Sigh.
It was 5:30pm on a Tuesday when the email hit my inbox:
“Gartner's Magic Quadrant + Critical Capabilities Fact Review – Response DUE BY December 15, 5pm ET”
At first, I didn’t open it.
Didn’t even hover.
Just stared at the subject line for about 10 minutes like it was a ticking bomb.
I already knew - our dot was behind that email, and it wasn’t going to be what we wanted.
Everyone had worked hard and put in their best effort.
We had high hopes for the result.
But it was our first time doing an analyst RFI as a company. We were figuring it out as we went, trying to reverse-engineer what “good” looked like without the muscle memory or a seasoned AR lead guiding the process.
And because of that, I had a quiet, honest feeling in my gut:
We didn’t quite know what we were doing yet.
And the results were probably going to reflect that.
So I let the email sit there, glowing gently, waiting for me to click.
I took a breath.
Clicked anyway.
The graphic appeared.
And our dot… landed pretty much where I feared it would.
Not catastrophic, but certainly not what we wanted.
The natural outcome of a first-time effort without a clear owner, a clear plan, or a clear sense of how analysts connect the dots behind the scenes.
I closed my laptop, leaned back, and exhaled.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I already knew this moment was coming. The person owning AR for us previously had left a few months earlier, and because I’d been supporting them as a Product Marketer, the work had quietly shifted to me.
But it wasn’t until this email that it truly sank in: this was mine now, and I needed to figure it out.
The Moment You Realize You Need a Plan
I opened with this story because it’s the thing no one tells you about inheriting AR for the first time:
It doesn’t start with confidence. It starts with a lurch in your stomach, an email you don’t want to open, and the very real awareness that you have no idea what you’re doing.
This is where most people panic.
They assume AR requires:
a decade of experience,
a carved-in-stone strategy,
perfect relationships with every analyst,
an encyclopedic memory of every past RFI, briefing, and inquiry
It doesn’t.
If you inherited AR, officially or unofficially, you don’t need to become an expert overnight.
I’ll be the first one to tell you, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Luckily, I knew some people who could guide me as I took my first steps. For those of you who aren’t so lucky, that’s why I’m writing it down.
There are a few minimum viable motions that can help give you the footing, clarity, and forward momentum to get you started on the right path.
Once you have a plan for the first 30 days, everything else gets easier.
So where should you start?
Your First 30 Days Owning AR
Days 1–5: Reorient Yourself
You might be tempted to start talking to the analysts right away. Unless you have an RFI kicking off in the next 2-3 months, I wouldn’t recommend this.
You won’t have enough context to get much out of it.
Start by figuring out which analysts matter (and why).
Your first five days are about getting your arms around the essentials:
Reaffirm the 3–5 analysts who are most strategically important to your company and market.
These are the people whose opinions move deals, influence your execs, or shape your category.Pull the latest big evaluation reports where you show up (or want to show up):
Magic Quadrants, Waves, MarketScapes, etc.Read your vendor profiles and the overall narrative carefully.
How do they talk about:your category,
your competitors,
you
Start a simple working doc with three columns:
What they seem to believe → What they seem to reward → Where we stand today.
You’ll use this later.
This is your core orientation, and it’s a critical step before you take any other action.
Days 6–15: Read Deeper and Build the Mind Map
Stage 2 takes the initial orientation a step further. This is your “mind-mapping” phase — sussing out patterns and themes across additional research.
Continuing past the core reports, you should:
Read the analysts’ other recent notes in and around your space:
trend reports,
market guides,
quick answers,
best practices,
related adjacent-category pieces,
blog posts
For each analyst, ask:
What do they keep coming back to? (Themes, risks, opportunities)
What do they seem skeptical about?
What do they reward when they describe category leaders?
Now build your mind map:
Put your category in the center,
Branch out one layer for each key analyst,
Under each analyst, add:
their core themes,
their pet topics,
their red flags,
overall: what “good” seems to look like in their eyes
Finally, highlight where their POVs overlap and where they diverge.
It tells you:which themes are table stakes in the category,
which are key differentiators,
where you might need different emphasis for different analysts
By Day 15, you want to have a clearer understanding of your analysts’ POV and how it may have shaped their report criteria.
