Vendor Briefing 101: Your Guide to Success

By Nga Pham

You’ve likely heard about Vendor Briefings at Aragon Research—but how do they work, exactly? In this blog, we will cover how a vendor briefing is conducted as well as provide you with particular best practices that are easy to adopt.

What Is a Vendor Briefing?

Vendor Briefings connect you, a technology vendor or a service provider, with one of Aragon’s analysts. The briefing allows our analysts to understand and assess key elements of your product, offering, or solution. A Vendor Briefing is a golden opportunity for you to introduce your offering and start generating or capitalizing on market awareness. You can fill out the briefing request form here and follow this guide to ensure a successful briefing.

Before the Vendor Briefing

Know your analysts

Get to know who you are talking to in advance. Aragon analysts not only have experience at lauded analyst firms, but also have executive business and IT experience as well. Read their bio to know which technology areas they cover. Gain more insight into their professional style and interests by studying their recent research notes and Aragon’s research methodologies. Knowing the analysts will also help you tailor your content to engage with them better.

Understand your value proposition

One of the most common mistakes that technology providers make when introducing new products is focusing too much on the product features instead of their value proposition. A true value proposition helps you make a strong first impression. Your value proposition should describe how your product or service solves problems, what benefits customers or end users can expect, and why they should choose you over your competitors. Prior to the briefing, you must clearly define your product or service’s value proposition. Make it customer-centric, coherent, and unique.

Have a clear goal and objective

Always keep in mind that the purpose of a vendor briefing is to help the analysts covering your market understand your strategy and capabilities. Keeping analysts up to date is a strategic way to increase market awareness and visibility, or build upon existing momentum.

During the Vendor Briefing

Bring your A+ game

Vendor briefings are competitive events. You are competing to win the analyst’s time and mindshare. Aragon analysts are likely briefed by all of the major players in the market which means this is your chance to show how you make a difference.

In order to succeed, use a well-structured presentation to conduct your vendor briefing:

• Start with an overview of who you are
• Summarize the focus of the company
• Concisely review the product value proposition
• Overview products and services offered
• Highlight customer success stories
• Accentuate competitive differentiators

Actions speak louder than words

Even though a vendor briefing is not a sales pitch to your prospective customers, a killer product demonstration is always a plus. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is that they demonstrate their product by showing a dozen features. Instead, you need to tell your analyst a compelling story and create a product demo that walks through a scenario they can understand and relate to. Remember that you are here to talk about how your product helps customers solve a particular problem.

Maximize your time with the analysts

Vendor briefings are typically 45 minutes to an hour of presentation. Think ahead how you will allocate your time. Dedicate 15 minutes for Q&A where the analyst can ask you questions to have a deeper understanding about your product. However, you don’t want to overwhelm the analyst with asking for market analysis or product feedback. Aragon Research is an independent research and advisory firm. Therefore, Aragon analysts aim to keep their opinions objective, with no bias or personal favoritism.

After the Vendor Briefing

Follow up, follow up, and follow up

A vendor briefing is a great way to start building your relationship with Aragon Research. After the meeting, send the analysts your presentation deck or any relevant materials such as customer testimonials, product updates etc. Create a dialog with them by following Aragon Research thought leading blog or podcasts. You want to stay up to date with the market they cover and see how you can make your product or service relevant.

Bottom line

Vendor briefings are not a one-off activity. Start planning for the next vendor briefing with Aragon Research when there’s innovation in your product or a pricing change. Highlight those changes and how they impact your end users. A successful vendor briefing should be a regular part of your organization’s product strategy.

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