduled six analyst briefings and handled four analyst calls this month." However, the turnover in PR firms is notorious, both in terms of personnel and clients, so often the PR person you talked to six months ago is either gone or no longer handles the vendor you talked to.

So, if you're a vendor and you want to make it easy for an analyst you briefed to call you, put your name and contact info in the presentation and then make sure you send me the  presentation. It's a simple thing, but a lot of vendors don't do it. Be one who does.

Vendor Oops #1: Getting the Dial-In Number Wrong

In this highly wired world, about 90% of my vendor briefings take place over the phone via a web conferencing mechanism (e.g., Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Cisco WebEx). These save time and are quite effective.

However, familiarity breeds contempt. Unlike a person-to-person meeting, where everyone makes sure they know where to turn up and whom to ask for, sometimes a vendor doesn't doublecheck things and sends me to a non-existent web conference or gives me a dial-in number that doesn't work. It doesn't happen a lot--maybe once a month--but when it does, it's scramble time, and the communications channels light up. I get urgent e-mails from analyst relations folks, other Burton Group analysts on the call send messages via IM ("Does the PIN number work for you? Did they cancel the briefing?"), and PR people call my cellphone assuring me, "We'll be ready to go in a moment."

I vacillate between being aggravated and being amused--I often have briefings booked back-to-back and can't afford delays. Vendors often figure they have an hour to talk--so if it takes them 15 minutes to straighten things out, they now assume they deserve an hour and fifteen minutes. Not necessarily so.

At the same time, it's kind of amusing to watch how long it takes vendors to figure out that the analysts aren't turning up for their briefing because they can't. I had a briefing yesterday that started off with a bad PIN number and a bad Adobe Connect URL. When I got to the meeting, the splash screen stated something along the lines of, "This meeting is blocked. Press the button below to request admittance." I did, and got a message about 10 seconds later saying, "Your request to join the meeting has been denied."  Based on the later cellphone call I received, it took the analyst relations person about three minutes to realize, "Oops, I should have let him in."

This seems to be an equal opportunity error. Large companies make this mistake, as do small ones. So a word to the wise--if you're a vendor about to brief an analyst, doublecheck your dial-in info before you send it out and give the analyst a number to call in case of a problem. You want to be remembered for your product, not for the fact that you can't set up a web conference.