GTM Innovators: Building GTM Trust Through Analyst Relations with Chris Manfredi

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In this episode of GTM Innovators, Kyle James sits down with Chris Manfredi, Global Director of Analyst Relations at Sprout Social, to explore the power of analyst relations as a trust-building force in go-to-market strategy. With over a decade of experience navigating firms like Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, Chris shares how AR serves as a strategic connective tissue across product, marketing, sales, and the C-suite. From managing 1,500+ analyst touchpoints a year to synthesizing insights for executive decisions, Chris offers a behind-the-scenes look at what makes AR truly impactful, especially in today’s AI-driven, insight-saturated landscape. Whether you’re new to AR or looking to take your program to the next level, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom, human-centric perspective, and bold ideas for the future.

Subscript to GMT Innovators Series on the following platforms:

Transcript:

Kyle James (00:01.602)
Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of GTM Innovators by 3Sixty Insights. I’m your host Kyle James and today we’re diving into the value of strategic analyst relations as part of a go-to-market strategy. A little bit meta, me being a research analyst, but wanted to have this conversation because it’s something that when I was having, we were talking with Chris recently about, he has a big passion for too. So Chris, welcome to the show today.

Chris Manfredi (00:30.879)
I’m super excited to be here. It’s an honor and yeah, can’t wait to talk not only Amlist Relations, but you know, Amlist and firms and analysis. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Kyle James (00:43.062)
Awesome, awesome. So. Chris joining us, a true veteran of analyst relations with over 13 years of experience helping companies navigate relationships with firms like Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and you are the global analyst relations director at Sprout Social and the North American co-lead of the Institute of Influencers Analyst Relations. Man, I’m stumbling over words today. But Chris, instead of me kind of reading out your…

Chris Manfredi (01:09.102)
No, no, absolutely. You’re totally right.

Kyle James (01:14.884)
Instead of me really reading out all your accomplishments, I usually love to start these conversations with why don’t you give us a little bit of your origin story about how you’ve kind of gotten here and kind of some of the past you’ve gone to building relationships with analysts and kind of what you do now at Sprout Social.

Chris Manfredi (01:37.461)
Absolutely. I love talking about this. So because I have like a different type of journey than maybe other folks do or maybe the similar. Because Zanis Relations is a kind of a strange job. It’s kind of weird, right? Because people kind of fall into it. It’s not something that you find in business school or you find, you know, anywhere. It’s sort of an interesting type of place. Not a lot of people, you know, do it and it’s very specific. you know, I always like to say I started out in the United States Air Force, which I loved. Went to grad school, got a couple grad degrees. I got a Master of Science in something called Future Studies, so that’s like high level research. I paired that with an MBA, but I had no sort of corporate experience, but I knew that I really enjoyed being a part of strategy, trying to understand where things are going, trends, sort of being at the tip of the spear when it comes to.

Kyle James (02:23.716)
Mm.

Chris Manfredi (02:32.59)
how business or product or service is being directed. And I found this very specific job, analyst relations, which was speaking to industry analysts, gaining insights on where things are going, working with the leaders of the company to help direct strategy and understand the size of the market and how to compete. And I was like, this is it. This is the job that I want to do. And I reached directly out to the recruiter. Luckily, I was able to get the job. And it’s been.

sort of a love and a learning at the same time, really, my entire career. So I feel like every single time I move to a different firm, whether it was a large organization like an IBM, whether it was a sort of a smaller space like I’m doing right now at Sprout Social, reaching out to the analyst community, doing things like advisory sessions, completing competitive reports and learning how to compete effectively in it.

Um, learning how to engage with analysts, right? Not just face to face, but actually through inquiry calls and engagements, stewarding the completion of thought leadership, not just those competitive reports that we’re talking about, but surveys or co-partnered papers, right? Something, um, that’s the reason, of course, why we’re speaking because, uh, we did something ourselves with 360, which is really fantastic. So, uh, you know, when it comes to analyst relations, there’s a chance I’ve done it all or, or, or have been a part of it, or at least know folks.

Kyle James (03:50.382)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (03:57.818)
Because I’m involved in a lot of these different analyst relation networks who have done it. So, you know, it’s a labor of love I have to say it’s exactly where I want to be because it hits all of the things that I really love right I love learning. I love knowing things I’d love assisting and helping and I love people and ultimately that’s really what analyst relations is all about It’s about relationship development both external relationship development with industry analysts like the folks at 360

as well as your internal relationships as you help to drive the strategy of the products and services and sort of gain insights on how you can kind of take your innovation conversations and embed it into the endless eyes and ears so they can go ahead and make some sense of how you’re making it to the market.

Kyle James (04:45.27)
Awesome. Well, and it probably makes a little bit of sense because some people out there are probably more familiar with analyst relationships than others. Some companies have them, some companies don’t. But I’m really curious, like, how do you think about it? And I’ll kind of lead it with me. It’s third party validation, it’s third party content that can help you tell stories that aren’t maybe not a little less independent, less biased maybe, but kind of how do you define it with what it is

and kind of how people should think about it and why it’s important for companies to work with third party independent analysts and researchers to kind of come up with content to tell stories.

Chris Manfredi (05:26.861)
Hmm. So, you know, one thing I’ll say is that when you are bringing a product or a service to market, there’s a lot that’s put into this, right? There is the experience of the person driving that. There is the company strategy behind, know, should we purchase our way through this? Should we hire more people to innovate faster? Do we grow in international standards or not? How do we compete?

Kyle James (05:53.88)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (05:54.452)
And what’s the reality in the competition? Like there’s a lot going on in order to do very well. and so you need some insights. You need somebody outside of the organization. Cause what I find is that if you only have the organization, you only have the people who are building the product or building the service. The thing is you, you get lost in the love that you have for your way of going to market, your way of, you know, delivering a product or service or building it.

