After two decades of building analyst engagement programs at Intershop, Elastic Path, and Spryker, watching companies in the market do it well and do it badly, I've come to a clear conclusion: analyst relations is one of the most strategic GTM investments a B2B software company can make. And most companies treat it like an afterthought.
The pattern is familiar. A last-minute scramble to submit for an analyst evaluation. An inquiry that gets deprioritized until the deadline is imminent. A briefing that goes off-script because nobody prepared the evidence pack. Then surprise when the placement doesn't reflect the product's actual capabilities.
Why Analysts Still Matter
Some people will say AI and practitioner communities are making analysts irrelevant. Buyers have more information than ever, and that is true. But when a company is making a six- or seven-figure platform decision, they want someone who has seen it a hundred times, who knows where the bodies are buried, and who can help them avoid expensive mistakes. That's what analysts bring: pattern recognition and risk mitigation that AI summaries can't yet replicate.
Here's the part that's easy to miss: analysts spend most of their time talking to practitioners. The CIOs and CTOs who are actually buying this software. When those buyers ask "who should we look at for composable commerce?" or "which platforms actually handle complex B2B workflows?" Analysts shape that shortlist. If you're not showing up in those conversations consistently, you're simply not in consideration. It doesn't matter how good your product is.
Analyst reports influence 30–50% of enterprise buyer decisions. Your placement in those reports determines whether you get invited to evaluations. And being absent from the shortlist is a problem that no amount of sales effort can fully compensate for.
What Good Analyst Relations Actually Looks Like
The companies that nail analyst relations do two things differently from everyone else.
They treat it as a relationship, not a transaction. Regular cadence. Real updates on product direction and customer wins. They show analysts how they respond to market shifts and solve real customer problems, not just at evaluation time, but throughout the year. Analysts remember the companies that keep them informed between evaluations far better than the ones that appear only when a submission is due.
They use analyst feedback to sharpen their positioning. Analysts bring market intelligence you can't get anywhere else: what practitioners are asking for, where competitors are vulnerable, which use cases are heating up. The companies that treat analyst inquiries as a two-way intelligence exchange rather than a one-way briefing get dramatically more value from every interaction.
The Flywheel
When analyst relations works, it creates a compounding flywheel: better positioning leads to better analyst conversations, which leads to stronger placement, which leads to more enterprise shortlist inclusion, which leads to more qualified pipeline. Each cycle reinforces the next.
When it is ad hoc and reactive, you are invisible when enterprise buying decisions get made. Not because your product isn't good enough. Because the narrative reaching analysts doesn't reflect what you've built.
If your analyst strategy is "we'll get to it when we have time," you're leaving pipeline on the table. The companies advancing to Leader positions in Gartner MQ and Forrester Wave evaluations aren't doing it through better products alone. They're doing it through systematic, evidence-backed engagement that runs year-round, not just at submission time.