Getting an analyst briefing is easier than you think. Making it count is another thing entirely.
Tony Spangler, APR, Rep Cap's analyst relations practice lead, recently hosted a panel with three people who have collectively sat through more of those meetings than they can remember: Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer at Sapient Insights Group; Kyle Lagunas, founder of Kyle and Co.; and Sarah White, independent strategy advisor and former head of innovation and transformation at SAP SuccessFactors. The conversation covered what analysts actually want from a briefing, what vendors consistently get wrong, and how to build a relationship that creates real value over time.
TL;DR: Most vendors treat briefings as a chance to present. The analysts in that room treat them as a chance to learn — and they're hoping you'll do the same.
The Deck Is Not the Meeting
Kyle Lagunas calls himself a slide queen.
"This is a fact-gathering exercise for me," he said. "I want to know who you are...what your product offerings are — and then get through that in five minutes and get to what your announcement is."
The discipline of building the deck signals something. Spending 25 minutes walking through it signals something else.
Stacey Harris put a harder floor on it: If you talk so long there's no time for a product demo, you've failed the meeting. She rarely has good enough notes from an in-person briefing to do real recall — impressions, not analysis. Virtual briefings are a different exercise — screen grabs, detailed commentary, the kind of notes that actually end up in write-ups. Show up ready to show the product.
The best briefings run in both directions. The analyst across the table has done hundreds of meetings in your category. They have a read on your competitors, your buyers, and where the market is heading. Leave room for that exchange and you walk out with something most vendors don't get on a sales call: unfiltered feedback from someone who talks to your buyers every day.
Research Your Analyst the Way You Research Your Buyers
This is the one that almost never makes the pre-briefing checklist. It should be the first thing on it.
"The thing that I get frustrated most with vendors is they treat all the analysts the same," Harris said. "You really need to do the same level of research on that analyst — what they're doing, what their position is, what's important to them — as you would with your own ICP."
The problem she sees most often: A company brings the same deck they use for investors, buyers, and every analyst they meet. "You're spending 20 minutes telling me what Gartner says about you. I don't care. I care about what your customers are saying, because I'm a voice of the customer analyst — that's where my data comes from."
Lagunas made the same point differently. He doesn't need the CEO in the room. He needs someone who has a genuine point of view and is ready to listen. Showing up with the right person — at any level of seniority — matters more than seniority itself.
The research required isn't deep. A quick search on what each analyst focuses on will get you most of the way there. The problem isn't that vendors don't know how. It's that they don't think to do it.
Send the People Who Actually Built It
White was direct on who should be in the room: "Don't send your CMO." Analysts, she said, want to talk to people who are actually leading product, doing product strategy — the executive team if the company is smaller. Who shows up signals how seriously a company takes the relationship.
The other thing that drove her to distraction: vendors who wouldn't share basic information. Revenue range. Customer count. Real traction data. "There's no judgment coming," she said. The numbers help analysts understand where to put you — which reports you belong in, who to connect you with. Withholding it doesn't protect anything. It just means when a VC or acquirer calls asking about you, the answer is: "Yeah, they sent some junior level marketer and they wouldn't answer any of our questions."
Harris added the one that wastes the most time: defensiveness. Analysts are going to push back on your positioning. That's the job — and the value of what amounts to a free consulting session. "If you start shutting us down on what we're saying, then we won't share what we're seeing with you." The vendors who argue back aren't protecting their brand. They're cutting off the most valuable part of the conversation.
Nobody Believes You Invented a New Category
When Spangler asked what each panelist hated most in a vendor deck, Harris answered before anyone else could. "I'm a new category. I'm the first to do this."
White had the full diagnosis. "It's literally something that Kyle, Stacey, and I have been watching briefings of for the last decade." Founders and new marketing leadership come in claiming no competitors, no comparable products, a brand-new space that only they occupy — often using terminology that means something completely different to the buyers they're trying to sell to. "It is a kiss of death," she said. Category creation is expensive. It confuses buyers. And it forces you to fight battles that don't need to be fought.
The simplest reason it fails? As Harris put it: "No category means no budget." Buyers can't fight internally for a purchase they can't name.
What analysts actually want to hear from a company that's unsure where it fits? Exactly that. "I'm much more interested if you tell me we're not sure what category we fit into," Harris said. "I can help you with that answer all day long."
The Relationship Is Built on Follow-Through, Not Spend
The conversation closed on what actually moves the relationship forward, and the answer wasn't budget. Harris made the access point explicit first: "You don't need to pay anybody to get access to us. I'll do a briefing with anybody at least once a year."
White put the scale of it in context: during her time as an analyst, she would meet with 300 to 400 unique companies every single year. Most weren't a fit — but every conversation informed her research and provided value back to the vendor.
What makes the relationship worth something over time isn't payment. It's follow-through. Harris was specific: "Just telling us who you are and then walking away and not contacting us afterwards, not doing follow up, not touching base on what you're trying to do in the market...then you're just a notch in another 30 briefings I had that month. You do have to do some connecting tissue for us."
Lagunas described what the best vendor engagements look like from his side: a company that has absorbed his research, has a real point of view on the market, and wants to build something together — a focus group, a market event, research that gives practitioners something useful. "Finding opportunities for mutual value is where it's at." Not: Here's our budget, what can you produce.
There's more in the full recording: how the HR tech analyst community compares to the rest of tech, the nuances of the pay-to-play question, and some genuinely good stories from the analyst day circuit. Watch the on-demand version now.
Interested in building or refining an analyst relations practice? Whether you're at the crawl, walk, or run stage, RepCap can help. Get in touch at repcap.com.