Definition:
1. The Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) is a proprietary research tool developed by Gartner Inc., a US based research and advisory firm. According to Gartner, the Magic Quadrant aims to provide a qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants, thus possibly enabling a company to be a stronger competitor for that market.
2. A customer reference request that can make your heart rate speed up and cause panic.
Alright to be honest it's not that bad but there are some things you should know about this type of request. First of all, let me say I've only done analyst requests for Gartner so that is what my experiences are based on. I have helped with at least ten Magic Quadrants while I've been a customer reference manager. The most important thing is to provide the best customer references you have. The analyst will interview your customer and then will base a lot of his/her decision where to place your company in the Magic Quadrant on your customer's feedback, so take your time to qualify your customers to make sure you are providing the best references you have!
Second, if you are prepared this won't be too stressful. All you have to provide Gartner is a list of usually 10-12 of your top customers they can interview. Depending on the analyst, you usually will need to provide some customers in the following categories: enterprise, medium and smaller business. Hopefully by now, you've been building up your reference list and you can pull out your handy dandy database or spreadsheet and look at who you have for your analyst references. Depending on what analyst you will be working with on the Quadrant you may have to provide information about your customers like number of employees, offices worldwide, etc. What I have found useful is to whip up aan online survey you customers can fill out in a few minutes to provide this information. This has been very effective.
Third, while this is an important request it can also be easier to fulfill than others. Most customers can do these without getting corporate or management approval, as it's a confidential reference and the company's name will never be used. This is where you can finally use your big-name Fortune 100 customers who can't help with any other reference requests such as press and other public-facing activities.
