Fractional AR is an AR mercenary resource hired to work on one or more very specific AR tasks or projects at the same time. The same concept is commonly applied these days to CMOs, CTOs, CFO, CROs, and other critical business functions.

Fractional AR is elastic, adaptive and flexible. It produces results in real time minimizing your AR costs and risks.

First, your costs are much lower than hiring full time AR personnel while timing and scope are very clearly defined from the onset. Second, fractional AR is very elastic, meaning you only pay for what you need when you need it (it’s a SaaS model). Third, fractional AR is typically used to produce quick ROI with short horizon goals.

Much like cloud computing, fractional AR is price on an as-needed basis by the hour, week or month. There are no long-term contract or complicated opaque and inconsistent costing models, no lock-ins, and zero risk. You can hire us for a couple hours a week or on a monthly retainer. Need more hours one specific month vs. others? No problem. Fractional AR is elastic, adaptive and flexible to match your needs.

No. One hour a week or 20 hours a month. Monthly retainers. Whatever works for you. You can start small, adjust as needed, and throttle over time to match your exact needs in real time.

Some typical projects are listed here, but essentially, fractional AR is designed to tackle any pressing business goals, challenges or questions you might have which can be addressed quickly by engaging with industry analysts. As such, many fractional AR projects tend to involve “inbound” or insights-generating AR.

Yes. The purpose of fractional AR is to get in, get you up to speed, and deliver results as quickly as possible. In many ways, we succeed when at the end of the assignment, we fire ourselves and leave a highly functional AR program in your (and your team’s) capable hands.

Easy: I will spend up to 30 mins on an introductory call with you to answer your questions and determine if fractional AR makes sense for your needs.

It makes total sense as it can help alleviate some of your team’s backlog, or re-enforce ongoing initiatives, allowing your folks to focus on more urgent or strategic missions.

Typically anywhere from a couple of weeks to 6 months.

Acing evaluative reports is a 365 day a year endeavor, however, fractional AR can come in to re-enforce your existing team during MQ or Wave time and provide strategic and tactical advice to optimize your dot placement - This includes activities around RFIs, references selection (or online reviews like Gartner Peer Insights), and briefing development and slideware.

Why yes, yes we do - here’s a small sampling:

1 - Competitive SWOT analysis: leverage the right analysts to give you an unbiased “out of echo chamber” analysis of where you really stand in the market, gaps, and what competitive levers you might leverage. Can also answer “why are my competitors always placing better in these reports”?

2 - M&A guidance and advice: leverage analysts to recommend potential targets and approaches to either acquiring or partnering with other market players.

3 - Strategic offering guidance: leverage analysts for specific targeted advice on things like optimizing a practice or product offering. Find out what customers are really saying about you and what they really need and expect vs. what you think they do.

4 - Product launches: leverage analysts before, during and after a specific product launch to avoid missteps, guide messaging, market fit, and de-risk the whole thing.

5 - Messaging: review corporate communication and/or marketing messaging content with several key analysts. This can include re-branding, new go-to-market initiatives, new partnership announcements, product launches, reorgs, etc.

6 - Category creation POV: de-risk your strategy by reviewing a problem statement and POV with carefully-selected open-minded analysts who focus on emerging tech or have shown a propensity to “see around the corners”.

7 - Win/loss analysis: Run your win/loss analysis by the analysts and try to figure out (or confirm with the analysts) why you’re losing deals and how you can stop that nasty habit.

8 - New market segment/industry/geo/ICP: leverage analysts to help you penetrate a new market segment, geography, or industry vertical, and/or understand how to best target and message to a new ICP. Sometimes you’ll even discover a new ICP or industry you didn’t even know you could or should be selling to.

9 - Product roadmap: run a product offering roadmap by analysts and have them help you validate and prioritize it from both a demand/timing and investment perspective.

10 - Simplification: enlist the analysts to help you simplify (or modernize) business models, product portfolios, ineffective processes, or subpar operating models.

11 - Evaluative reports: engage with the analysts when a Magic Quadrant, Wave, or Marketscape process is about to start. Although the time to start engaging around these reports is 365 days a year, it’s better to have a competent harbor pilot to sail through the many pitfalls.

12 - Report relevancy: which ones matter, which ones are nice to have, and which ones you can afford to blow off: a quick AR analysis can put your mind at ease with a cost-benefit analysis.

13 - Vision and strategic planning: you think the market is headed one way and are about to pitch your board and possibly invest a boatload in that assumption. Why not run it by the analysts to validate the premise?

14 - Pricing and commercial models: ask the analysts if yours are better than your competitors. If not, who’s innovating in those areas and doing better? Hint: probably those you’re losing deals to in #7.

15 - The right stuff: are you talking to the right analysts? Have an AR pro evaluate and analyze the analysts you’re investing in to ensure an optimal ROI payoff. See pitfall #1 in this excellent article.

16 - Perception: Run a quick project to ask the analysts point blank what they think about your company or brand. Find out if they recommend you (related to #15) and if so, to what organizations and under what contexts and situations.

17 - Marketing content: enlist analysts to collaborate on content creation like videos, papers, blogs, webinars, or commissioned research (like Forrester TEIs).

18 - Demos: work with the analysts to refine and optimize your product demos.

It’s best (but not required) if clients have access to the golden standard of AR CRM aka ARInsights with a content subscription and at least one seat. Clients should also have a subscription to Slack (or Teams or other) for internal communication as well as an asset sharing platform like Box, Google Docs, or the like.

For established AR programs, clients need analyst inquiry and advisory access (meaning seats and advisory credits or budget).

For strategy/vision or product demo briefings, yes we can help with briefing messaging, design, presentation, slideware and delivery. Including figuring out who should present (and train them if needed), what to say and what to avoid saying to create and deliver briefings that won’t bore an analyst to death (which is 97% of briefings).

Yes, as fractional AR is inbound-focused and insight and advisory are the #1 AR levers that solidify analyst relationships. The more fractional AR you do, the tighter your relationships become.

Definitely. One of the most critical skill sets of an AR pro is the ability to manage upward and highlight the advantages of an AR program in terms and language business people (those who pay the bills) can understand.

It can be one or both which is a huge advantage. Some clients have immediate tactical needs, others are more interested in higher-lever strategic support. And for most, it’s a mixture of both.

Yes! Learn to Influence the influencers like a pro! This quick no-nonsense class is designed for PMMs, PMs, Marketing and Product folks who need to work with industry analysts without internal AR support. Learn “just enough” to start making real impact today.