As I had mentioned in another article that one of the top 3 sources that generates natural market pull and awareness is the analyst community (the other two being your own web site and its ability to attract traffic and PR).
Here is how to win with the analyst strategy.
The companies that are on top of the analysts' mind will get the most benefit, because as the analyst clients call to ask questions about products and services, the analyst will drop names of companies that they not only remember, but care about. So, it is important to make the analysts your friends and make sure that you are fresh on his mind.
What should you do to accomplish this and stand apart from your competition? Here is a trick that will surely help you get there:
Schedule at least 3 analyst inquiries per week per analyst firm. If you are a customer of firms like Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others, you have (in most cases) unlimited access to the analysts. When you schedule inquiries, you are saying "I want to speak with an analyst to ask questions and learn" and they don't have a choice but to schedule a 30 minute call with you. But what you are really doing on the call is to spend 50% of the time to ask questions and learn for the sake of learning (that can't be bad either), but spent 50% to educate the analyst about you! Analysts, like you and me always want to learn, and by taking 15 minutes to bring them up to speed on your company, strategy, and recent customer wins, can be appreciated by them as well.
Doing this consistently on a weekly basis is time consuming, but I will guarantee you that it will pay off in the long run. Once you have gone through a long list of analysts, start again with the first analyst and repeat. You must do this consistently and not only will you be well educated, but each analyst firm and their analysts will know your company well.
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