And you might not be paying attention because you’re trying to get the customers move as quickly as you can, you know, get your stock price up with all the various things. And so there’s so much that it takes to truly succeed in the IT marketplace that you might essentially have blinders on to think like that, you know what? There might be things we’re behind on. There might be things that we need to work on. There might be a space where our particular product or service may fit.

Kyle James (06:48.504)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (06:52.985)
And maybe we’re just not presenting it way, the proper way. We’re not marketing in the right way. Maybe we’re not going to do it or go to market strategy properly. So what industry analysts do is give you a third party view, give you somebody who has some sort of neutral way of viewing at the marketplace. Somebody who’s at the intersection of not only yourselves, but your direct competitors, your customers, what’s happening in the market trends. So industry analysts, have an interesting.

sort of intersection of all things your space. And they are experts, right? Because they’re speaking to all these folks, they’re tracking it, they’re building reports, they’re building insights. So frankly, I find it’s invaluable to speak to these folks, because in some ways, they’re the scientists, the ones that are breaking down these specific spaces. And by breaking it down, you’re able to not only partner with them, right, to potentially, you know, build content, but you’re actually there to listen.

to gain some insights. And to me, what I really enjoy is there’s just a sandbox type of relationship. You get to go inside the sandbox. You get to speak openly about where your product and service is at and how it’s going and how it’s competing. You know, I think there’s chances for differing of opinion too. I don’t think you just have to say, yes, you’re correct. We’re going to do exactly what you say. I think it’s always good to have a good back and forth with the industry analyst who’s covering you.

Frankly, I like to speak to many different industry analysts, right? I like to kind of triangulate a little bit of a view. Maybe I’ll hear from one particular firm and I’ll ask one question, ask the same question to the other firm, ask the same question to another firm, right? So you can kind of triangulate a view of what’s going on. So because you’re constantly connecting, you’re constantly ingesting, there’s research, there’s blogs, there’s webinars, there’s podcasts to listen to.

You’re swimming in all this information. So our job is actually to synthesize that to make sense of it to say hey pay attention to them Prepare your leaders for the engagement that are going to have prepare your team whether it’s product marketing or product when it comes to actually Helping out by by filling out RFIs timely information so, know our job really is assisting sort of information flow from the industry analysts to

Chris Manfredi (09:12.725)
our internal teams and from our internal teams to those industry analysts. And so by doing that, I think we gain a deeper understanding of the space. And frankly, I think we compete more. I think we compete better. And I think we have sort of a better view of how we can innovate ourselves to success.

Kyle James (09:33.218)
Yeah, and I think everything you said kind of shows like…

how much you enjoy relationships, right? Because what I heard you say is this is a lot of lessons, listening and learning from outside parties and the way you do that is to build relationships with people. But it’s ways that you might be blind to or can’t see internally because a lot of times companies have their blinders on and are so focused on that next objective, that milestone, that growth target that they’re trying to set that they can miss things that are super obvious to anybody that kind of can see a little bit externally and can

Chris Manfredi (09:40.354)
guess.

Chris Manfredi (09:49.047)
Yes.

Kyle James (10:06.342)
what else is going on in the industry or in the space or what others are doing and how, you know, is that 3D chess is playing out. Other people are making moves too and not just you and can kind of learn what are some of those other moves and how they’re impacting and how they’re affecting what we’re doing and so on, right?

Chris Manfredi (10:25.504)
That’s totally correct. you know, I think sometimes too, it’s not even just the fact that maybe you miss something, but maybe you just want to verify to ensure that your path is the right one. That happens a lot too, right? Like I get a lot of folks that are frankly, you know, my, my product leaders, the product marketers I work with, they’re some of the best, smartest people in the spaces. You know, what’s really kind of interesting too, when you work with industry analysts, many of them were product marketers, were product leaders, did

Kyle James (10:53.881)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Manfredi (10:55.156)
you know, take a startup and go all the way to acquisition. Or they just have 20, 30 years of experience in that space. They’ve written books, have PhDs, they’re teaching classes. So the amount of rich information that they have is extremely helpful. And what I find is that great product folks sometimes are debating, but sometimes they’re just being reassured that the path that they’re building is correct. And I think that’s what makes the relationship so important.

You know, my job really is to build relationships with the analyst as best as I can and kind of set up the relationship, the facilitation with my team, right? Because again, like we’re saying, they’re busy trying to get customers. They’re busy reaching out to customers for references. They’re trying to innovate as quickly as they can and build something better.

Kyle James (11:43.908)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (11:51.081)
CEO is reaching out to them and they got to do an update. So they’re so busy. So my job is to minimize the pain, maximize the value, direct the information, however. So what you see from me, and this is one thing I like to do in announce relations is not just building the relationships, of course, connecting through inquiries, doing face to face connects, maybe having an analyst day where you can share your vision and your innovation cycle on a huge scale, right? To 30 or 40.

analysts all at the same time. All that’s completely possible. But what I really try to do too is beyond that, how can I synthesize the deluge of information I’m getting? So I’ll do things like weekly breakdowns of what’s happening in the marketplace. Sometimes I’ll synthesize a piece of research and put it into a slide deck or something. I do my own inquiries one on one to kind of gain insights and speak on behalf of the product and or the

the strategic team to kind of gain direct insights and then send that directly back to my leadership. And so whether I’m bringing product or bringing product marketing along the way, whether I’m doing it myself, whether the CEO is in tow, whether we’ve got the CMO or the strategy team that’s learning stuff, doesn’t necessarily matter. And what I find is that ANS Relations is not even, it’s even beyond product. Sometimes it’s my marketing team is training insights. Sometimes my sales team is…

Kyle James (13:15.076)
Mm.

