For many SaaS executives, analyst relations sits in an uncomfortable category—expensive, difficult to measure, and often misunderstood as an extension of public relations.
That misunderstanding is common enough that Andrew Hsu, managing partner at Spotlight, an analyst relations firm, says it was the reason his company exists at all.
More than a decade ago, while working at a consulting firm pursuing a major deal with JCPenney during its digital transformation, Hsu and his co-founder lost the opportunity for a reason that had nothing to do with their capabilities. The analysts covering the space did not recognize their firm, did not rank it, and did not consider it a viable option.
“They did not know our core competencies,” he recalled, describing a moment that forced a reassessment of how large enterprise buying decisions are actually made.
That realization—that influence over purchasing decisions often sits outside the direct control of the vendor—became the foundation for Spotlight and, more broadly, for a growing recognition across SaaS that analyst relations is not a marketing accessory but a structural component of how enterprise deals are won and lost.
The confusion begins with how companies approach the function.
Executives often assume analyst relations can be handled the same way as public relations—outsourced, message-driven, and focused on amplification. Hsu tried that approach himself and it failed.
“The main reason why it failed is that analysts are amongst the most critical listeners to your business strategy,” he said, noting that analysts spend their time hearing from competitors, customers, and investors simultaneously.
In that environment, a traditional marketing posture—overconfident messaging, polished positioning, selective storytelling—breaks down quickly.
“If you walk in with arrogance,” he said, describing the tendency to treat analyst briefings like a one-way pitch rather than a conversation, “you end up completely failing in this channel.”
What works instead is closer to a consulting conversation than a marketing one.
Companies that approach analysts with a willingness to expose what is not working, alongside what is, tend to get a different response.
“Let me tell you about what’s not working in our business… let me tell you where I need help,” Hsu said, describing the kind of interaction that leads to productive engagement.
The distinction is subtle but consequential. Analysts are not an audience to be persuaded; they are a source of signal to be interpreted.
Part of what makes analyst relations difficult to evaluate is that its influence is rarely direct.
Sam Abadir, Research Director at IDC who previously led product and analyst relations at a software company before moving to the analyst side, describes the role as sitting at the center of three distinct conversations—only one of which most companies pay attention to.
“They talk to buyers… they talk to sellers… and they talk to private equity firms,” he said.
That third audience is the one many executives underestimate.
Private equity firms and institutional investors rely heavily on analyst perspectives to evaluate companies within a category, often tracking rankings, positioning, and perceived market strength as part of their investment decisions.
The implication is that analyst relations does not simply influence demand generation or brand perception. It shapes access to capital, valuation, and strategic positioning within a market.
One reason analyst relations is often deprioritized is that its return on investment does not follow a simple, linear model.
“It’s not like, ‘I bought this for a dollar and now I’m getting two dollars out of it,’” said Abadir, describing the difficulty of tying the function directly to revenue outcomes.
Instead, the impact accumulates across multiple parts of the business.
For emerging companies, analyst coverage provides credibility when competing against larger, more established vendors. Enterprise buyers, particularly in well-covered categories, often use analyst reports as a filter before engaging with vendors at all.
“If you’re an emerging company… it’s almost non-negotiable,” Hsu said.
That credibility extends into the sales process, where analyst involvement can materially affect outcomes. Hsu cited cases where deals influenced by analysts closed at significantly higher rates, while Sam described how analyst feedback reshaped product and pricing strategies inside his own company.
In one instance, analyst input led to a simplification of a complex pricing model that had been slowing down sales, a change that would have been difficult to justify internally without external validation.
“It’s hard to be a prophet in your own country,” Hsu noted, pointing out that internal arguments often gain traction only when reinforced by an external, credible voice.
What emerges from these examples is a different understanding of where analyst relations fits within an organization.
It is not primarily a communications function. It is a feedback system.
Analysts aggregate information from across the market—what buyers are asking, what competitors are doing, where deals are won and lost—and feed that information back into the companies they engage with.
That feedback loop, when used properly, affects not just messaging but product development, pricing, and go-to-market strategy.
“You’re working with less signals” if you are not engaging with analysts, Hsu said, framing the issue in terms that resonate with investors as much as operators.
In that sense, analyst relations resembles market intelligence more than marketing.
The role of analyst relations is also expanding as the way buyers conduct research changes.
Increasingly, enterprise buyers begin their discovery process not with vendors, but with large language models and AI-driven search, which aggregate information from multiple sources to generate recommendations.
That shift has not diminished the role of analysts. It has made their influence more diffuse.
“What the machine is doing is looking for pools of trust,” Hsu said, describing how AI systems pull from analyst research, peer review platforms, and expert communities to generate responses.
Analysts remain one of the most important of those pools, but they are no longer the only one. Companies now have to think more broadly about how they are represented across the entire information ecosystem, from formal research reports to user-generated reviews and technical forums.
The result is that analyst relations is no longer a discrete channel. It sits at the intersection of how companies are discovered, evaluated, and ultimately selected.
For companies that have not yet built an analyst relations program, the barrier is often cost.
Engaging analysts directly, subscribing to research, and potentially working with an intermediary firm represents a significant investment, often reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
That makes timing critical.
Hsu describes a threshold moment when companies move from regional or niche players to competing on a national or global stage, at which point analyst visibility becomes necessary rather than optional.
“That’s the signal… now I compete with the big boys,” he said.
For companies below that threshold, both Hsu and Sam suggest a more incremental approach.
Briefings—where companies present their strategy to analysts—are often available without a formal subscription, providing an entry point for building relationships and gathering initial feedback.
“You don’t have to be a paying customer to brief them,” Sam said, recommending that companies use those interactions to understand how analysts perceive their market and positioning.
The process is not scalable in its early stages, but it creates the foundation for a more structured program when the organization is ready.
For investors and executives, the broader implication is that analyst relations operates less like a marketing tactic and more like a structural layer in how enterprise markets function.
It influences who gets considered, how companies are evaluated, and, in many cases, who ultimately wins.
Those effects are not always visible in dashboards or attribution models, which is why they are often underestimated.
But as Hsu’s experience losing a deal with JCPenney suggests, they are no less real for being indirect.
In some cases, they determine the outcome before the conversation even begins.