At GitLab we spend a substantial amount of effort on Analyst Relations (AR) which is working with groups like Gartner, Forrester, and 451 Research. On https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/org-chart/ you can see we have two people who are a dedicated Analyst Relations Manager. They manage the relationship but many of our product marketing managers and product managers are involved to answer questions and give presentations.

An important thing these firms do is aggregate customer feedback. For a consumer tool I can look on Quora and for a development tool I can look at Hacker News. But for enterprise tools the people that use the product are often not allowed to share feedback themselves. However they are allowed to talk with analysts.

That is why the opinions of these analysts are often really important to convince new customers your product is any good https://about.gitlab.com/is-it-any-good/

BTW We just won a 451 Firestarter award https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2020-01-14-gitlab-re... which we're stoked about.