Chris Manfredi (13:16.37)
is learning how to go to market better and whatnot. there’s just, we’re everywhere. If you’re a really great analyst relations person, you try to drive value wherever you are. And if it’s in product one week and with product marketing the next and with sales and or campaign or content management the one after that, we wanna provide value however we can. And that’s what makes it really exciting.

Kyle James (13:41.668)
Well, it…

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you this because you’ve worked at a lot of companies in this role in different sectors and in different company sizes. What is the difference, especially, know, like how to like, is it different or really it’s kind of comes down to fundamental core things that work across all industries in all sizes and kind of this, this world or are there certain things that certain strategies for got to go to market to work well or not, you know, kind of speak on that. Cause you, you, you, you’re in that position where you kind of seen it all I imagine, right?

Chris Manfredi (13:52.833)
Yes.

Kyle James (14:13.318)
you

Chris Manfredi (14:15.754)
I’ve well maybe I haven’t seen it all but I’ve definitely seen a lot, right? And what I say is that in some ways, Amos Relations is the same and also completely different depending on you know, what your angle is and what in some ways, what are you trying to do? So let’s say you work at a big huge firm, let’s say you work for AWS or IBM, you know, I worked for Cognizant and Wipro before. These are huge organizations. They have so many different spaces that they’re in. There’s so much innovation that’s being driven.

Kyle James (14:17.412)
You’ve a lot. You’ve seen a lot.

Kyle James (14:29.252)
Sure.

Chris Manfredi (14:45.612)
And sometimes it’s at different levels. You might have sort of a corporate sort of analyst relations where it’s kind of a broader, you’re helping assist when it comes to large scale events like the World Economic Forum or you’re going to RSA when it comes to security. So it’s sort of a top level AR, right, that you’re just trying to assist the leaders and be able to get them to connect with the thought leaders at that level.

When you get specifically into the product segments or services segments, well, this is really where the rubber meets the road. This is actually driving the specific innovations in those specific areas. And there may be like many different competitive reports and different market guides that you may have to assist with. And so the larger box players, the ones that have 30 or 40 different analyst relations folks, those are very sub-segmented by a specific purpose.

Kyle James (15:13.369)
Yeah.

Kyle James (15:39.748)
sure.

Chris Manfredi (15:40.811)
And so that particular AR person might be doing lots of reports and maybe not a lot of proactive engagement or vice versa. So it’s just because the scale of the organization, it requires so much. And so you need that much more. And so you’re going to completely segment what that AR person does because they can’t do everything and the scaled organization will not allow it. When you’re looking at a smaller organization, let’s say the mid tier.

Here you have essentially not the same scale, but you might actually have different types of segments that you’re in as well. So you’ll have probably lots of engagements around competitive reports or guides. You might have different product marketing or product teams that you’re working with. So you’re working with sort of a different team, either week to week or quarter to quarter, depending on what the needs are.

And so, you you’re still sort of report sort of directed and maybe though you’re doing some more proactive engagement trying to learn how to do better in those particular reports. So very busy, all these, you know, jobs of course are extremely busy. When you go to the one person band, right? So one specific space that’s currently what I’m doing right now. Well now you might not have as many of the reports or the broad communications or connections that you’re doing at the larger scale firms.

And so because of that, you’re freer to actually go deeper into the particular spaces. And so I’m lucky enough to be able to do lots of proactive engagement, exploring all the different sub-segments of Sprout Social. So whether it’s influencer marketing, whether it is our work in social care, whether it’s our work around social analytics and social listening, I’m able to explore these with a lot of depth because I’m not.

way down by all the events and or all these different competitive reports that are keeping me extremely busy. So I’m able to do more strategic analyst relations, which is going and speaking to as many analysts as possible to help direct the innovation of the company. So all of these could change. So for instance, I’m doing two competitive reports right now. So I’m doing a little bit less strategic analyst relations.

Kyle James (17:48.26)
Yeah.

Kyle James (17:52.868)
Sure.

Chris Manfredi (17:57.453)
Sometimes actually you’re and and really I think there’s kind of three distinct ways to do AR there’s sort of AR for sales So maybe you’re assisting maybe you’re helping with an advisor relations team or trying to get sales across the finish line You’re trying to help the competitive intelligence person to to compete properly. So there’s a sort of information and sales help There’s the analyst relations for you know report value like we were talking about like creating the reports making sure they get done making sure that thought leadership gets

done and marketed properly. And then there’s the strategic kind of engaging in the topics, the product segments, trying to understand where everything’s going on. All of these interplay. They’re all interconnected and month to month, year to year, you might have a different sort of lens that analyst relations can go through. But what I hope what you’re seeing is, that an analyst relations person has to have a lot of hats, right? They might be a technical sort of person who really understands the space.

They might be somebody who really understands how to kind of get big things done within a marketing organization or trying to get a competitive report done. Or they might just be a great relationship person, an event manager, right? Who’s really great at facilitating big, huge events and all the organizational stuff that is required in order to run gigantic teams. know, Anis Relations and the people that do it.

are sort of jack-of-all-trades, right? And typically they have a lot of experience either in the space or a lot of experience in IT in general. So they can have sort of a good mix of both soft and hard skills to sort of get the job done.

Kyle James (19:33.444)
Well, let me ask you this, what specific metrics, and I’m sure the answer is probably it depends, but what metrics should companies track to measure the ROI of their analyst? Or are there certain things that you track that really depends on what you’re trying to do and accomplish at the time, whether that’s a report and you’re trying to get a certain amount of reach or an event that you’re trying to bring analysts to. How should companies think about measuring the ROI on their analyst relations team or person?

