Cue the confetti cannons: When Cornerstone OnDemand sales reps need to push a deal across the finish line, they often turn to analyst relations (AR) for the win!
Enter Jennifer Borun, senior director of AR and strategic engagement at Cornerstone, the leader in workforce agility solutions. She launched and leads the business’s “Analysts for Sales” program, also known as “AR for ARR.” And at ARInsights’ annual AR productivity event last year, Jennifer shared program how-to’s and jaw-dropping results: including netting 1,200 leads from an analyst webinar and influencing the company’s biggest deal of the year.
From credit to collaboration (ditch the tug-of-war!)
Before the program took shape, when it came to deals, “I was getting very frustrated,” Jennifer shared. “I wasn’t getting any credit [from sales] for what we, in AR, were doing.”
Picture a lightbulb going off: “I realized that credit is a give-and-take. You have to give something to get something,” she continued. “And so I took credit out of the equation and said, ‘You know what? I don’t need credit. I just want to help you. If you succeed, we succeed. So, let’s figure out how to work together to close those deals.’”
Ironically, even without a data trail in Salesforce, the AR for ARR program has catapulted AR into the spotlight. Now, Jennifer noted, “our CEO talks about analyst relations all the time,” and colleagues across departments clamor to be involved.
4 program elements
Jennifer integrates analysts into the sales process in four key ways, tapping them for:
1. Private analyst webinars, presented to 10-15 handpicked customers and prospects, typically at the VP or C-level, and identified in partnership with customer success and sales. During the first 30 minutes, the analyst speaks on a predetermined topic, and the last 30 minutes are devoted to Q&A with the customer/prospect attendees.
“Now you’re thinking: ‘Why would I waste one of my [contracted] webinars on 10 people?” Jennifer said. “Well you’re not wasting it — because we take that first 30 minutes, cut out the customers, and run it as either a live or on-demand webinar. Then, the last 30 minutes [of Q&A] gets sent to sales, and they get valuable insights directly from the customers: What are their problems? What are they asking? We can use that in our sales cycle, and it has been wildly successful and helpful.”
It sure has — as Jennifer mentioned, one of those webinars last year went on to generate 1,200 leads!
2. Deep competitive background where she picks analysts’ brains. “When you’re going for a single, really big deal, and you need some background, guess who has the information? The analysts!” Jennifer explained. While analysts typically can’t divulge information on specific vendor prospects, they can provide helpful intel, couched in the form of “companies like the one you’re pitching.” According to Jennifer, analysts might say things like, “‘If I had talked to someone like that… here are the things that are bothering them; here are their biggest challenges.’ Then, the analyst will help me formulate how to sell our products to them. It’s such a game-changer.”
3. Competitive positioning, with high-impact and actionable tips. “Analysts understand our competitors,” Jennifer noted. “They are a vat of knowledge, so we go to them with a deal and say, ‘Here’s who we’re up against. Can you help us? What do you think?’ And they actually will help us position for that deal against competitors. They will say, ‘Here are the challenges that you’re seeing, and here’s where those competitors can’t keep up with you. Here are the strengths you need to tap into.’ It’s super-helpful.”
4. Sales references for prospects. “First of all, let’s dispel the myth that it’s too expensive,” Jennifer said. In other words: You don’t need to tap your Tier 1s for this.
“You can have some of your boutique analysts be that third-party voice,” Jennifer continued, “because the most important thing is, you’re getting a third party. People don’t want to hear [why you’re great] from you; they want to hear it from someone else who is an expert in the industry… and some boutique analysts are willing to work with you on this.”
For connecting prospects with larger firms, Jennifer suggested getting creative: “Think about conferences,” she advised. “Analysts are there to meet with people. You can set up meetings with customers and prospects at conferences, and analysts will do it — they’ll talk about you, and they’ll be very helpful.”
That approach paid off in a big way. At a conference, AR connected a Cornerstone prospect with an analyst for drinks. The result: This influenced Cornerstone’s biggest deal of the year! “I had the CEO call me personally and say, ‘Thank you,’ which was really nice!” Jennifer shared.
Getting started with AR for ARR
If you’re looking to launch a similar program, Jennifer suggested steps to ramp up and scale:
- Find a friend — Start with one salesperson who can become an evangelist. “Position it as, ‘I’m here to help you. I’m doing an experiment, and I’d love to have your feedback and partner with you,” Jennifer advised. At this stage, you’re probably not running an analyst webinar, or facilitating analyst/prospect intros — maybe you’re just providing analyst research to support a deal. Whatever the case, “find that person, give them information, help them close the deal however you can,” Jennifer continued. “Then use that person’s voice as your reference; have them sell the program for you.”
- Then, pilot your program — Identify the right analysts, define initial activities, and establish areas of partnership.
- Start small, win big — Nothing wrong with setting the bar low! Target an initial number of accounts you can deliver on; quick wins will help get the program off the ground. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal that you work on either,” Jennifer explained. “It could be a really small deal that’s strategic for your company — maybe you’re pivoting into a new vertical or something like that.”
- Set guardrails — With a small-but-mighty team of 1.5 people, Jennifer had to be clear about capacity. “I limited the number of deals I could do,” she said, and she worked with sales leadership to qualify deals — determining where AR can and should help. “By the time salespeople come to me with a deal, it has to have already been approved by a VP or above, and I have first right of refusal,” she said. “I don’t take deals that are Hail Marys. As we’re scaling up the program, we have to make sure every deal [we commit to] is something we can do.” She also advises creating an SLA — factoring in deal stage and urgency — so salespeople know AR’s timeframe for providing support.
- Tap technology — Technology can help AR get more productive and strategic. “We are all in with ARInsights,” Jennifer said. “We have everything. That’s how I, as a team of one-and-a-half, can manage anything.” In particular, with over 400 analysts and partners in Cornerstone’s Analyst Portal, Jennifer is able to serve many of them in bulk: delivering fresh content updates for on-demand consumption and monitoring engagement. She also leans on ARchitect AR productivity software to “catalog analysts, understand who’s helpful, and who’s going to be a good reference. You can also prevent analyst fatigue, because you can keep track of when you used an analyst last for your program,” Jennifer noted. “And then there’s analytics — you can show all of your great work to your ELT [executive leadership team].”
AR for the win
Cornerstone’s AR for ARR program has been a winning one. “We had a new CRO come in,” Jennifer said. “And on Day 3, I showed him the program, and his mind was blown. He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I want every single sales person to do this.’”
Looking to drive similar successes? Got questions? You can reach Jennifer on LinkedIn.
And stay tuned: More takeaways from our annual AR conference (formerly ARchitect User Forum — now AR Engage Live!) are coming soon!
