What Analysts Actually Want From the People Who Brief Them

Talking Headless · Analyst Relations

I hosted Kate Mauser and John Santaferraro on Talking Headless this week, and an hour wasn't enough. Kate leads analyst relations (AR) at Boomi. John runs Ferraro Consulting and covers enterprise tech as an independent analyst after years as a CMO himself. I've known Kate a long time and wanted her on the very first episode of this show, over a year ago now. John and I keep crossing paths at events, so I finally got him on too. Here's what stuck with me.

Kate's Career Is a Masterclass in Starting Over

She's been doing this for over twenty years. StorageTek first, learning disk drives on the hardware side. Then JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, SAP, running a global team across security, content management, business intelligence, the works. Then she did something most people at that level don't do. She went to Domo and built AR from scratch as a team of one. Took that experience to Tableau during its run-up to being acquired by Salesforce. Then went to Boomi, freshly divested from Dell, and built AR from scratch again.

I asked her directly what that's like, going from running a big team to being the only person twice. Her answer: you see the whole program, strategy, goals, everything, but every mistake is yours. And you outgrow what one person can do faster than you'd think, if the company's growing the way you want it to.

There's No Right Org Chart for AR

Kate's worked both ways. AR under individual business units, closer to product and strategy decisions. AR centralized under marketing, focused on mindshare and brand. She wouldn't say one beats the other. It depends on the skill sets already on your team and where the company needs impact right now, and that answer changes as the market shifts under you. Last year's priorities might not matter this year.

Curiosity Is the Trait Kate Hires For

I asked Kate how she gets executive buy-in to grow her team. Her answer wasn't about pitching a budget. It was about who she hires. AR gets chaotic fast, relationships, launches, inquiries all at once, so she looks for people who are naturally curious and comfortable making mistakes while they figure things out. That's also, she said, what earns trust with executives. They see a team that keeps adapting as the market moves under it.

The Portal Debate I Didn't Expect to Win

Julie asked the question I knew was coming: what do analysts think of analyst portals? John didn't hold back. He wants direct communication. He said the briefings and conversations a portal can't replicate are where the real value sits.

Kate agreed on the direct communication part, but she stood up for portals too. A single repository works, especially for a small team, and some content only makes sense to publish there since it's exclusive to analysts. Where they landed: the portal organizes what you've already said directly. It doesn't replace saying it.

Why a Company Without an AR Function Should Care

I put John on the spot for this one, since a lot of readers here haven't built an AR function yet. His list: influence with buyers, real research and numbers behind your claims, advisory input on go-to-market and competitive moves, and thought leadership co-authored with someone buyers trust more than your own content. I'd add a fifth, since it's the one that changes fastest right now. AI-powered search results surface analyst content next to yours. Credibility used to be the whole case for analyst relationships. Visibility is too, now.

Stop Sending Every Analyst the Same Deck

John's top piece of advice for AR people: analysts aren't one profile. Some are strongest at research. Others lean toward thought leadership or go-to-market strategy. His own strength, built over almost twenty years, is messaging and positioning, which he's turned into a program called Impact Messaging that he's run for companies from seed stage up to the Fortune 500. Match the analyst to the conversation instead of blasting the same briefing to everyone on the list.

He gave one example of this done right that I hadn't heard before. Before SAP's Sapphire conference, they bring in a dozen or so analysts to sit with the executives who are about to deliver keynotes, and they pressure-test the message in the room, disagreements and all. By the time those executives are on stage, they've already heard the pushback from a room full of people who don't always agree with each other or with SAP.

Gary Asked About Newsletters, and It Turned Into the Same Argument

Gary Frazier asked whether John feels the same way about quarterly vendor newsletters as he does about portals. Turns out, yes. John likes the format when it tells a story: what happened, why it matters, how it connects. A bulleted list of announcements buries the actual news. Kate's version of the same point: figure out why you're sending the update and what you want the reader to walk away with, then write toward that instead of listing everything that happened and calling it done.

John Started as a Youth Pastor

Didn't see this coming.

Ten years as a youth pastor before he co-founded a data warehouse software company and moved into product marketing, then CMO roles. About fifteen years ago he noticed the internet had handed anyone with an opinion the same reach as an analyst, so he was making trend calls from inside vendor companies long before he had the title. He joined the analyst firm EMA about eight years ago, then went independent.

I asked both of them what it takes to move into this work. John's answer: if you're doing the competitive research, the thought leadership, the messaging inside product marketing, you're already an analyst in every way but title. Kate's advice to anyone considering AR, whether it's their first job or a pivot: stay curious and never stop asking questions. She also told new AR people to get involved in the AR community itself. It's a generous group that likes to talk shop, and the relationships you build tend to outlast whatever job you're in when you meet someone. She's still close with people from the very start of her career.

Everything Is Moving Faster Except Us

I asked if information cycles have gotten too fast for something like a quarterly update to matter. Kate pointed to the range of channels available now, so no team has to lean on one method over and over, plus the summarization tools analysts themselves use to manage the volume. John put it more bluntly: everything is moving faster except the people processing it. His worry isn't the speed. It's what happens if vendors start producing every update with AI and analysts respond by running it back through their own AI. At that point there's no human judgment left in the exchange on either side, and that judgment is exactly what he thinks keeps analysts relevant no matter how far the technology goes.

How They're Both Using AI

Kate's team builds AI skills with custom guardrails to templatize recurring AR tasks like briefing plans, and she's starting to use it to prioritize where the team spends time based on the interaction data AR teams already collect, who got briefed and how the meeting went. AI is also handling meeting scheduling for analyst events now, a task she said a lot of teams still build manually in spreadsheets.

John keeps a running notebook per company he covers in Notebook LM, feeding in every piece of news and asking it direct questions instead of digging through a portal. As an independent analyst without a big research firm's database behind him, he called it one of the most useful tools he's got for cutting research time without losing the specifics.

Works Cited

Mauser, Kate, and John Santaferraro. Talking Headless. Hosted by Shashi Bellamkonda, Playaz Productions Network, 22 July 2026.