Chris Manfredi (19:40.725)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (20:03.468)
Absolutely. So, know, kind of what I was talking about before, right? Like the different ways that AMS relations can help. Is it going to help drive revenue? Is it going to help with the sales cycle? Is it going to help with content creation? Is it going to help with strategic insights? Is it going to do all three, right? Or is the ratio a little bit different just depending? So if you’re doing the revenues, you know, like how much, how many eyeballs, how much are we getting AR attached to deals? Were we able to actually

Note that we were able to get 10 20 100 200 million dollars attached to the endless relations engagement, right? So that’s like in some ways the the holy grail being able to use your AR program and the the investment that you do to be able to get revenue in so That’s a crucial metric to potentially look out for and it’s something that AR people do You know sort of peg two the other stuff to think about is also the content that you create so if we are creating content well

Kyle James (20:43.832)
Yes.

Chris Manfredi (21:01.44)
there’s that’s going to be a part of the go-to-market sort of engine. So, you know, when you’re downloading the reports, when you’re getting the eyeballs on the webinar that you’re stewarding, how many, you know, seats are endless attended your event? How many post event write ups did you have? And were those positive? What are the positive mentions? How many mentions are happening all across the research? Right. So, you know, the more briefings, the more engagements you do, the more your name is being connected, right? There’s a

Kyle James (21:24.035)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (21:29.388)
There’s a part of AR that’s very much kind of PR, right? The same thing, right? We are actually engaging so we can get mentions, so we can get our name up in lights. And of course, the more mentions we have, the more possibility we’ll be in these competitive reports. And perhaps if we have really great product, the better we do. So I look at things like, are we bringing in revenue? Are we assisting in the go-to-market strategy? As our name coming up in these reports, how well are we doing these competitive reports?

And then the last thing is the analyst relations for strategic understanding. So this sort of stuff is more along the lines of, we actually getting insights? Are we delivering these insights directly to the folks that actually need it in the product, product marketing, the strategic levers of the company? Sometimes it’s the CEO, sometimes it’s a CMO who’s actually looking for something that’s very timely. And this will happen from time to time where

I’ll have strategic leader reach out to me. They’ve got a presentation they’re working on. They’re boards coming up. We’re working on some data that they need to collect. And they need something yesterday to fuel the, to fuel exactly the exact, you know, presentation, the data, the metric that they’re looking to do. So in some ways, like a proper AR manager is going to try to hit all of these. And they’re not only going to try to hit all of these types of metrics, both through sales as well as content management, as well as the insights.

Kyle James (22:37.838)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (22:56.79)
But they’re going to track things like, OK, well, who am I engaging with? Who are the firms that I’m engaging with? I like to track who’s coming along with me, right? Because it can’t just be me doing the engagements. Is it my leader? Is it my product marketer? Are different parts of product coming? And if you have even also a product that actually has specific product segments, you need to track, OK, well, you know what? I’m spending too much time in this particular segment. You know, we really need to do some outreach next quarter in this one.

So frankly, you want to hit all of these. And the reason why is that, you know, it’s one thing that we haven’t discussed yet, but AR, costs money. It costs money to actually have this access. You know, this is not by the way, which is really great about it, is that this is not a lot of the content that we have access to, the endless time, the engagement that we have. That’s not chat GPT-able, right? We can’t Gemini and or Copilot our way to these insights. This is behind paywalls.

Kyle James (23:34.094)
Yes.

Chris Manfredi (23:53.868)
And so, you know, the stuff that we’re learning is very unique. And so it costs money. There’s a cost to Anos Relations. And so what I like to do is to drive as much value as possible. So whether that is getting an insight that my CEO needed immediately, whether that’s getting as much eyeballs or as many downloads as I can on a competitive report, or helping actually maybe drive some revenue in that pays for the Anos Relations budget, I want to track all of it.

because you never know what leader and or what metric a different leader needs to follow. So I think you kind of have to do it all. And you have to sort of build a mechanism or many mechanisms to track it and be able to share exactly where the value is that you’re driving each and every day, each and every week.

Kyle James (24:40.376)
Yeah, it’s like building a whole company inside of a company in a lot of ways, it sounds like, because you have all these different connections and all these different stakeholders in the company, and you’re delivering different things to different ones depending on what they need when, right? Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (24:52.245)
Correct. Correct. it’s just relations. This job is a constant relations development. And that’s why there’s a sort of soft skills that comes with it. By the way, there’s many times when I am leading a presentation, there’s some times when I’m facilitating and letting other person leading. Sometimes I’m not saying anything and I’m just making sure that we’re on time and there’s coffee and we’ve got donuts coming and…

Kyle James (25:15.364)
You

Chris Manfredi (25:20.555)
The space looks nice, right? So your job could depend, you know, just depending on what day you’re doing, you could lead a technical discussion, you could just be there to assist, or you could just be there just to make somebody look good. Make sure that they’re prepared. Here is the analyst profile. Here’s what they’ve been writing about this. Here’s some things that they potentially are going to ask you. So my job is to make people feel comfortable, to make people feel heard, to, you know, make sure that they’re gaining insights. And sometimes

Kyle James (25:36.408)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (25:49.388)
know, tax and figuring out what’s the best way to get the most value out of the relationships and relationship development that we can do with these industry analysts. So it’s a lot of fun, but we really need to pay attention and put the onus on the relationship development at the heart of AR.

Kyle James (26:07.714)
Let’s flip it around. You’ve talked about lot of the success, but what are some common mistakes that people do or you’ve seen when they’re trying to leverage your analyst relations? Or what are some common mistakes you’ve seen people make? Or maybe a story of something you’ve made in the past if you feel comfortable sharing it. Lots of good stuff, but they’re also like, are some of the negatives or bad things that have happened out there that you would encourage people to avoid?

Chris Manfredi (26:26.293)
haha

Chris Manfredi (26:32.203)
Sure. So, you know, there’s plenty of good, but this good is hard. It’s hard to do. We’re talking about folks, you know, whether they’re your strategic leaders, your CEO, whether it’s your product leaders. These are people that have been doing this job for 10, 15, 20 years. Their opinions matter, right? What they say is vital and how they feel about themselves is vital. And so my job is actually to get

Kyle James (26:49.902)
Right.

