Kudos to the Community Builders
Neighbors: It’s Now Up to You to Keep It Vibrant

By Larry Fleischman, Practice Director, Branding and Go-to-Market Strategies & Solutions

Televerde joined SiriusDecisions last year after hearing references by multiple clients to the research firm. In the midst of so much incoming information from groups like MarketingSherpa, CMO Council, DMA, Gartner, Forrester and others, keeping up with all market chatter was, and frankly still is, a little overwhelming. Probably similar to how many of you keep up the pace, we tend to listen to the conversations that appear to rise above the rest. Sadly, sometimes that’s a function of volume – literally the companies generating the most amount of information. Because we all have email addresses, they’re just hard to avoid. 

But what should reallygenerate the most attention are those conversations that appear to be the most sensible, relevant and timely. (Old school I know. But hey, if 50 is the new 40 (or maybe the new 30, then Old School is the new New School!) These conversations are sometimes hard to find but generally worth the effort. We found that sensibility when we engaged with Sirius. While the initial attraction was simply a result of how often their name was coming up in dialogues with our current and future customers, the thing that encouraged the formal relationship and that is sustaining our interest is the relevance of what they’re saying. 

Now we don’t always agree with everything SiriusDecisions says (again, relevance is the thing), but we’re okay with that. We all have different perspectives of the world, unique experiences, and our lenses aren’t always focused on the same things. And disagreement can be a good thing, especially when it forces a conversation about a topic that really does need to be more deeply examined. In the end, we may realize it’s worth changing a previously closely held belief, or standing even more strongly by a long-held conviction, or simply agreeing to disagree and move on to another topic. We’ve had some of those moments as I’m sure you have too around your own conference room discussions. 

After joining SiriusDecisions, we downloaded and voraciously read all the research briefs we were entitled to. We discussed them amongst ourselves and others. We spoke to and questioned some of their analysts and other execs about the things we were reading. We attended some of their events to network and listen more closely in intimate settings to issues that sales and marketing execs in the high-tech market were experiencing. We engaged in the conversation when appropriate. Some of what we heard was new, some of it was information we already knew but with a fresh twist that re-stimulated the conversation and gave us the platform for engaging more people – more of our own staffers and clients – in the conversation. It has given us a water-cooler to gather around.