When product starts asking for the analyst call

If you are a product marketer or analyst relations owner who has just been handed an AR program, this is the advice I wish I had had much earlier: before getting too focused on running the program well, understand what the organization actually wants the investment to do, and what you can do to make analyst access useful beyond the program itself.

I was introduced to analyst relations almost a decade ago, relatively early in my career, before I fully understood how the mechanisms of B2B marketing worked together.

I learned the visible parts first: preparing for analyst conversations, coordinating internal inputs, following research, understanding evaluation processes, and making sure analysts had an accurate picture of the company and its products.

I also learned quickly that certain reports could generate an extraordinary amount of internal buzz, and one version of the same request kept coming up: we need to be in the report.

At the time, I mostly understood that as the objective itself. It was only later, as I moved deeper into product marketing, worked with AR in different forms across several organizations, and compared experiences with peers facing similar questions, that I began to understand the broader commercial logic around it. 

One of the patterns I have come to trust is how easy it is, when you first inherit AR, to concentrate on the program immediately in front of you: the briefings, the research, the evaluations, and the internal coordination. All of those things are an important part of the work.

But if I were advising a PMM or AR owner taking this on for the first time, I would encourage them to ask a broader question early: if we are putting this much effort into helping analysts understand our market, customers, differentiation, and strategy, are we being equally deliberate about what the organization could learn in return?

The WHY is more consequential than it looks

If I were setting up an AR program today, I would start by trying to get as precise an answer as possible to two questions: why are we making this investment, and how will we know whether it is working? I would not expect perfect answers, and the first version is often revised, but the answers matter because they shape what the person running the program spends their time doing.

If the objective is primarily visibility in influential research, PMM may own the target while relying on product, R&D, sales, and leadership to contribute to it. Those teams can be completely supportive, but somebody still has to create much of the internal activity around the program.

That is what I mean by push: product participates because PMM identifies a useful reason to involve them, sales provides evidence because somebody asks for it, and research gets circulated because the AR owner thinks another team should see it. The program can be successful while still depending heavily on one person creating demand for it.

Earlier in my career, I probably would have treated that mainly as an evangelism problem. I would have tried to communicate the value better and distribute more relevant research.

I still think those things matter, but what I would tell a younger PMM now is to make that push more purposeful: rather than trying to create engagement with AR because the program exists, look for questions the business is already trying to answer and consider whether analyst access can genuinely help.

A few things I would want settled early

If I were responsible for the program, I would try to establish a few things as early as possible:

• Why are we investing? Is the primary objective visibility, enterprise consideration, market intelligence, decision support, or some combination? 
• What would tell us it is working? Report inclusion and analyst engagement may matter, but what evidence connects them to the reason the company invested? 
• Who might need to participate? If the desired outcome could benefit from product, sales, R&D, or leadership involvement, where would their participation be most useful? 
• Where could analyst intelligence enter existing work? Think about selected product decisions, positioning, market reviews, or commercial conversations. 
• What is the program designed to do? Managing the analyst relationship, creating useful opportunities for engagement, and making insights accessible are different activities from the business outcomes they are meant to support. Programs work better when both are named. 

That last question matters because the outcomes an organization hopes the investment will support usually depend on several functions, while the program itself is run by one. What the program can do is reflect the intended outcome, create useful connections, and make the value easier for other teams to see.

Yesterday: the report mention. Today: the AI citation.

More recently, I have noticed a familiar conversation emerging in marketing circles around AI-mediated discovery and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

The language is different, but the instinct feels similar: we need to appear in the answer; we need the citation. It reminds me of the urgency around “we need to be in the report.” There may be a perfectly valid commercial reason to care about both, but what I find interesting is how quickly visibility itself can become the objective.

I would be careful about drawing a direct line between analyst coverage and visibility in any particular AI system. The parallel I am interested in is organizational rather than technical. In both cases, a visibility objective can create a lot of activity before the underlying question has been fully explored: what are we actually trying to change?

Before chasing the report mention or the citation, I would understand what outcome it is intended to support, and then ask what we can do with the access, intelligence or visibility around it that makes the investment more useful.

The scope question sits next to the objective question

The objective and the scope of the program are usually decided together, even when only the objective is written down.

If the ambition extends beyond analyst engagement itself towards stronger market intelligence, pressure-testing important assumptions, enterprise consideration or support for significant product and GTM decisions, the program needs to be scoped for that from the start rather than acquiring a larger target later.

In practical terms, that means shared agreement on why the investment matters and a clear route for analyst intelligence to reach the work where it could be useful. The AR owner does not need to own that work. What makes the difference is whether the connection is part of how the program was designed or something improvised afterwards.

There is a practical difference between saying to product, “We have an analyst conversation coming up, and I need your help,” and saying, “You’re evaluating this direction. Would an analyst's perspective help us pressure-test it?” The analyst conversation might be almost identical, but the second starts with product’s question rather than AR’s calendar.