Chris Manfredi (27:00.095)
these thought leaders inside my company to speak to these other thought leaders and kind of co-work and co-habitate, right? And unless I make both sides feel good and both sides feel prepared, sometimes it’s a hard meeting, right? Because there might be some disagreement, there might be some issues in between. And this happens a lot when analyst firms actually are trying to do a competitive analysis because every firm, I don’t care where you work at, believes their platform, their product, their service is the best.

And frankly, that’s good because they need to have some confidence in what they’re delivering to the market. But where you see problems is actually when on the firm side, they don’t see the flaws that they potentially have. They’re not willing to actually look at the truth, look at themselves in the mirror, open up the hood and kind of see where the issues are in it. And that’s really where an Ancillation Program could falter.

Kyle James (27:50.51)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (27:55.724)
When there’s not really an authentic view of what is happening inside of the firm, right? And what you know, how well you’re competing, how well you’re doing, right? Everybody loves it when you’re a leader. Everybody loves it when you are the number one innovator, you’re making the most money. But most companies aren’t. Most companies are somewhere in the middle. Or they’re competing very well, you know, in product or they’re competing very well in revenue, but like the…

Kyle James (28:07.566)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (28:22.475)
know, vice versa, the other players are doing better or they’re innovating quicker or they’re making a little bit more money. So sometimes it’s a little bit of a wash and you kind of have to figure out like, well, okay, well then where’s the truth in this, right? So from the analyst perspective though, and this is where the relationship development comes in, is that if you don’t actually have a relationship with them, then there is no real trust that you’re getting from them. And so it’s hard actually to connect that trust with these leaders that are, by the way, getting

Kyle James (28:46.638)
Very true.

Chris Manfredi (28:52.191)
you know, skewered, you know, quote unquote, or at least having their product be sort of examined in this way. Nobody wants to have, you know, their work be examined in a critical way. No one really likes these critical views. And so, you know, from the endless perspective, you really actually want to build trust with them and make them feel good and make them feel heard. But also like sometimes you got to pick the right ones to, or at least be able to work with them in a way that

sort of connects with their vibe or their style. Analysts just, you know, like these, we’re talking about people, right? We’re talking about the leaders in both these spaces, both with a lot of egos. And so our job is here is to sort of assuage both, to make it comfortable in both and actually make sure that you build relationships with both folks. So then when you have these facilitated talks, when you have these kind of critical discussions about where the product’s at,

Kyle James (29:25.795)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (29:50.56)
We do it as colleagues, we do it as peers versus enemies versus, you know, geez, you know, like I’m going to battle against this person. And frankly, that’s not the way, you know, and, you know, the one thing to note too about the complexity here with this, and as you break down these spaces is that, you know, if you can’t compete in one of these reports, then you just can’t compete because this is what it’s like. You know, these other companies are going to come after you. They’re going to come after you.

Kyle James (30:17.976)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (30:18.831)
via the product, via how you sell, via the marketing. However, competing in these spaces is really difficult. So frankly, when an analyst comes and takes a look at it, you you really get to show like how the heart is placed. And actually true, maybe how you can actually go to market best by actually making sure that you are open-hearted and open-minded and willing to look.

critically at some of the tougher places. to me, that’s the hardest part of analyst relations is that it’s extremely political. You know, when you’re at the tip of the spear, that’s the first place that hits somebody. You know what mean? and so that’s, yeah, well, and it’s not even just the ego thing. Yeah, and it’s, sometimes there is, and I’ve seen this happen, right? Like a misanalysis of how the…

Kyle James (30:58.062)
Yeah, and you’re coaching a lot of people to check their ego. mean, and be humble, right?

Chris Manfredi (31:12.105)
market is being put together. That’s completely true too. There’s, you know, there’s some truth in it. There’s an analyst has to put the market in a box and it says, this is the things that I think are important in driving this market. That could be fundamentally different from what the firm is doing. Right. And I’ve seen actually too, where you’re put into that box and maybe you don’t belong in that box. Maybe you belong in another one. and so there’s a forcing mechanism there, right? But how, how do you kind of make sure that this doesn’t happen by

Kyle James (31:28.036)
They just have difference of opinion.

Chris Manfredi (31:42.016)
building relationships across these different stakeholders, right? Your internals and keeping them aware, hey, this is what the analyst is saying. Here’s how they’re paying this box. Here’s the things I think we might do well. Here’s the things maybe, could might be critical. And it’s something to think about right before we have this conversation from the analyst. It’s more along the lines of we appreciate this insight. We really look at, really think this is important here. Maybe even being a speaker for the firm a little bit before they meet. Like, you know what?

Kyle James (32:09.624)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Manfredi (32:11.327)
We’re unsure we fit in the space or, you know, I think this might be a pain point, but let’s kind of figure it out, right? Ultimately, our job is about facilitating information between folks about making sure that people have an optimal sort of understanding of where these spaces are. And sometimes reducing the friction, not only in the room, but even in the process, right? Ensuring that we could steward the information properly from one side to the other. So everybody completely understands it. I think there’s a…

There’s a lot of times where Anastalations is viewed as just like you just pay somebody more money and that they will cover you better, right? There’s this whole idea of pay to play, right? Like you pay to play. You what I say is you pay to understand. I pay to have access to the information to help my firm be able to deliver, you know, their product better, to have an understanding of what’s happening in the…

Kyle James (32:47.982)
favorite favorite right

Chris Manfredi (33:06.435)
go-to-market strategy, which may better our position in some ways, getting to our customers better or faster and whatnot. So my job is really to truly help assist in this information sourcing, both from my firm and back. And that takes trust. It takes consistency, I think. And it just takes being willing to open your heart and mind.

