Hello, 2025!
A new year often brings a fresh approach to strategy, different ideas to try, and renewed enthusiasm that can be channeled into driving results.
As analyst relations (AR) pros set the groundwork for success in the year ahead, we’re here to share important insights from Brandon Davis, AR director at LogicMonitor, a leading SaaS-based hybrid observability platform powered by AI.
Brandon presented at ARchitect User Forum 2024 — impressing the crowd with his plans for, and successes in, “program-atizing” analyst partnerships. “The thing I love about the partnership cycle,” he shared, “is that you learn and earn in every single step.”
So, if you’re looking to deepen and derive more value from analyst relationships in 2025 (what AR pro isn’t?!), check out Brandon’s three-step process, lessons learned, and the jaw-dropping results of his efforts.
Results first!
Let’s cut to the chase and highlight the value of this programmatic approach. In two years’ time, LogicMonitor has:
- Gone from 0 to 20 analyst partnerships — Brandon defines true partnerships as having “mutually beneficial value… delivering as much to the analyst as they’re giving you.” It’s no wonder he called this level of engagement “the dream metric.”
- Engaged 76% more analysts — increasing awareness of LogicMonitor’s value proposition.
- Had over 20 dedicated analyst reports written about the company — that is, focused solely on LogicMonitor, where it’s heading, customer successes and so on.
- Been included in 12 evaluations — “This really shows that the analysts are validating our strategy, our mission, and how we’re going to market,” Brandon shared.
- Grew analyst Share of Voice by 106% — Wow!
- Gotten execs gung-ho about AR — “It’s hard for me to keep up with how many requests I have for executive engagement with analysts,” Brandon noted. “It’s fantastic!”
It all started with an evaluation moratorium…
You heard that right! As Brandon looked to start up and scale the partnership program, he pumped the brakes on vendor evaluations, like Magic Quadrants, Waves and so on (as each RFI takes teams roughly 159 hours to complete, according to KCG).
“We took those hours and put them into partnerships instead,” Brandon explained. It wasn’t a hard sell: At the time, LogicMonitor sought to iron out messaging and positioning, and align on the best way to frame those for the analyst community. Then, they’d be in a better position to both partner with analysts and improve research penetration and positioning.
Prior to implementing the partner program, LogicMonitor also had limited executive engagement and a more reactive, “brief-and-bounce” approach to analyst engagement (that is, briefing an analyst once but not sustaining a dialog afterward), according to Brandon.
By program-atizing partnerships, LogicMonitor was able to maximize AR’s value, involve more executives in the program, and make a big impact!
3 simple steps
Brandon explained that “program-atizing” partnerships is a three-stage process. “What I love about this model,” he shared, “is it’s easy to understand, and it gives you, quantitatively, a measurable way to report on your program,” with the ability to track at every step.
- Establish — “The goal of this first phase,” Brandon said, “is to identify where someone can add value to your organization, and also where you can add value to their specific goals.” Activities in this phase include identifying target analyst partners, and conducting initial briefings and inquiries. This phase also encompasses gauging the analyst’s baseline perceptions — where the analyst can “clearly articulate the organization you represent, its values, differentiators and customer impact, and also clearly articulate what they think about that… so you get a very firm understanding whether or not they agree with you.”
- Influence — This next phase could also be referred to as the “engage” one, according to Brandon. Here, AR teams engage with analysts to fill perception gaps and work to positively influence initial perceptions: developing relationships between analysts and executives, providing access to customers, and so on.
- Partner — The partnering phase may encompass things like partnering on research and category creation, as well as “activation and advocacy activities” (such as when analysts influence pipeline, participate in strategic initiative advisory sessions, and recognize your business as an industry leader). “To me, this is the dream metric,” Brandon repeated, “measuring how many folks we have in this final partner stage. This is where you can show measurable impact back to the organization.”
Helping hands
As LogicMonitor’s sole internal AR practitioner, Brandon found that as he ramped up the program, he could use a little help. So, he tapped external partners for expert assistance.
“We could not have had the results we had without these two individuals: Melisa Bleasdale [of Method Communications], who is my partner from an agency perspective. We also have an incredible partner in Kara Lira [with ARInsights ServicePlus], who has helped us scale our program, track metrics, and deliver key insights from the ARchitect platform. So, thank you to both of them: They’re the secret weapon to why we’re doing so well program-atizing partnerships.”
The power of face-to-face
For LogicMonitor’s team, fostering valuable analyst relationships and partnerships involves building connections in authentic and memorable ways. This has included seizing opportunities for in-person meetings whenever possible.
“I really focus in on face-to-face opportunities, using external and internal events to create relationships between our leadership and the analyst community,” Brandon said. “I think you can get more out of a 30-minute face-to-face conversation than a series of five or six [online] engagements.”
In particular, LogicMonitor’s annual analyst day has brought great value to the organization and dovetailed well with the partnership program.
“The event has scaled up significantly, and the impact it’s having on the organization is huge,” Brandon noted. “This is the event where we vet our company strategy. It’s when we’re coming right out of annual planning, and the first people to hear our hypotheses are the analyst community. It’s really incredible to see the impact that this analyst day has had — not only on our ability to scale the program and the number of awareness-driven reports and dedicated research mentions, but also on the organization [strategy]. It’s an example of that kind of two-way value.”
Technology is your friend
Brandon and his external partners tap AR technology to drive better results and measure impact With ARchitect, ARInsights’ AR productivity software, the AR team can identify analyst targets, track relationships, and scale outreach. Brandon described some of his favorite capabilities:
“One of the things I love so much about ARchitect is the email feature,” he said — specifically, its ability to build, send and track branded communications to analyst groups. “We typically record our briefings and demos, and we’ll send those out via newsletter and engage a lot of folks. That’s one of the ways we’ve been able to increase our reach, engagements and touches: from 62 per year back in 2022 to over 360 now.”
Brandon also emphasized his excitement for ARInsights’ new Analyst Impact Monitor, which combines Share of Voice tracking with sentiment analysis, so companies can see where they stand with analysts and why. This tool will aid in LogicMonitor’s reporting activities, as it measures results from each stage of the partnership program.
Putting a premium on partnerships
Even with its incredible results, LogicMonitor’s partnership program isn’t a one-and-done activity; Brandon’s team keeps the cycle going!
A former account executive at Gartner, Brandon notes he’s been passionate about partnerships in every stage of his career. “I want to develop as many meaningful partnerships as I can with the folks driving the space we operate in,” he said.
At LogicMonitor, the approach is always front and center.
“We’ve program-atized it into the way we report, the way we educate, and the way we train our spokespeople,” Brandon shared. “Everything that we do really permeates the program.”
If you have questions for Brandon, or would like to connect, you can reach him on LinkedIn. And stay tuned as we continue to summarize winning insights from other ARchitect User Forum presentations!
