Kea Insight / Analyst Relations
Your Analyst List Is Probably Wrong
Your analyst list is probably wrong. Not because the people on it are unimportant, but because analyst relevance changes faster than most companies update the list. Analysts change coverage, research firms reorganise, specialists begin appearing in customer conversations, sales teams hear names that AR barely knows, and major evaluations move to different owners. Yet many analyst lists remain almost untouched, carried from one planning cycle to the next with a few additions and deletions while the assumptions underneath stay largely intact.
That matters because AR capacity is finite. Executive time is finite. Product leaders will not brief twenty analysts every quarter, and customer evidence cannot be spread equally across every relationship. Every hour spent maintaining one relationship is an hour not spent somewhere else. The real question, therefore, is not whether an analyst is important in the abstract. It is whether that analyst is important to your business, your buyers and your market now. That distinction changes how an AR programme should be built.
Most analyst lists are historical documents
The first analyst map a company creates is usually rational. It starts with the obvious research firms, the analysts covering the category, whoever owns the relevant evaluations and perhaps a few specialists already known to the business. The problem begins later. The product changes, a new buyer enters the decision, the company moves upmarket or into a new geography, and a use case that once sat at the edge of the proposition becomes central. At the same time, analysts leave, change roles or take on broader remits, new research appears and specialist firms gain traction around emerging problems. The company changes, the analyst ecosystem changes, and the list often changes least of all.
This is how historical relevance quietly becomes current priority. You hear it in the language teams use: “We have always briefed her”, “He knows us very well”, “They are Gartner, so of course they are Tier 1”, or “The CEO likes speaking to him”. None of those statements is meaningless, but none establishes why that analyst deserves more of the company’s attention than somebody else. A long-standing relationship may still be valuable; what it cannot do is exempt itself from the same relevance test applied to every other analyst.
The consequences are usually subtle before they become expensive. Senior executives keep meeting analysts whose remit has moved away from the company’s core market, while someone writing the next important piece of research has barely heard the story. Sales repeatedly encounters an unfamiliar specialist in live deals, yet AR still treats that person as peripheral because they are not on the inherited list. A briefing programme can therefore look active while allocating its best time badly. An analyst map should describe the market you are trying to influence. If it mainly describes the relationships you already have, it is doing a different job.
Relevance needs evidence, not prestige
“We need Gartner, Forrester and IDC” is not analyst prioritisation; it is a list of organisations. Large research firms matter for obvious reasons. They have buyer reach, established research processes, broad portfolios and, in many markets, significant influence over how buyers understand a category. But the useful unit for AR is still the individual analyst: their remit, their research responsibilities, the buyers they advise and the role they play in the market you care about. Two analysts at the same firm can have completely different relevance to your company. One may cover your exact market and advise the buyers you are trying to reach, while another may sit close enough to look relevant in a database but have no meaningful reason to spend time on your proposition.
This is why tiering without defining relevance first creates false precision. Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 look disciplined, but if you cannot explain why an analyst is Tier 1 without saying the name of their employer, you probably have not prioritised the analyst. You have prioritised the logo. Ask five people inside the same company what makes somebody Tier 1 and you can still get five answers: firm size, research visibility, existing relationship, evaluation ownership or seniority. The purpose of a prioritisation model is not to turn judgement into mathematics; it is to force the programme to explain why its judgement is reasonable.
A useful analyst map therefore needs a defensible reason behind each priority. Coverage matters: does the analyst actually research the market, technology or buyer problem? Buyer relevance matters: do they advise the kinds of organisations you sell to? Research responsibility matters: are they writing the reports, evaluations or market notes that shape how your space is understood? Commercial evidence matters too: are customers and prospects using their research or advice when they make decisions? Then there is strategic fit. An analyst can be highly relevant to the business you had two years ago and much less relevant to the business you are becoming; equally, someone who once looked peripheral may suddenly matter because your proposition, geography or target buyer has changed.
