As reports, insights and content from industry analysts increasingly play a role in defining and influencing AI search responses, Three Rings hosted a panel discussion on analyst relations earlier this year in coordination with the PR Club of New England.
The session was designed to clear up some misconceptions about AR and give guidance and tips that professionals can put to work right away. Our panel provided perspectives from a company, analyst firm and agency:
· Dave Parks, Director of Product Marketing at BillingPlatform
· Ramon Llamas, Research Director of Mobile Devices and AR/VR at IDC
· Drew Miale, Account Director at Three Rings Inc.
After the panel, I caught up with Dave to get a recap of his main points from the session. His takeaways were too good not to share, and align well with three core themes that ran through the entire discussion: relationships, preparation, and measurement.
For context, BillingPlatform is a high-growth player in the enterprise billing and monetization space and works with iconic companies such as JP Morgan, DIRECTV, Carrier, Instacart and more. Through a large, proactive AR program with detailed pipeline attribution, BillingPlatform has delivered an unprecedented run, including being named a leader in reports by Gartner, Forrester Research, MGI Research, ISG Research, QKS Group and more over consecutive years.
Relationships Are Ongoing, Not Transactional
Dave’s central message was that analyst relationships are a long game, not a point-in-time transaction. The strongest programs run on a steady cadence - quarterly briefings, inquiries whenever a real strategic question comes up, and informal check-ins around company news. Vendors who go dark for ten months and then resurface two weeks before a Forrester Wave or a Gartner Magic Quadrant closes tend to have a difficult experience. The goal is for the analysts to know your story well enough that your name surfaces in vendor short-list conversations and analyst reports without any prompting.
Part of building that kind of relationship is knowing when to stop talking. Briefings are where you present to the analysts; inquiries are where you listen to what the analysts have to say about a given market or sector - and that’s where the real value lives. Use inquiries to ask how buyers are evaluating vendors, what win-loss patterns analysts are seeing, and how your positioning lands against named competitors. That intelligence is worth more than any slide you’ll ever build, and it shifts the dynamic from vendor pitching to a genuine consultative conversation.
Preparation Separates the Best Companies from the Rest
When it comes to briefings, Dave encouraged everyone to prepare the way analysts wish more vendors would. Read an analyst’s recently published work before the call so you’re not contradicting a note they wrote last month. Bring a point of view rather than a product tour, and back it with concrete numbers - customer counts, deal sizes, win rates, and outcomes. Do at least one dry run (ideally a few) with your team to nail down the narrative, time each section, agree on who answers what, and stress-test the demo so nothing breaks during the live briefing. And always leave time at the end for Q&A.
That same discipline applies to the big research cycles. Dave’s advice: start participating a year out, not six weeks before the survey. By the time a Wave, Magic Quadrant, or IDC MarketScape opens, the analyst’s view of the market is often mostly formed. Engage 12 months ahead, brief on strategy rather than just product launches, make customer references easy to access, and respond to published notes with fresh data points. Then, when the survey itself arrives, answer the questions the analyst actually asked - not the one you wish they’d asked.
Measure AR Like a Brand, but Track the Attribution
Measurement is where a lot of AR programs get stuck, and Dave offered a clear way to think about it. Treat AR like a brand-building function, but track the attribution that genuinely exists. He broke it into three layers. First, activity and coverage: briefings delivered, inquiries logged, and firms engaged. Second, positioning and perception: movement in evaluations and the mentions you’re earning. Third - and this is where leads and attribution live - downstream impact: analyst-sourced leads where an analyst referred a buyer to you, form fills on gated report reprints, UTM-tagged links in co-marketed content, and influenced pipeline where an analyst touchpoint shows up in the deal. His closing note on this: track sourced and influenced separately, and be honest about the difference.
Bringing It All Together
What struck me most across all three viewpoints was how much we all agreed on common principles: strong analyst relations is a long game built on genuine relationships, disciplined preparation, and honest measurement.
Whether you’re starting an AR function for the first time or improving an existing one, the fundamentals above are a good place to start. And if you’d like to talk through what an analyst relations program could look like for your organization, please reach out to me.