Days 16–25: Evaluate What You Inherited
By this point, you’ve grounded yourself. You have a baseline understanding of the analysts, their POVs, and the category’s shape.
Now it’s time to turn inward.
These next steps are about understanding what you inherited — not to judge it, but to decode it.
Here’s what you do:
Pull the last RFI submissions (the ones that got you your most recent dots)
Read them slowly (one at a time – and ideally on different days).
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the analyst.For every question, ask:
Did we answer the whole question?
Was the answer clear and specific?
Would an analyst understand what we actually do?
Did we give enough context, or assume knowledge we shouldn’t have?
Mark the spots where the answer feels:
vague
overly polished
incomplete
too marketing-heavy
disconnected from the analyst POVs you mapped earlier
Be honest with yourself, perhaps a bit harsher than you need to be.
Remember, the analysts don’t work for your company and don’t have an inherent working knowledge of your product like you do. Whatever their current understanding is is a direct result of what you have or haven’t yet communicated.
Compare the RFI answers to your mind map.
Where were we aligned?
Where did we accidentally talk past them?
Where did we miss their priorities entirely?
And most importantly:
Note what worked.
There are always at least a few solid things you’ll be able to build on — a clear explanation, a crisp differentiator, a great example, a metric that landed.
By Day 25, you should have a clear, honest picture of your starting point.
Now, you can start building an engagement plan.
Days 26–30: Turn Insight Into a 12-Month Plan
This is the moment where it all starts coming together.
So far, you’ve:
mapped analyst POVs
read their research
dissected your RFIs
connected the dots
Now you can build an engagement plan.
This will hinge on two workstreams:
Validating what you’ve understood from reading the research
Figuring out what it means for your company
1. Validating what you’ve understood
You’ve formed opinions on:
how the analysts think
what they value
what they believe about your space
where your story isn’t landing
where your RFI misaligned with their POV
But don’t get too ahead of your skis just yet…
👉 Your interpretation is still just a hypothesis. A well-informed one, but still one that needs testing.
The next few months are about validating your hypotheses directly with the analysts.
First, decide:
Which analysts you need to validate specific assumptions with
What parts of your POV or product need clarification
Which gaps in your understanding require a briefing (you sharing information and doing most of the talking) vs. an inquiry (you asking questions and the analyst doing most of the talking)
Where you need to pressure-test your read of the category
Based on the answers to those questions, you’ll define a validation plan:
which analysts,
in what order,
for what purpose,
tied to which assumptions
This becomes the backbone of your analyst engagement strategy.
2. Deciding where you need to provide better information vs. where you need to change internally
As you look across your notes and your mind map, you’ll start to see two kinds of gaps:
Gaps you need to close with analysts
and
gaps you need to close inside the company.
There will be areas where analysts don’t yet see the full picture — places where you know you need to show them better evidence, clearer explanations, tighter demos, stronger proof.
That’s influence work.
This becomes part of your briefing and inquiry strategy for the year.
And then there will be some areas where you have to take a deep breath and say,
"Yeah… they’re not wrong."
Maybe the story isn’t crisp.
Maybe the examples aren’t strong (or you don’t have enough of them).
Maybe the roadmap needs clarity.
Maybe your positioning is a little wishful.
Those are internal alignment problems — the kind you’ll need to massage, workshop, and collaborate through over the next twelve months.
Once you’ve named these areas, by Day 30, you should have everything you need to build a calendar of calls and engagements that include:
Your priority analysts (and why)
Your POV influence areas
Your internal change areas
Your validation roadmap
The frequency and cadence of these calls should be driven by your realistic bandwidth. 1-2 calls a month isn’t a bad starting point, but you can scale this up or down depending on how much time you have.
Not sure how to prepare for an inquiry? In Episode 3, we’ll explore a simple, startup-friendly workflow you can follow every time — so even if you’re doing this part-time, you’ll show up like a pro.
Did You Find This Helpful? I’d love to hear what you thought. Reply to this email with your feedback, and let me know what you’d like to see in future episodes (I read every one!)
Till next time,
Nathan
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