AR at Scale: Everything Sneha Kapoor and Shawn Rogers Said That You Need to Hear
By Shashi Bellamkonda | March 25, 2026 | Talking Headless Show Recap
The March episode of the Talking Headless Show was one of those conversations that did not want to end. I had two guests I have known for a while and respect a lot: Sneha Kapoor, Managing Partner for MEA and APAC at Kea Analyst Relations, and Shawn Rogers, CEO of BARC USA, who literally joined us live from a vendor event he was attending that morning. Twenty-eight years in the industry and still in the room where things are happening. That tells you something.
Sneha and I actually met as panelists in the Women in Product Marketing community event. Shawn was one of the first people who welcomed me when I started as an analyst attending an event, introduced me around, and gave me the lay of the land. These are not cold panelists. These are colleagues, and the conversation had that energy.
Here is everything that came out of it that is worth your time, organized by topic.
Sales Enablement: The Biggest Missed Opportunity in AR
This was the topic I pushed hardest on and the one that generated the most concrete advice. The problem everyone in this community knows: sales teams say they never hear a prospect mention an analyst or a report. Leadership takes that as evidence that AR is not working. The actual problem is that nobody is asking the right question.
Sneha's fix is systematic. Her team runs sales enablement sessions every couple of months, timed to where each client is on their AR journey. They go deep: sample outreach emails, how to reference analyst coverage compliantly, how to position analyst-backed content in a conversation with a prospect. The goal is to make salespeople capable of using what AR has built, not just aware that it exists.
The most important habit she recommends is simple: train your sales team to ask every prospect, early in qualification, which advisors or analysts they consulted before starting their evaluation.
Then make sure that answer goes into the customer relationship management system. When that data accumulates, the attribution picture becomes visible. Sneha described clients who have been able to show multi-million dollar pipeline impact once this tracking was in place, from budgets that started at just a few thousand dollars.
There is also a sales outcome that surprised even some of her clients. Prospects who had gone completely dark, not responding to anything, agreed to meet after an outreach that referenced analyst-backed positioning. The ghosting problem, she said, has changed for clients who do this well.
I also pointed out that the savvier sales teams are now using AI to scan call recordings for any mention of analysts or reports. That is another way to build the attribution data, and it is happening whether AR teams know about it or not.
The one thing to do this week: Add one field to your sales qualification process. "Which analysts or advisors did you speak with before starting this evaluation?" Log every answer. Review it in ninety days.
The Opportunity in Analyst Relations Is Still Wide Open
Both guests made a version of this point independently. Analyst Relations is still a small community. I mentioned that the number of professionals whose primary focus is Analyst Relations is probably not even in the thousands globally. Sneha agreed, and added a layer: even large companies that absolutely should have an AR function often do not. That gap is opportunity.
Her formula for where Analyst Relations delivers value is memorable: fifty percent of the work is driving report mentions, fifty percent is driving recommendations. The story does not end when you get a report mention. That is the starting point for amplification through marketing campaigns, sales enablement, event content, and go-to-market strategy.
Sneha's broader point is that companies are beginning to understand that Analyst Relations is not a luxury for large enterprises. Startups scaling toward their Series C, companies planning a funding round, companies eyeing an eventual public offering: all of them have a window to build analyst credibility before they need it.
Her advice is specific. If you are planning an initial public offering, start your AR program two to three years before you think you are ready. If you are raising a round, start at least a year out. The credibility that analysts carry with investors and buyers does not build quickly. I brought up SpaceX as an example of a company you hear a lot about for IPO potential but whose AR presence is invisible. That is a gap.
Global AR: It Does Not Work the Same Everywhere
Sneha moved from being an analyst at International Data Corporation in Singapore to running AR across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. That jump came from a specific observation: companies in those regions have serious global ambitions, but most of them have never thought about analyst relations as a channel to support that growth. They see Analyst Relations as something US and European companies do.
The nuance she brought, which I think gets missed in US-centric Analyst Relations conversations, is that the analyst ecosystem looks different in each region. The relationships, the firms that carry weight, the way companies engage: all of it requires localization. Running a global Analyst Relations program means speaking to analysts in the US for one view of the market, Europe for another, Singapore and India for another. They are not all saying the same thing.
Shawn confirmed this from the analyst side. BARC is headquartered in the US and in Wurzburg, Germany, and their European event has been running for fifteen years. He made the observation that face-to-face engagement is becoming more important again across every region, something he said he missed during the years when in-person events disappeared.
His firm runs thirteen events globally per year and is doing a new data and analytics retreat in Colorado this May. The point he was making is that the analysts who are physically present, in the room with vendors and end users, are building a kind of synthesis that cannot be replicated remotely. For AR teams thinking globally, knowing which analysts are actually showing up in your region matters.
How to Actually Reach an Analyst
Sneha was direct about what works and what does not. Most outreach fails because it is templatized. A generic email to a list of analysts is not a strategy. Before her team writes a single word of outreach on behalf of a client, they run a deep-dive workshop to understand the product well enough to connect it to what specific analysts are actively researching. The pitch has to feel like it adds to the analyst's thinking, not interrupt it. If it reads like the sender could have swapped in any other analyst's name, it will not land.
Her practical tip on this: read the analyst's recent published work before reaching out. Connect the pitch to something they are already working on. She also made a point that I thought was underused: a contrarian angle works. If your client's product challenges a conventional assumption in the analyst's coverage area, lead with that. Analysts are not looking for confirmation. They are looking for signal.
