Organizing analyst meetings is always a very enjoyable exercise. An exercise in patience, planning, faux-surprise and overlapping logisitics.
Recently I had two interesting (paraphrased) responses from two un-named research firms (it goes without saying the communication was from sales reps):
- 1) Sorry you can’t meet with Analyst X because according to our records you briefed him/her eleven months ago and as you are aware non-clients can only brief a analyst once in any given twelve month period.
- 2) Thanks for getting in touch. Unfortunately we never made any progress in working together and our analysts have to keep a balance between client and non-client work. Why don’t you see if there’s an opportunity for us to do some business and come back to me.
We all have to make a living and I have to say (once again) that in my experience, the vast majority of research firms are above board and interested in finding out what’s happening in the market. But I have to ask the question: Are the analysts at these firms as knowedgeable as they should be (from their clients’ perspective) on firstly new technologies and products and secondly on how those products are being used in practice?
Murphy's Law 