When you’re new to analyst relations, it’s easy to assume inquiries exist for one reason:
to influence analysts.
So you join calls prepared to explain, justify, or persuade.
And that’s usually the moment that most analysts’ highly trained bullshit detector kicks in.
Here’s the reality that took me far too long to internalize:
The purpose of inquiries isn’t to pitch
Your role on the inquiry is the client
Your job is to ask good questions and listen
In a well-run inquiry, information flows mostly from the analyst to you. There can be dialogue — there should be dialogue — but it has to come from genuine curiosity about what they’re seeing in the market, not a relentless agenda to steer them toward your conclusion.
This episode is about the inquiry types that help you do exactly that.
These won’t be the only inquiry types you’ll ever run, but they’ll help you build a sturdy foundation for impactful, trust-based analyst relationships that translate into real strategic benefits for your company.
What inquiries are really for (especially for part-time AR)
If AR isn’t your full-time job, inquiries can be one of your highest-leverage tools.
They help you:
Understand how analysts actually see the market
Learn what real buyers are asking them — and who those buyers are
Pressure-test internal assumptions before they harden into strategy
Build credibility by showing curiosity instead of defensiveness
To be clear, influence is an important part of your job, too. But working to understand their POV first helps you earn the right to challenge it when it makes sense for your program.
Before we get into the specific inquiry types, one practical note:
Even when it’s not required, in my experience, anchoring an inquiry to a specific piece of their published research almost always produces better answers.
Referencing a report, framework, or research area:
Gives the analyst a clear starting point
Signals that you’re engaging with their actual point of view
Reduces the risk of generic or overly abstract guidance
This doesn’t mean every inquiry has to be about a specific note, but your questions will land better when they’re grounded in the analyst’s existing work.
With that in mind, here are ten inquiry types that consistently deliver real value for startup and growth-stage AR programs:
1. Buyer alignment & influence inquiry
This inquiry answers a very simple but critical question:
Does this analyst talk to the same buyers we sell to?
The goal is to establish whether the analyst’s perspective is grounded in conversations with your ICP — in your segments, at your company size, in your buying contexts.
You’re learning:
Which buyer roles reach out to them
In what situations buyers seek their advice
How often those conversations resemble your real deals
Especially if your category doesn’t yet have a marquee report like an MQ or Wave, this inquiry protects you from anchoring strategy to misaligned signal. It also sets the tone for a relationship based on accuracy instead of assumptions.
2. Market landscape inquiry
This inquiry helps you understand what buyers are prioritizing right now, and why.
You might ask the analyst to describe:
The high level problems buyers are bringing to them
The capabilities buyers ask about first
The tradeoffs buyers are making under budget, time, or organizational constraints
This inquiry grounds your internal strategy discussions in external reality. It helps you distinguish between what your company wants the market to care about and what the market is already responding to.
3. Market segment / buyer persona deep dive
This inquiry helps you understand how different buyers define the problem you think you solve.
You might ask:
How expectations vary by role, industry, or maturity
Which personas initiate evaluations versus influence them
What success looks like from the buyer’s perspective, and how it differs by persona or segment
In contrast with a market landscape inquiry, the value comes from specificity. Differences between personas often explain stalled deals, confused messaging, or roadmap tension.
4. Messaging & positioning inquiry
This inquiry helps you understand how your story is interpreted, summarized, and repeated by someone who advises buyers for a living.
Your goal is to learn how analysts might describe you when buyers ask, “Who should I look at?”
This is less about whether your positioning is “good” and more about whether it is distinct and easy to recall. Analysts act as translators between vendors and buyers — this inquiry shows you how well your message translates without your help.
5. Competitive positioning inquiry
This inquiry reveals how buyers and analysts compare you when you’re not present.
You might ask:
Where buyers consistently see you as strong
Where they hesitate or discount your claims
How buyers compare to specific competitors in real evaluations
Listen closely to frequency and context. Repeated patterns across conversations matter more than any single anecdote. This inquiry often surfaces strengths you underuse, and weaknesses you overestimate.
