Gartner Stroking

Paul A.
Member

Posted 28-Apr-2003 06:02 AM
I am sick and cynical of the hypocrisy of Gartner worship and I hope that this message hits home for some of you.

I am an analyst and writer and I get invited to a lot of trade shows. What kicked off my ideas today was that this past week I was an inundated with companies that wanted to schedule me to come by their booths at an upcoming call center show for product demos. "No thanks," is my standard and speedy reply. "But we would like to talk about using your services while you are there," is the retort from the pesky PR flack. I digress already.

There are two phenomena happening in this depressed market. The first is that it seems that every laid-off and let-go person who has spent any time looking for a new job when there are none, inevitably arrives at the idea that they could be a consultant, writer or analyst. Sure, professionalize the fact that you now get up everyday looking for new job—that's what working for yourself really is all about if you think about it. Unfortunately, now we have a market that is glutted with half-assed consultants who think that they can write analytically. I suspect that this why these PR flacks may be scheduling so many "demos".

The second phenomena is the influence of lay-offs and let-go's in the analyst communities. I don't even know who these people are that cover our industry anymore. I have to give Gartner, Frost, META and others credit—they USED to know what they were talking about. Now these firms are filled with charlatans and fakers (there are exceptions) who only have knowledge of this industry by virtue of the fact that they were given the previous analyst's laptop and files, before they were unceremonious dismissed. There is, therefore, no continuity of knowledge or relationships.

The fact is that on the technology side of the call center industry there is only handful of people that actually know what they are talking about. I know them all and none of them work for Gartner (et.al.) anymore. This turnover is absolutely debilitating to these company's depth of market knowledge, but your company keeps paying them anyway. I describe this as going along to get along.

So here is what inevitably happen. You, your marketing director or somebody in your company discovers that the information Gartner provides is indeed superficial, irrelevant, dated and available to everybody. You believe that you have paid enough money to Gartner for the "magic" of being placed in some quadrant—a confidence bolster by the fact that you have won some product of the year award, but you want to double check anyway. So you turn to a few of the "independent" analysts in the market for numbers to fill in the job performance blanks that prove you are doing your job. But since you have just blown your entire wad on Gartner, you don't have much budget to negotiate with the some real numbers from analysts with real relationships and depth in the business.

Your next call to an "independent" analyst is predictable. From this analyst's perspective, you then shift to the, "let's talk business", con-game. When a company wants market information from me and has no money, it is always, "let's talk about doing some business together; let's write a report, a presentation or white paper—but tell me what you would say." All the while there is furious keyboard clacking and clicking going on in the background. Personally, I speed up my conversations when I detect people taking notes—and as most of you know, I already talk fast. The end effect is that once they've got what information they wanted, or not, they forget who you are and you certainly never hear from them again until after the next information budget shortfall—or tradeshow.

I reserve especially a distaste of PR flacks who try to book appointments at tradeshows. I am speaking at the upcoming CMP Call Center Demo in Orlando, May 8th. (My presentation, Five Vital Call Center Investments, can be found on my web site's from page.) Don't bother calling me and don't bother emailing me to schedule a demo of your product. I will call you—it is my job.

Particularly egregious is when your persistent PR flack, or marketing director, tells me that, "our VP of Marketing also wants to talk about your services". I have heard that line a thousand times and if they sincerely want to talk business I'd be happy to do that, but if they are **ing me just to get an appointment, I'll never ever write a good word about you. Now, please, don't jump to the conclusion that this is vindictiveness, it is just that this is behavior indicative of executive leadership that finds this behavior acceptable. From my perspective, this whole set of behaviors, from Gartner stroking to tradeshows, does not reflect a type of moral character that market endurance requires. Going along to get along is bad management in the long run. Going along to survive is what most of you are doing.

Then again, the long-run isn't anywhere near what most of you are managing for is it? This call center and customer market is driven by people who live in web-years and wake up everyday wondering about their jobs (free advice; consulting, analyzing and writing is pretty crowded right now). I understand market fear. It is what is responsible for every broken marketing promise you let your employees make based on suppositions supported by firms such as Gartner. What a house of cards.

Now, I am sure that some of you will think that this is narcissistic, but if you don't know who I am by now, or who the handful of others are that are intellectually credible enough to understand your company's products, then you are just stroking some list and chumming the water. The fact is that it IS my job to know who the players are with credible products and productive applications. And that isn't many. Don't bother calling me about who those companies are either unless you plan to pay me, because that is exactly what I get paid to know. Call Gartner, didn't you pay them well to know this too?