For each high-priority analyst, the AR team should be able to summarise the rationale in one or two sentences. “Owns the primary evaluation, advises our target enterprise buyers and covers the exact problem we need the market to understand” is useful. So is “specialist whose research now appears repeatedly in European customer conversations and whose remit overlaps directly with our new product direction”. Both are more valuable than a score in a spreadsheet because they can be challenged when the facts change.
Let the market challenge your assumptions
AR teams know analysts; buyers know which external voices they actually use. Those are not always the same thing. One of the strongest checks on an analyst map is therefore to ask customers and prospects which outside sources helped them understand the market and evaluate their options. The question should be broad enough to avoid manufacturing the answer. “Did Gartner influence you?” mostly tests brand recognition. Better questions ask which research was used, whether the buyer spoke directly to an analyst, whether a consultant or colleague introduced a particular report, and at what stage that information mattered.
The distinction matters because analyst influence can enter a decision in different ways. Research may help define the shortlist, change a technical requirement, identify a vendor the buyer had not considered, or simply give the buying team confidence that a category is worth investigating. These are different forms of influence and they imply different actions for AR. What matters is that the evidence comes from the buying process rather than from the programme’s assumptions about which firms ought to matter.
Sales sees another part of this picture because analyst influence often appears inside live opportunities. A buyer quotes a report, procurement asks about an evaluation, a prospect says an analyst raised a concern, or a competitor uses research in the deal. That information should flow back into the analyst map, but it needs verification. “The analyst is blocking the deal” is not evidence. A complicated sales problem can very quickly become shorthand for “Gartner said something”. The source, timing and effect need to be established: what was actually used, who said it, at what stage and what decision did it affect?
Once the evidence is real, it should be allowed to change the map. If the same analyst repeatedly appears in buying decisions while sitting at the bottom of your priority list, the list deserves scrutiny. If somebody has remained Tier 1 for years but nobody can point to current research, buyer relevance or strategic value, that deserves scrutiny too. The analyst map should be informed by the market, not protected from it.
This is also where specialist firms matter. A large firm can matter enormously and still be the wrong place to spend the next hour. A smaller firm can have narrow reach and still sit directly inside the buying decision you care about. This is especially common in emerging categories, where specialists may cover a problem for years before it becomes large enough to sit comfortably inside a major evaluation category. By the time the market becomes obvious, those analysts may already have strong credibility with the practitioners, architects or executives your company needs to reach.
That does not mean every boutique firm deserves attention. It means firm size is a poor shortcut for judgement. The same questions apply: what do they cover, who consumes their work, do customers mention them, are they producing serious research and does their expertise intersect with a strategic priority? Sometimes the answer will be no. Sometimes the smaller firm deserves more time. That is simply what prioritisation means.
Relationships matter, but they are not the same as relevance
AR professionals naturally value good relationships. Analysts who respond, engage and ask thoughtful questions make the work easier and often more useful. But relationship quality and market relevance are different things. An analyst can know your company extremely well and still become less important when their remit changes. Another analyst can be difficult to schedule, challenging in meetings and exceptionally important because they cover the exact market and speak to your buyers every week. Accessibility should not be confused with influence, familiarity should not be confused with coverage, and comfort should not be confused with strategic relevance.
This becomes particularly difficult when senior executives are involved. Executives build relationships too, and if a CEO has spoken to the same analyst for years, moving that analyst down the priority list can feel like saying the relationship no longer matters. That is not what it means. The relationship may remain valuable and the analyst may still provide useful context or historical perspective, but the company may no longer need to allocate the same level of executive time, product access or customer evidence to it.
Strong AR programmes can hold both ideas at once: preserve useful relationships and still reallocate scarce attention. They can also accept that a challenging analyst may deserve more attention than an agreeable one. Product may dislike the questions, sales may dislike the conclusions and executives may prefer somebody easier to brief, but none of that reduces the importance of an analyst whose research and buyer conversations materially shape the market. The purpose of prioritisation is not to reward the relationships that feel best. It is to decide where engagement matters most.