Kyle James (33:13.625)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (33:34.159)
So you can sort of gain some insights and find your way to the top in not only in innovation, but also in revenue as well.

Kyle James (33:42.628)
So let me change it up a little bit on you and kind of ask a.

I don’t know this is a really tough political question for people to think about, but what do you think an analyst relationship’s best lives in an org? Sometimes it’s in communication, sometimes it’s in marketing. I imagine sometimes it’s even in product, depending on where they kind of put the product marketing people. But what do you think is the best way to kind of like, where should it sit? Do you have a strong opinion? But secondly, how does it feed the insights across every department? Because you end up, right? Sales enablement, product marketing, customer

Chris Manfredi (33:49.259)
Hahaha

Chris Manfredi (33:55.467)
Hmm.

Kyle James (34:16.12)
success and become an asset to all these different pieces of the org. But where does it sit? And why, maybe?

Chris Manfredi (34:23.477)
So yeah, it sits in all these different places that you mentioned, right? It could sit with communications, it could sit with public relations, I’ve seen it sit in strategy, I’ve seen it sit in product, I’ve seen it sit with product marketing. you’re kind of like noting, depending on where it’s sitting, might be like the analyst relations program that they’re sort of looking to do. So if you’re sitting in communications,

Kyle James (34:48.536)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (34:49.983)
You might want the mentions to go up. There’s a lot of reports. You’re creating marketing engine behind it. You’re trying to get as many, Sprout Social in the hearts and minds of everybody out on LinkedIn and everywhere else as much as possible. Let’s say if you’re connected with strategy, well maybe you really want to understand the &A landscape. You’re really trying to understand the size of the market. You’re really trying to figure out the competitive landscape and how you can sort of do better.

because that’s going directly to the CEO and the major levers to direct the product or service of where it’s going. Frankly, I think the best place is within product and or product marketing. And in some ways product marketing might be the optimal place because analytics relations still is marketing and communications. We’re still creating information. It still is in the…

Kyle James (35:21.166)
Yeah.

Kyle James (35:32.74)
Okay.

Kyle James (35:36.388)
Sure.

Chris Manfredi (35:40.236)
market creation sector that to me I think that’s where a lot of the value can be derived because you do very well in competitive report or you have these market guides and you can use them as I was saying before as a go-to-market engine as a way to sort of get customers eyeballs on your product or service and you can actually attribute the money that you invest in these reports back to potential deals right so there’s the whole you know getting the revenue as I was noting so where product marketing is really interesting is that

that product marketers are connected to product. And product are super busy. Like they’re building the product. it’s kind of a good to actually be more aligned with product marketing because we actually have the same sort of things. Analyst Relations is trying to turn the innovations, the language of innovations in product, the roadmap, the vision of where it’s going, and turn it into something tangible that I can then communicate via deck.

Kyle James (36:11.182)
Yep.

Chris Manfredi (36:36.391)
or an RFI or a narrative and send it to the analyst so they can gain an insight and then they can properly compare us or put in us a market or anything else. Who else does that?

Kyle James (36:44.92)
You’ve just got a niche persona, niche audience that you’re going out to instead of whatever the customer might be. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Chris Manfredi (36:47.495)
Right, right, right, right. But who else does that, frankly? Product marketing does the same exact thing. They literally are doing the same thing. know, a lot of times it’s segmented by the different parts of the product or platform. They have the same decks. They have the same information. They have the same things that they’re trying to do. So frankly, I think the best place for it and where I’ve seen really strong programs take off really well is when they’re really aligned to product marketing.

Kyle James (36:54.434)
Right, right.

Chris Manfredi (37:16.945)
and or product, because that’s when you take the insights and it’s going directly into the product and or service and helping it change, gain insights, get a kind of a view of what’s happening. But as we were talking before, I think, you know, the best of the best programs, not just work through the lens of product and or product marketing, but are impacting all these other areas sort of in a balanced way. And so depending on the type of projects that are happening,

Kyle James (37:40.622)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (37:46.155)
And like any good corporate executive, you’re doing multiple projects all the time, you might be aligned to different parts of the organization for different needs.

Kyle James (37:56.292)
That’s what it sounds like, that’s what I’m hearing from it. If you’re AR, energy relations in a certain department, it’s kind of a tale about what you’re trying to measure and what’s important to you, right? But if you’re trying to do what is best by the company and everybody, it kind of sits in that product marketing, because it’s doing the same thing, it’s just got a different target audience. Makes a ton of sense. Yeah, it can be.

Chris Manfredi (38:05.941)
Right.

Chris Manfredi (38:17.867)
Correct, correct. And sometimes it’s the same target audience. And it’s a synthesis tool, think, too. I know sometimes, many times, actually, product marketers, very segmented themselves. So if you’re at even the size of Sprout Social, medium-sized firm, we have many different product segments. And so we have product marketers that are attached to influencer marketing or social care. And that’s all they do each and every day is

drive that innovation and put it into the marketplace, put it on the website. They’ve got a webinar coming up. They’ve got a new thing that’s coming up on the roadmap. They have a new type of innovation that’s going to be coming in coming months. And so there has to be a narrative around it. It has to be a deck. There has to be a positioning statement. And so it may work with me to get the briefing done. And or sometimes my job is to actually go above it all and kind of create this

Kyle James (39:07.812)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (39:16.219)
overarching sprout narrative. So I have to work with all of them to compete. You have the corporate kind of view of how we’re going to market broadly. And then you have the segmented view where it’s like, this is how we’re going to win an influencer. This is how we’re going to win in these specific other platform segments. So that’s the magic, right? Because analyst relations is sort of hitting at the heart of what a company means to perform and do well in both the technology capabilities.

as well as the go-to-market strategies. And so because of it, we are having engagements and conversations with the entire platform. I always like to say it, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Game of Thrones, but there was this guy who was the master of whispers, I forgot what his name was. And his phrase was always, I’m here for the realm. I’m here to ensure that the realm continues. And that’s what Sprout, or that’s what…

Kyle James (40:00.868)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Manfredi (40:13.981)
I do on behalf of Sprout and or any company is that I’m here for the entire company. I’m there to see not just the product segments or the communication arm to get the eyeballs onto the Sprout social logo and brand or the strategy team that’s trying to gain insights on the sides of the market so they can go and, and, know, better position our financial capabilities within, you know, the, the, the wall streets of the world. My job is everything. It’s the entire thing.