The only "magic" of Gartner is they have alchemically created cache out of nothing and managed to get companies to pay tribute for it. Just ask me and I will tell you the names of five analysts that will charge you one-fifth the price and give you twice the value for far better information than Gartner.

"It's hard to draw the line between giving information as a prospecting tool, being an asshole and not answering calls from non-clients a la Gartner, and giving away too much information. I've probably done all three at the wrong times." A independent intellectually informed colleague of mine wrote me this week.

The greater enduring lesson of the dot boom will be about the superficiality of marketing, to the degree even of what I call immoral marketing. It's ok to lie, everybody does it. This is actually a deeply cultural issue here. If it is ok for CNN to lie, certainly it is ok for the PR flack to embellish. There is no moral leadership in marketing and it is not just the call center industry, it is society in general. We are a culture that prefers the polite lie rather than the impolite truth.

I couldn't make this column interesting if I wasn't a little bombastic, but let's agree that there is a fair amount of intellectual dishonesty when cluster-functioning Gartner lemmings pay Gartner good money to be educated about their own products. This is the same smell I commented on earlier this week with Siebel paying Aberdeen to tell the market how happy Siebel customers are.

Why would I seemingly be tilting at windmills here? Because I am a futurist. And in one, maybe several years from now, trust will become a de facto market demand again. Imagine all of the money spent on PR flacks, tradeshows and Gartner being spent on improving products and really satisfying customers. The bottom will turn over when sustaining the polite lie becomes to expensive to maintain.

Paul Anderson
Consulting Futurist
Customer Relationships
www.paulandersonwrites.com

Geoff Ables
Member

Posted 01-May-2003 04:58 PM
Regarding Paul Anderson's paragraph (shortened version):

> The greater enduring lesson of the dot
> boom will be about ... what I call immoral
> marketing. It's ok to lie, everybody does
> it. This is actually a deeply cultural issue
> here ... We are a culture that prefers the
> polite lie rather than the impolite truth.

It is absolutely true that we need to take an evolutionary step forward in terms of truth, honesty and integrity in American business culture.

It is easy to point the finger at marketing, sales or service because they are the ones who make promises to customers. But they are often simply the footsoldiers of the real decision makers and market forces. Exaggerations, lies and incentives that encourage unethical behavior start in the boardroom, CXO offices, government policies (or lack thereof) and out-of-control marketplace drivers. We can hope that the dot boom and the corporate collapses that followed on it's heels will indeed teach us this lesson—but the application of this lesson will require real leadership.

The reason many businesses lack integrity is that they believe they will be more successful if they are less than honest. But would more honesty be good business? Let's answer that question with another:

Who has the most powerful economy in the world? America. Why?

One of the most important reasons is that our HONESTY is a great cultural strength and tradition!

When you are in business in America, you are not (generally) expected to give kickbacks and bribes to your customers. You don't have to be the brother of a government regulator to get a contract. You can expect to follow a fairly consistent set of rules that your competitors are also required to follow. You can hold individuals accountable who have either welched on their contracts—or who have written unethical contracts.

Are we perfect? Far from it—and we desperately need to grow in this area. Are there other countries who are on a par with us in this area? Probably.

So saying that the American business culture would benefit from more honest sales, marketing and service practices is absolutely true. The fact that American business culture already has more integrity than most others is the clearest evidence of this.

But the lack of honesty and integrity is not "a deeply cultural issue here." In fact, it is a cultural strength that we should continue to strengthen.

Carol Smalley
Managing Editor, CRMGuru
Member

Posted 02-May-2003 08:58 AM
Paul was kind enough to combine two of his columns into one for our readers—both addressing the Gartner/PR/magic issue.

You can read his words of wisdom at:
The Gartner Phallic-ies and Other Magical PR Thoughts

Reactions to his thoughts will be highlighted in a future edition of CRM.Talk.

Share your thoughts today!

Carol Parenzan Smalley
Managing Editor
www.CRMGuru.com
carol@CRMGuru.com

Carol Smalley
Managing Editor, CRMGuru
Member

Posted 14-May-2003 05:03 AM
Posted by Carol Smalley (Editor) on behalf of Blueprint [blueprintcape@iafrica.com]

Hi Paul,

Wow ! Interesting point of view. I really can't comment about Gartner, except that they have joined the ranks of the larger consulting firms, so can charge serious rates.