That is something the person running the program can influence: learn where important questions are being asked, understand what other teams are trying to figure out, recognize where an external perspective might genuinely add something, and create the connection.

The real shift is who starts asking

Imagine product is considering a significant change in direction. PMM notices that an analyst covers the area, suggests getting their perspective, arranges the conversation, and helps the team prepare.

That is already a good use of analyst access because the relationship is being used to learn rather than only to communicate. PMM has spotted an opportunity to make the access useful, but PMM still created the demand.

The more interesting moment comes later, when product is working through another decision alongside customer evidence, product data, competitive intelligence, and feedback from sales, and someone independently asks whether an analyst perspective could help pressure-test the direction. That is the shift from push towards pull.

It is not about having more analyst meetings, and I would not turn pull into another KPI for the AR owner. I would treat it as a behavioral signal. If people outside the function responsible for AR begin developing their own understanding of when analyst access might help, the program is becoming useful in ways that no longer depend entirely on PMM creating the demand.

Bring analysts in while the question is still open

Another pattern I have noticed is how easy it is to have an excellent analyst conversation after the organization has effectively committed to a decision. The feedback can be thoughtful and relevant, but if resources have already been allocated and assumptions have hardened, there may be very little room for it to change anything.

I would not try to insert analysts into everyday product development or treat their opinion as a validation gate. Instead, I would look for selected moments where an external category perspective might genuinely add something and ask:

• Is there an important market assumption here that we are not confident about?
• Are customer, sales, product, and competitive signals giving us conflicting answers? 
• Could an external category perspective expose an assumption we have missed? 
• Is the decision still genuinely changeable?

That last question matters most to me. The goal is not to increase the number of analyst inquiries, but to get better at recognizing the moments when analyst access might be useful while the answer can still influence the thinking.

Make the value visible early

There is a circularity in moving from push to pull: it is easier for other teams to value analyst access after they have seen it contribute something useful, while creating that value often requires their participation in the first place.

This is where I think the person running the program can help by capturing a small number of signals early rather than waiting until somebody asks for an AR ROI number.

I am cautious about attribution because enterprise buying journeys rarely give us the clean causal relationships dashboards encourage us to look for. If analyst research appears in an opportunity, that does not mean analyst relations generated it, but that does not make the signal irrelevant.

A few things I would watch:

• Analyst influence in CRM. Where the infrastructure allows it, did the buyer mention an analyst firm or particular research? Did it contribute to discovery or shortlisting, or appear later during evaluation? 
• Analyst-backed sales assets used in actual deals. Market insights from the research meetings and discussions sitting in a deck is one signal. Seeing that deck used repeatedly in enterprise opportunities is a much more interesting one. 
• Analyst intelligence entering internal work. Is research informing product strategy, positioning, competitive analysis, or leadership discussions rather than being added afterwards simply to support a conclusion? 
• Who is requesting analyst input? Are inquiries and research requests still almost entirely initiated by PMM, or are other teams beginning to ask for them themselves? 

A handful of signals captured consistently can already tell you a great deal about where the investment is actually being used. If sales is using analyst-backed materials in real opportunities, make that visible. If an external perspective helped product challenge an assumption, capture the example. If research travelled from an analyst interaction into positioning or another piece of internal work, show the connection.

Over time, those examples make the value less abstract and help other teams recognise where analyst access might be useful to them.

The maturity signal I now watch for

There are established AR maturity models, and the idea that analyst relations can develop from transactional activity towards more strategic, bidirectional engagement is not new. What I have become interested in is one much simpler behavioral test:

If the person responsible for AR stopped actively reminding the organization that analyst access existed, would anybody eventually miss it?

I like the question because it does not assume there is one correct AR model. A company may have a narrow and deliberate reason for investing in AR, where success primarily means accurate representation and visibility in research that matters to its buyers.

That may be exactly the right program if it reflects what the organization actually wants. But if the ambition is broader, I would watch for some demand beginning to originate elsewhere over time.

The signals can be quite small: product asks whether relevant analyst research exists without PMM prompting them; another team requests an inquiry because it has a question it wants to pressure-test; or someone asks for analyst input before a major assumption has been finalized rather than asking for validation afterwards.

The AR owner cannot force those behaviors, but they can create the conditions for them: understand what other teams are working on, connect analyst access to real questions, bring the right insight in while those questions are still open, and make examples of value visible afterwards.

If people eventually start asking without being prompted, that tells me something a count of analyst meetings cannot: they have begun to understand for themselves where the access is useful.

Someone will almost always need to push at the beginning, and I no longer think eliminating that push is the objective. The question worth settling early is a different one:

Have you been handed an analyst relations program to run, or have you also shaped how analyst access reaches the work that justified the investment in the first place?

Nobody asked me that question when I first took on AR, and I did not think to ask it myself. It would have changed how I spent the first years of my career.