Kyle James (40:37.785)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (40:41.479)
And so that’s what makes it so exciting is that I’m here for the entire platform, the entire strategy, the realm of the space that I’m in. you know, frankly, that’s what makes it like a lot of fun.

Kyle James (40:52.652)
Nice, nice. So as we kind of start to wrap up here, and I’m sure we could probably have a whole other podcast on this question, but I’m going to throw it at you anyway, because I saw that you recently wrote something about how gen AI is starting to impact the analyst relationship to industry. So talk a little bit about that, right? And what does it mean to companies in the go-to-market strategy as kind of AI starts to get its tentacles into everything now, especially kind of analyst relations?

Chris Manfredi (40:58.537)
Duh.

Chris Manfredi (41:07.966)
wow.

Chris Manfredi (41:19.285)
man, so you know, one, I’ve been talking about this for a while, I’ve given a couple presentations on it, this is, frankly everybody is right, like you can’t throw, you

Kyle James (41:25.378)
Yeah. Yeah. I can’t have an episode here without asking AI how it impacts this specific thing, because it’s in everything now.

Chris Manfredi (41:35.156)
It’s true. It’s true. frankly, when it comes to a job where information is so important, the synthesis of information, the tracking of information, obviously AI was going to impact us. And it really has been. How I like to position this is actually I look at the history of analyst relations and analyst firms. And really in the past 10 years, analyst firms have changed a lot. There’s multiple analyst firms. There’s influencer type firms.

The firms with themselves have expanded their coverage and the types of reports. So there’s not just competitive reports, there’s specific segment breakdowns, there’s more data, there’s more content in the forms of not just the research that we have, but the blogs, the podcasts, the webinars, the events that they’re doing. There’s so much information that comes an AR person’s way that they actually have to gain like an insight, like there’s no way to sort of keep up with it.

until really the past couple years where we’ve had the ability to use GNI to help us synthesize this deluge of information that we’re dealing with. And it not only synthesized the external stuff, but the other thing that we can do is actually now start to synthesize the internal information. So it’s really helped the Analyst Relations layman deal with all this, right? It started out with us just…

maybe having something that’ll help us make a profile so we can set up in front of our leaders so they know who they’re speaking to. But now it’s like, just downloaded 20 or 30 different pieces of research and I’m able to synthesize it in a way and be able to gain some insights on this whole space so we can kind of read into exactly what’s happening. And this is happening not just in the research as I was noting, but we can record podcasts and webinars. We can pull in slide deck data.

I can pull in slide decks as well as my product overviews. I’m doing this right now. Put it into some sort of reader, like a Notebook LM or Conveyor or Lupio, and be able to answer questions around my product. Because this is all of the information that’s being let in, natural language generation and or processing. So Gen.AI is going to completely transform.

Kyle James (43:34.936)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (43:51.916)
how and it is right, frankly, analyst relations is done, I think for the better. And what’s really fantastic about this is that instead of spending 60 or 70 % of your time kind of dealing with all the library of information you have and trying to figure out a way to present it in the best way possible. Now, you know, maybe that’s 30 % of your time and the 70 % is more on the relationships that you need develop.

reaching out to the analysts, seeing them and meeting them for coffee, going to meeting with your product or product marketers for coffee, reaching out to other folks inside your organization, finding out what their needs are, what other things can actually deliver. Because instead of spending all my time kind of trying to turn all this information to a couple slides to hand to my CEO, I could do that stuff that much quicker and I could spend more time in the things that matter, which is the relations part, the human being.

I always like to say when it comes to AI, when it comes to the robots taking over, well, one, they’re not taking over, right? You’re going to bring their technology along to make sure that it works for you versus against you. So I think that’s really vital. But the other thing is that it actually creates more human value in the IT marketplace because now we can spend more time connecting. We can spend more time doing a podcast and talking about what analyst relations is and whatnot.

Kyle James (44:56.74)
Sure.

Kyle James (45:10.265)
Yes.

Chris Manfredi (45:15.093)
versus spending all this time trying to take all of this data that we have and making sense of it. So frankly, I’m here for the GNI world. Not only is it going to transform analyst relations, and as I said, it already is, but I think we’re gonna be better for it. So I just suggest to everybody who is analyst relations and is just experimenting and sort of playing with everything, continue to do that, continue to develop your skills because it’s only gonna make you that much better.

It’s going to be able to help you gain insights that much quicker. And I think it’s going to, you’ll get so much, you’ll get so good at it that you could spend your valuable time with the people that you need to impact the most. And that’s with face-to-face connections, Zoom, online, over coffee, bring the relations back to handle relations. That’s what it’s all about.

Kyle James (46:06.116)
I love that because I hear that from a lot of the experts in a lot of different industries that it’s the relationships that are becoming front and center again. Like sales roles, right? If you’ve got this AI transcribing your calls and putting all the notes in your CRM, what does that give you more time for? Relationships. If you’re in support and you’ve got this thing that can answer questions and spend more time troubleshooting and giving you the answers to have a good conversation, to build rapport with the customer who’s having trouble or customer success or whoever.

Chris Manfredi (46:15.796)
Yes.