I just hope you are wrong that Western culture prefers a polite lie to the hard truth. This leads to major problems later down the line (as you can imagine), and I was always under the impression that (especially) Americans were tough and straight-talking. Has this changed ?

As an engineer and later a consultant, I was always taught to dig out and deliver the real facts and interpret these as I see them. I admit this has lost me some clients (some people hate to face the truth), but integrity and lack of company-political bias are some of the things the client is actually paying for, so I'll keep on.

However, I think we all understand that stiff competition and need for sales can drive any company to over-promise. This is probably human nature—duck the real problem now and face the (potentially bigger) problem later on. Also, in some cultures (African for example) it is a far worse sin to hurt a person with the truth than lie politely. In fact, I experienced this in Mozambique last year, when trying to train sales teams. It proved absolutely impossible to get sales people to disagree with a client—they will ALWAYS agree to a deadline, even when they know it is impossible. What was interesting was that, when we surveyed the client base, the Western and South African-based clients were infuriated with this behaviour, whereas the local clients were very happy. What's the answer ??

Regards

Dave Liddell

Blueprint Research Associates (Cape) (Pty) Ltd

Carol Parenzan Smalley
Managing Editor
www.CRMGuru.com
carol@CRMGuru.com

Neil Benson
Member

Posted 14-May-2003 05:42 AM
Paul,

An interesting and thought provoking article, but I can't help wondering what you think makes Gartner so different from any other intermediary.

My fiancee works for a Big Pharma. They spend all day marketing to and educating doctors to recommend their drugs.

I'm working for a Big Fund Manager. We're trying to get more independent financial advisors to recommend our funds.

What's so different about Big Tech selling to intermediaries as a means of selling to Big Business.

The tactics of selling to intermediaries--whether we call it education, sponsored research, channel marketing--are all aimed at gaining mindshare of the intermediary as a means of gaining marketshare with the customer.

Neil

Danny Khow
Member

Posted 15-May-2003 07:55 PM
I am interested to find out "the names of five analysts that will charge you one-fifth the price and give you twice the value for far better information than Gartner."
Care to share?
Smile

Carol Smalley
Managing Editor, CRMGuru
Member

Posted 20-May-2003 07:49 AM
Posted by Carol Smalley (Editor) on behalf of Blueprint [blueprintcape@iafrica.com]

Hi Paul,

Wow! Interesting point of view. I really can't comment about Gartner, except that they have joined the ranks of the larger consulting firms, so can charge serious rates.

I just hope you are wrong that Western culture prefers a polite lie to the hard truth. This leads to major problems later down the line (as you can imagine), and I was always under the impression that (especially) Americans were tough and straight-talking. Has this changed ?

As an engineer and later a consultant, I was always taught to dig out and deliver the real facts and interpret these as I see them. I admit this has lost me some clients (some people hate to face the truth), but integrity and lack of company-political bias are some of the things the client is actually paying for, so I'll keep on.

However, I think we all understand that stiff competition and need for sales can drive any company to over-promise. This is probably human nature—duck the real problem now and face the (potentially bigger) problem later on. Also, in some cultures (African for example) it is a far worse sin to hurt a person with the truth than lie politely. In fact, I experienced this in Mozambique last year, when trying to train sales teams. It proved absolutely impossible to get sales people to disagree with a client—they will ALWAYS agree to a deadline, even when they know it is impossible. What was interesting was that, when we surveyed the client base, the Western and South African-based clients were infuriated with this behaviour, whereas the local clients were very happy. What's the answer??

Regards,
Dave Liddell
Blueprint Research Associates (Cape) (Pty) Ltd

Carol Parenzan Smalley
Managing Editor
www.CRMGuru.com
carol@CRMGuru.com

Paul A.
Member

Posted 21-May-2003 09:14 AM

quote:Originally posted by Danny Khow:
I am interested to find out "the names of five analysts that will charge you one-fifth the price and give you twice the value for far better information than Gartner."
Care to share?
Smile

Off the cuff independant analyst recommendations:

Paul Stockford
Saddletree Research
www.saddlketreeresearch.com
480.922-5949

Blair Pleasant
Commfusion
www.commfusion.com
707-538-4368

Shelia McGee Smith
McGee Smith Analytics
908-713-9956
www.mcgeesmith.com

Art Rosenberg
Unified View
www.unified-view.com
310.395.2360

David Zimmer
American Eagle Group
215.491.9966

Allan Sulkin
TEQConsult Group
973-449-4951
www.teqconsult.com

Paul Anderson
Consulting Futurist
Customer Relationships
www.paulandersonwrites.com