6. Category definition & market framing inquiry
This inquiry helps you understand how analysts mentally organize markets when solutions span multiple domains.
It is especially valuable when:
Your product overlaps multiple categories (e.g., CMS + marketing automation)
Buyers compare you to vendors from different markets
Your solution doesn’t cleanly fit existing research buckets
Your goal is to learn:
Which markets analysts associate you with — and why
Where they see overlap versus distinct category boundaries
How buyers are likely encountering you in research and shortlists
This inquiry prevents category confusion from becoming an unforced error. It helps you align your narrative to how analysts and buyers already structure the problem space.
7. Pricing strategy & monetization inquiry
This inquiry helps you understand how pricing & packaging decisions affect buyer behavior.
You would run this inquiry when:
Considering a pricing model change
Introducing AI, usage-based, or platform pricing
Seeing unexpected friction late in deals
You might ask:
What pricing structures buyers accept in your market without pushback
Where pricing creates confusion, delay, or distrust
How peers are adapting to the same pressures
This inquiry is valuable because analysts see patterns across many deals. It brings external buyer behavior into internal pricing discussions that are often driven by assumptions.
8. Marquee report (e.g. MQ, Wave) debrief
This inquiry helps you understand how the analyst translates buyer signal into evaluation frameworks.
You might ask:
Why certain capabilities are weighted more heavily than others
Which buyer outcomes and use cases drove those weightings
How analyst conversations over time shaped the framework
This is also where a common misconception needs clearing up: Vendors do not influence criteria by arguing with the analyst during debriefs.
Criteria are shaped upstream through:
Repeated references to customer outcomes in briefings
Concrete customer stories tied to measurable results
Consistent alignment between vendor claims and buyer feedback analysts hear independently
The debrief inquiry helps you see where the criteria came from. The influence happens over time, by grounding analyst understanding in real-world customer evidence (not by disputing your scores after publication).
9. Document review: vision deck
This inquiry helps you understand how credible your long-term direction feels in the context of market trends and dynamics.
Operational nuance can differ among firms, for example:
For Gartner: You can submit a pre-read document (e.g. word doc or deck with your vision narrative) directly as part of an inquiry.
For Forrester: You can’t submit a pre-read ahead of time, so you might need to brief them first so they have sufficient context before providing feedback.
The goal is to understand:
Which assumptions feel aligned with market movement
Where buyers would likely push back
What questions your vision raises in the analyst’s mind
10. Document review: roadmap
This inquiry helps you understand whether your roadmap aligns with what buyers are actually asking for, and how analysts interpret that alignment.
You would run this inquiry when:
Deciding where to invest next
Debating tradeoffs between competing initiatives
Trying to distinguish between “nice to have” and “buyers expect this”
Similar to 9, the operational mechanics among firms differ slightly.
You’re learning:
Which of your roadmap items map clearly to buyer demand the analyst is seeing
Which investments analysts see as table stakes versus differentiating
Where your roadmap may be over- or under-indexing relative to market signal
The thread that connects all of these
Across every inquiry type, the most valuable moments come from the same place:
Curiosity about what analysts are hearing from buyers —
who those buyers are, and why that signal exists.
Ask:
Which personas?
Which segments?
In what buying context?
Your job is to show up with good questions, honest context, and the discipline to listen.
One last thing
The fastest way to stall an analyst relationship is to treat every interaction like a chance to influence.
Most vendors do this. They show up in sales mode, even when they call it an inquiry, and analysts respond accordingly.
What actually builds a real exchange of value is showing, early and often, that you care about the analyst’s point of view: what they’re hearing from buyers, how they’re interpreting the market, and where their perspective comes from.
When you lead that way, something important changes. You’re no longer just pushing a narrative. You’re demonstrating that you’re willing to listen before you challenge.
Over time, that’s what earns you the credibility to push back where it matters — because you’ve shown you’re not trapped in pitch mode, and you’re not just there to sell.
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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