Vendors who bully analysts often fail to build a relationship and earn influence
From time to time, many of us have had to figure out how best to "defend" against aggressive tactics by certain vendor analyst/"influencer" relations teams who may not react well to an analyst's point of view. Mainly, these programs or individuals fail to understand influence and relationship building. Instead, they often choose to express anger over any disagreement with their point of view and choose to react with mob-style "arm-twisting"tactics. Many times they lack the ability to even identify any factual errors. Most of the times, its the few in management who've drunk too much Kool-Aid trying to force their point of view on the poor analyst/"influencer" relations professionals trying to build a relationship and influence.
A few common traits characterize these vendors who don't respect objectivity and seek to undermine analyst objectivity for their own gain:

• Tremendous marketing budget and resources. Not surprising, vendors with the financial where-with-all represent some of the most aggressive vendors. They incorrectly equate a large army of analyst/"influencer" relations managers and budget with righteousness to bully an analyst or firm into their opinion. Instead of earning credibility via relationship building and facts, these vendors continue to believe they can "buy" influence via consulting dollars and marketing spin. On the flip side, I duly respect a vendor who invests in building a relationship, sharing a point of view, pushing for factual accuracy, and demanding integrity. But when a vendor starts to threaten analysts on tone, opinion, and making the tough calls despite the facts to support their case, this is "crossing the line" into bullying. One typical approach of this "bad behavior" is to arbitrarily cut off access to vendor events, briefings, consulting, and threaten to cancel a contract.
• Management team out of touch with reality. Pressures to meet investor expectations often cloud a management's team acceptance of internal problems that customers, partners, and even employees realize. Many good analysts will make a call based on conversations with a large sample size of these data points. Instead of appreciating this third party reality check and address the root-cause issues, these management teams will often go into "spin" mode when these comments are expressed by the analyst and even by their own internal employees. One classic example is when a vendor tells us that customers asked to pay more for something they don't need or enjoy the painful implementation experience they just encountered. Even worse they make claims about a product's capability even after successive failures to deliver.
• Intensely competitive market. Major competition for client mind share and wallet often drive such behavior. In most public companies, the comp plans put enough "skin in the game" to drive executives to stretch the truth and preserve appearances in order to make the next quarterly bonus or year end goal despite the impact to vendor credibility. At the heart of it all is sales competition and combating FUD (i.e. fear, uncertainty, and doubt) despite an inability to recognize their own failings. This leaves the poor analyst/"influencer" relations professional in a bind as they try to do the right despite bad calls by their management.
  

So this begs the question, what is the difference between persistence and outright arm twisting? The short answer - persistence takes a patient and perseverance approach in trying to make a fact based case for a point or view. Outright arm twistin seeks to "punish" an individual or firm for taking a different point of view based on facts and broad data points.
The bottom line - take proactive action
So the question among analysts, "How do I build the right balance of power to defend against the few vendor analyst/"influencer" relations program who aim to destroy objectivity and your tough calls?  The answer,"Defend yourself with five tactics that tilt the balance of power towards objectivity:

1. Establish an end user client base. The key to objectivity is to build a business model around end users. Engage with end users on vendor selection, strategy, and advocacy. With the buy side influence in the market place, you provide a "consumer reports" level of quality, experience, and a platform to effectively engage vendors beyond the "paid" briefings. By becoming engaged in their deal flow, vendors behaving badly will realize the need to act on their best behavior. You influence the vendor by serving the end user clients or "buy side".
2. Manage a portfolio of vendor clients and topics. Engage with multiple vendors to spread the risk. If you are doing your job, it will be inevitable that you will probably hit a raw nerve with at least one or two vendors a cycle. Having a broad portfolio of vendor clients spreads the risk that any consulting or account may be in jeopardy due to a difference in opinion. A broad range of coverage areas also mitigates risk in coverage area economic cycles and keeps the vendor on their toes. You may be bullish in one area and negative in another and that will at least make them think twice about "retribution" and bullying. Keep in mind, if you mainly build a business model around vendors, it often becomes easier to drift away from client realities and become sucked into vendor "spin" about the client pain points.
3. Avoid lending warrantless credibility to vendor solutions. Keep in mind, staying objective does not mean you don't make a call with a vendor you see as the winner. It makes sense to "endorse" solutions who are leaders in evaluations. Those evaluations often go through numerous criteria and rigorous fact checking. Subsequently, it makes sense to speak at engagements, conduct webinars, and provide thought leadership for those vendors who do not cross the line. The real challenge is building a business so you can turn away bad business from a vendor that is offering you tons of cash for your credibility and endorsement of a product that is not up to par. One example of bad form is writing a white paper for a vendor's product you do not feel is tops in the market.
4. Make the tough calls. Build the credibility to make the tough calls. If you've done your primary research in interviewing clients, partners, and back channel employees, you have done the work to counter a lot of claims that you may be biased. Vendors need to understand that good analysts do not take vendor messaging points as their only data points. In fact, one would consider analysts to be biased if they failed to seek other sources and validate and cross check vendor "facts".
5. Expose vendor tactics to the end user community. Leverage user groups to empower these valuable client communities to keep a balance of power with the vendor. Show value to the "buy side" end user community by highlighting vendor tactics to influence objectivity. Provide cogent examples of how a vendor is unduly influencing the market to distort objectivity. One approach - improve transparency of client references by identifying the non-monetary and monetary incentives at risk to the client reference. Demonstrate how active participation in user groups can lead to end user leverage that will influence vendor policy.

Your POV
You've heard my view, but I'm more interested to hear what you expect as an industry analyst. Some feedback I'm looking forward from you:

• What would you think about a vendor if you heard about their hard line tactics against an analyst who was trying to stay independent?
• How would you expect an analyst to react to a vendor's "mob-style" arm twisting when they are unhappy with the analyst's point of view?
• Do you expect your analyst to cave in if the analyst is factually correct? Do you expect the analyst to "soften" language as part of the process?
• What actions would you say would cross the line on the vendor's side? What actions would you say would reflect poorly on the vendor?
• What actions would you think reflect poorly of the analyst?

Here's another view from Josh Chalifour at TEC who posted on April 22, 2008 (Thanks PJ) (added 20:54 -9:00)
Looking forward to your insights as always!  Comment here (these are all private) or send me an email to rwang0 at gmail dot com
Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.