Tiering is a resource-allocation decision
If Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 all receive roughly the same treatment, the exercise is pointless. Tiering is not a taxonomy exercise; it is a resource-allocation decision. For the analysts most relevant to the business, that may mean proactive updates, executive access, early discussion of major strategic changes, stronger customer evidence and a deliberate relationship plan. Other analysts may need targeted engagement when their research or buyer focus intersects with a specific company priority, while some should simply be monitored until there is a clear reason to engage.
The labels themselves are not important. What matters is that different levels of relevance lead to different levels of effort and that the reasoning remains visible. For every high-priority analyst, record why they matter. When someone moves down, record what changed. When somebody new appears, state the reason for adding them. This makes the model operational rather than political and reduces the risk that priorities are distorted by whoever speaks loudest internally.
Without explicit reasoning, a senior executive can turn one interesting conversation into a new Tier 1 relationship, sales can elevate an analyst because of one difficult deal, product can deprioritise someone because they challenged the roadmap, and AR can favour the analysts who are easiest to work with. A visible rationale does not eliminate judgement. It makes the judgement accountable.
What this looks like in practice
Imagine a software company entering a regulated European market. Its analyst programme is mature and it has long-standing relationships with several analysts at the major firms, so the natural assumption is that those relationships should lead the market-entry work. Then different evidence starts to appear. Sales reports that three target accounts have referenced the same specialist research firm. Two existing customers say they use that firm specifically for architecture and regulatory guidance. One analyst there publishes regularly on the exact implementation issue the company needs the market to understand.
None of this makes the existing global relationships less valuable. One analyst still owns an important market evaluation and another advises large multinational buyers, so both remain central to the programme. What changes is the allocation of attention. The specialist moves into the core engagement group for the European initiative. The company stops recycling the generic corporate briefing and builds the conversation around regulatory and implementation evidence relevant to that analyst’s audience. Product and security join because the likely questions require operating detail, and sales continues to feed back whether the specialist appears in opportunities.
The conclusion is not that the smaller firm is “more influential” than the larger one. That comparison is too crude to be useful. The conclusion is that this analyst is highly relevant to this business objective, in this market, at this point in time. That is what an analyst map is supposed to tell you.
Treat the analyst map as a live operating asset
Analyst prioritisation should not be an annual administrative exercise. The market moves too quickly for that, and if the list only changes when an analyst leaves, the programme is reacting to events instead of reading the market. Coverage changes, research agendas shift, evaluations move between analysts, customers start using different sources, new categories form and the company’s own strategy changes. A good programme absorbs those changes as they happen and periodically challenges the whole map.
Quarterly is a sensible rhythm for many companies, not because every analyst needs to be re-scored every three months, but because it creates a moment to ask whether the current allocation of time still matches the business. Bring together current coverage, research plans, evaluation ownership, customer feedback, sales intelligence, briefing history, geographic priorities and changes in company strategy. Then make actual decisions about who deserves more access, who should move down, which new analyst is becoming important and which relationship is being maintained mainly because of history.
If nobody ever moves, the review is probably not doing much. The purpose of the exercise is not a cleaner spreadsheet. It is a better use of scarce executive attention, product access, customer evidence and AR capacity. An analyst list is valuable only to the extent that it helps the company decide where those resources should go next.
Where Kea adds value
Kea helps technology companies build analyst maps around the market they are actually trying to influence. That means looking beyond firm names and inherited contacts to current remit, research responsibility, evaluation ownership, buyer relevance, relationship history and the evidence coming back from customers and sales. The result should answer practical questions: who deserves proactive engagement, where should executives spend time, which relationships need rebuilding because coverage has moved, which specialists deserve more attention and where is the company investing mainly because of history rather than current relevance?
The map then needs to stay alive. Take your current Tier 1 list and hide the research-firm names. For each analyst, ask four questions: what do they cover, which buyers do they influence, which company priority do they support and what evidence tells us this still matters? If the answers are clear, keep investing. If the answer is “because we have always spoken to them”, your analyst list is probably wrong.
Read alongside A Network Without Context Is Just a List and Your key analyst has left. What needs updating?.
Put this into practice
Make your analyst priorities reflect the market.
Review current coverage, buyer relevance, research ownership and commercial evidence, then focus AR time where it matters most.
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