Shawn added a relationship layer. The AR professionals he has worked with for twenty years are a completely different conversation than a cold inbound. You cannot manufacture that relationship quickly. Consistent, genuine engagement over time is the only way to build it. The community is small and hospitable. He and I are friendly despite coming from different firms. He helped me plan a road trip once. These things matter. Do not be afraid to reach out to people in the community without a commercial agenda.
Briefing Best Practices: What Analysts Actually Notice
Shawn has been on the receiving end of these briefings for nearly three decades. I asked him directly: when you hear something in a briefing you disagree with, do you say it in the room or follow up privately?
His answer was situational. In what he called cattle call briefings, fifty or sixty analysts on a call, he saves the critical commentary for private follow-up. The format does not invite that kind of exchange. In a one-on-one, the playing field is different. He will say what he thinks. He described AR people who have specifically told him that the executive in the room wants unvarnished feedback, including being called out if they say something that does not hold up. Those, he said, are the most productive conversations he has.
On what not to do in a briefing, he named three phrases that immediately put analysts on guard: claiming to be first, claiming to have no competition, claiming to own a category. Every analyst has seen those slides. They do not build credibility. They signal pitch mode. What he responds to is transparency: features labeled as beta, timelines labeled as timelines, and a willingness to have a real conversation. He added one specific thing he loves: vendors who put a small label in the corner of every slide indicating whether a feature is in beta, generally available, or coming in a future quarter. It tells the analyst the company respects their time and is not hiding anything.
Shawn also made a broader point about what makes an analyst valuable. He attends roughly twenty-five vendor events per year and talks to end users daily through advisory and events programs. The combination of those two perspectives, synthesized over decades, is almost impossible to reproduce. End users cannot attend every software conference. Vendors tend to live in a bubble. Analysts sit at the intersection of both. That is the value an AR program is paying for. Treat the briefing accordingly.
On AI: Opportunity, Threat, and the Search Question Nobody Has Fully Answered Yet
Both guests engaged with AI honestly, which I appreciated. Shawn's framing at BARC is that AI is more opportunity than threat, though he acknowledged this is one of the most volatile periods he has seen in the industry. Analyst firms are rethinking how they package services, how they add value, and how they stay relevant when some of what they do can now be approximated by a language model.
His answer to where AI cannot replace the analyst is the synthesis point. He had just run a vector graph visualization test that morning, built by one of his data scientist analysts. The tools are genuinely useful. But the insight that comes from sitting in a room with a senior vice president of product strategy at a vendor event, the kind of conversation that was happening later that same afternoon for Shawn, is not something a model trained on public information can reproduce. AI amplifies what analysts can do. It has not replaced the judgment that comes from being physically present and asking the hard questions.
The most forward-looking part of this conversation was about AI-powered search and what it means for AR. Shawn made the observation that being cited in an AI-generated answer is becoming as strategically important as appearing at the top of a search result. Analyst-generated content, because it is independent, in-depth, and carries a genuine point of view, tends to surface in those responses. The AR work you do today to build analyst relationships and earn research coverage is now also shaping how your company appears when buyers use AI to shortlist vendors.
Sneha added the other side: AI amplifies everything, including coverage that works against you. Analyst firms that understand this are already measuring it. Shawn offered to share two slides he uses to show how analyst firm influence is being tracked inside AI outputs. The implication for AR professionals is that your new coverage map is not just about which reports mention your client. It is about which AI answers do.
The one thing to do this week: Search for your company or a key client in two or three AI-powered search tools. See who and what comes up. That is your current analyst influence footprint in AI.
A Few Other Takeaways Worth Noting
On attracting more people to the AR profession, Sneha made a structural argument: the discipline stays small partly because it is too often run as a tactical, transactional function rather than a strategic one. When AR is positioned as a report-tracking exercise with narrow key performance indicators, it does not attract ambitious people and it does not keep them. Elevating the role starts with executive sponsorship. If the chief executive or chief growth officer does not show up for business update briefings, the AR program cannot do its job no matter how good the practitioner is.
On what to look for when choosing an analyst firm to work with, Shawn said the first question to ask is what kind of firm it is. Some have a media slant. Some lean toward marketing and marketeering. Some are pure research. Knowing which type you are working with before you engage saves a lot of confusion about what you will actually get.
On the culture of the analyst community generally: both guests agreed it is more collegial than outsiders expect. Shawn talked about getting real value from competitors he has known for twenty years. I mentioned that he helped me navigate my first analyst events. Sneha noted she was ready to set up an agenda-less conversation with Shawn after this episode. The point is worth saying out loud: the AR and analyst community is small, welcoming, and worth investing in as a community, not just as a transaction.
Watch the Full Episode
I am summarizing here but the full conversation goes deeper on all of these. Watch the recording and every past episode of the Talking Headless Show on the playlist below. The show is part of the CRM Playaz Production Network and broadcasts live on LinkedIn on the last Wednesday of every month.
Watch here: Talking Headless Show Playlist
Next episode: last Wednesday of April 29th . Guest suggestions and topic ideas welcome. Find me on LinkedIn.
Sources
Bellamkonda, Shashi, host. "AR at Scale with Sneha Kapoor and Shawn Rogers." Talking Headless Show, CRM Playaz Production Network, 25 Mar. 2026, youtube.com/playlist.