Chris Manfredi (46:24.171)
correct.

Kyle James (46:36.07)
It’s the relationships that are becoming more central, more important, and all more human, right? Nobody likes to do the busy work piece. And if we’ve got the AIs helping us do that, it’s great to hear that’s what you’re seeing happen is more the relationship becoming front center and how do we communicate and interact with each other instead of the busy work that we have to do, but that becomes less of the core central element of any job.

Especially with everything I’ve heard from you today about analyst relations, because you’re this almost puppet master between not just all the people internally, but all the people internally and this external team that you’re trying to like persuade in a way, but also get along with, you need all the time for relationships that you could find, right?

Chris Manfredi (47:23.211)
Absolutely. That’s what it’s all about, right? Like being a good person, connecting, being hungry for understanding, and getting other folks excited to, you know, sort of be a part of this whole game, right? Of industry analyst relations, industry insights, helping deliver better products to service, making it fun, putting the human back into this work. And, you know, I wouldn’t want to do anything else. It’s, it’s

Kyle James (47:38.553)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (47:49.909)
It’s a labor of love, I absolutely love it and it’s dream and it’s blessing to do it each and every day.

Kyle James (47:55.682)
Love it. Well, Chris, in kind of closing then, what have I not asked you that I should have asked you? Or what do we want to share with the audience that we want to make sure we get in here that’s, you I don’t know, like you could go anywhere you want with this, but before we kind of, you know, ask for your latin loan and tell everybody how to connect and how they can help you. Like what is one final thing that you kind of want to leave everybody with to not forget? mean, relationships is clearly central here, but what is one other pro tip, if you will?

Chris Manfredi (48:01.694)
Hahaha

Chris Manfredi (48:09.065)
Ahahaha!

Chris Manfredi (48:22.857)
Yeah, to me, think stay hungry, stay wanting to know things. You know, ultimately, if you do know stuff, you’re on that endless call, you’re an expert. It’s okay if you’re an expert. It’s okay even if you know everything the analyst is saying. I think that’s good. Because it means that you have a very thoughtful approach of how you’re sort of going towards your product and your innovation, your strategy, your go-to-market strategy. Right, it is validation. However, what don’t you know?

Kyle James (48:47.662)
validation.

Chris Manfredi (48:52.905)
What do you want to not only get verified, what’s the thing that you’re unsure about? You have an idea. I say whatever I want whenever I have these endless connections. The greatest part about me is that I’m not weighed down by an experience of building a social media management platform or working 20 plus years in cybersecurity or cloud computing or data science or AI that I was a part of. I’ve covered all these different spaces.

But I sort of take a Socratic sort of view of this. I don’t know anything, right? So tell me about this endless. Tell me what can you tell me about this, right? And I always like to bring my product marketers and product folks to say that. Like, you may know just as much as them, but actually think about what you don’t know or think about what you want to get verified. Think about what you want to explore. The best way to engage is actually to understand that you not only not, you don’t know everything.

but also what are some possibilities of things that you’re really interested in? What’s the future of spaces? What are the things that really bother analysts when they see the marketing or the coverage of a particular area? What are the surprises that may be coming that they’re hearing from customers? What are the pain points that they think are being delivered, not just in your product, but others? So the more creative you get, the more Socratic you are, the more you are open.

Kyle James (50:03.737)
Yeah.

Chris Manfredi (50:20.564)
to just understanding the world and being able to uncover rocks and, you know, gain an insight and just about everything and anything around you. think the better off you’ll be. So I’m not just a analyst relations person, right? I’m, I spend my time ingesting books. You know, I love music and movies and art and, you know, serving and, you know, museums and whatnot. have a podcast. I have a podcast. I’m a futurist. So I have a podcast. It’s called some future, which I’ll plug now to.

Kyle James (50:39.446)
surfer

Chris Manfredi (50:50.184)
So I think, you know, but to me, the critical thing is be hungry, right? That’s what this job is for. Be hungry for understanding and learning and knowing. And the hunger, the hungrier you are, and the more you could kind of sell that, you know, engaged hunger for insights, the better I think your organization will be. I think the better you will be. And I think those insights will ring true because you’re diving as deep as you can to really understand something holistically.

Kyle James (50:50.776)
You can plug anything else you want to plug too, feel free.

Chris Manfredi (51:20.062)
And I think when you do that, you’re really on the edge of your innovation tracks, your company, your product and service can be successful.

Kyle James (51:30.274)
Love that, love that. Always be hungry, always be learning. Because what is it that if you’re not learning, you’re dying. So, keep learning. Awesome, awesome. how, Chris, how could people connect with you? Obviously you’ve got a good presence on LinkedIn. Is there any other ways that you recommend people connect with you or how can they ask you questions, stay in touch, connect with you?

Chris Manfredi (51:34.302)
That’s It’s true.

Kyle James (52:02.338)
I’ll make sure that’s plugged.

Chris Manfredi (52:18.804)
for IAT or I like to help people with their resumes. I like to give directions about all the different spaces that I’ve been in. So feel free to reach out to me. I’ve got no problem. I’ve got a lot of, one thing about the relations part is that you get a lot of friends, not only just AR people, but people you’ve worked with, both in product and marketing and communications throughout the year. So I didn’t tell, I’m a very external type of person. I love engaging and connecting with folks. So if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn,

Feel free you want to ask me some questions you want to throw me on a webinar or podcast or you just want to Talk shop. I’m here for you. You know like that’s me. I love connecting

Kyle James (52:57.656)
Love it, love it. Well, Chris, thanks again for your time today and your humble, generous time. And thank you everyone for tuning in out there. We’ll be back with another go-to market innovator soon. And until then, keep growing, keep learning, and stay humble. Take care, everybody.

Chris Manfredi (53:12.939)
See ya.

 

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