What Do You Get for $100,000 From Gartner?

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • Gartner has a $100,000 starter plan for companies interested in Gartner’s advice for a software selection.
  • In this article, we cover what you can expect for this money.

Introduction

Gartner is the most powerful brand in IT analysis. And because of this, they can charge exorbitant fees. In the article The Similarities Between Gartner and Scientology in Sales Strategy, we covered how Gartner uses the Scientology strategy of responding to every complaint about what is provided at a certain level but stating that the excellent stuff comes at the level right above whatever the standard the customer is currently at. This allows Gartner to continually ratchet customers up “the bridge” to the next level of cost. Some companies pay Gartner a mind-boggling amount of money, we have heard in the vicinity of $10 million. You will learn what you can expect if you spend $100,000 with Gartner.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: You are reading one of the only independent sources on Gartner. If you look at the information software vendors or consulting firms provide about Gartner, it is exclusively about using Gartner to help them sell software or consulting services. None of these sources care that Gartner is a faux research entity that makes up its findings and has massive financial conflicts. The IT industry is generally petrified of Gartner and only publishes complementary information about them. The article below is very different.

  • First, it is published by a research entity, not an unreliable software vendor or consulting firm that has no idea what research is. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services as a vendor or consulting firm that shares their ranking in some Gartner report. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. 

Gartner’s Introductory Level

To get started with Gartner, it costs $100,000. However, the interesting thing is what this level includes.

  1. Previously prepared research.
  2. Calls with Gartner analysts.

At this stage, nothing is written for the client. The research received has already been amortized and paid for. And the number of hours with the Gartner analyst is minimal. The scarcity of this level has deliberately kept this way to upsell the customer to the next level. The intent is to have the client feel a bit ignored. The sales call that follows trumps up all of the extra services at “just the next level.” The client does not realize it at the time, but they will be greeted with another upsell and another upsell if they agree to the next level. The process of upselling never really ends with Gartner.

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Conclusion

Upon reviewing what is provided at the introductory level, it is clear that the $100,000 paid to Gartner is more than 95% profit for Gartner.

That is, we can conceive of no way how the costs incurred by Gartner could be more than $5,000. We say this because the number of hours of consultation is so low, and the reports that we have reviewed are standard reports shared with so many clients. Therefore, the cost is defrayed among those accounts. Secondly, Gartner has been writing those reports for years, and therefore, each new version is based upon previous versions, which were also already paid for.

Gartner is a fantastic profit machine. However, that $100,000 paid for the introductory level could be spent on actual work rather than the tiny amount of work that Gartner does. None of the client’s advice at this level is customized to the client’s environment, and even the $100,000 level at 95% margin (we estimate) is just viewed as a teaser on the part of Gartner.

The Problem: Thinking that Gartner is Focused on What is True

Gartner is hired by companies who fundamentally don’t understand how Gartner functions. Gartner has virtually no first-hand experience in the technologies they evaluate and get most of their information from executives at buyers or executives at vendors and consulting firms. Gartner is also not a research entity. They compare very poorly to real research entities once you dig into the details, as we did in the article How Gartner’s Research Compares to Real Research Entities. Gartner serves to direct IT spending to the most expensive solutions as these are the companies that can afford to pay Gartner the most money. Gartner has enormously aggressive internal sales goals that place accuracy far below revenue growth in importance.