“A note from Mark Miller: There have been some questions online, and to me through email, requesting detailed information on the selection of the SharePoint50.

Debbie Rosen from Global 360 talked with Nick Hayes, President of Influencer50, about what was looked at during the selection process.”

Debbie Rosen, Global 360: How did the SharePoint50 become the 50?

Since we have published the first SharePoint50 list we have had several people ask us how the list was developed. As I wrote in my initial article, “The SharePoint50 Project: Why we did it“, Global 360 and KnowledgeLake hired an outside firm, Influencer50 www.influencer50.com to develop the list for us. The goal was to identify the 50 people in the SharePoint community who had the greatest influence on buying decisions.

Influencer50 is both a pioneer and a leader in the field of “influencer marketing” and leverages a proprietary methodology to identify individual influencers in a market. I had the opportunity to sit down with the President and Founder of Influencer50, Nick Hayes and ask him about the Influencer50 identification process.

Debbie Rosen: Nick, we have been asked from some members of the community if the people on the list are simply those that have tweeted the most or wrote the greatest number of blogs. Is that the case?

Nick Hayes: No, certainly not. One thing is clear: ‘loudness’ is no indicator of ‘influence’. Many times people assume that the most prominent voice in their sector is therefore the most influential. Far from it. The real decision makers know that power is less ‘share of voice’ and more ‘force of persuasion’, that the most influential people are often behind the scenes, pulling the strings, the ‘kingmakers’. They are not the ones usually singing their own praises.

Because a journalist writes frequently on a subject, because a reseller specializes in just one product line, because an advisory firm has a narrow area of expertise, doesn’t necessarily make any of them the most influential. Knowledge helps, but even that is not the key factor. Influence is too complex to be based on any single attribute.

Update: Nick followed this up with a personal email and clarification

I’d ask whoever said that to do a social media search themselves and see who appears most prominently. I can guarantee there’ll be no correlation with our findings. As i’ve said before, Forrester’s own belief is that over 80% of enterprise decisions are made almost entirely offline, so any online search would throw up a very misleading set of individuals.

DR: So how do you go about selecting the “50”?

NH: Our Identification Reports rate each individual according to eight scoring categories, as judged by a group of experienced industry professionals. These eight categories are:

Market Reach: How well known, and well listened to, is the individual? Are they ubiquitous in the sector? What are the chances that a given potential customer would have heard that individual’s message?

Frequency of Impact: If we consider that the individual has just a low number of opportunities to influence then they score relatively lowly. If they are likely to have several opportunities to influence over a likely buying period then they score higher.

Independence of Impact: Once the individual’s message has been heard by the potential customer, how impactful is it? Vendors rarely score too highly here, because their message will always be considered biased. End-users are rated much more highly because their advice is considered extremely trustworthy.

Expertise: This criterion is self-explanatory, based on the individual’s number of years with relevant experience, and the seniority with which they have taken that experience.

Persuasiveness: When some people provide recommendation advice to another, their advice can be either taken or ignored without penalty. For example, the advice of regulators however usually needs to be taken extremely seriously, and so they exhibit high levels of ‘persuasiveness’.

Thoroughness of Role: Some individuals influence a decision throughout the decision-making lifecycle, from initial problem evaluation through to contract signing. Other individuals may be called in at one single micro-decision stage. How likely would it be that they could whisper in the ear of the decision-maker, should the decision not be going their way?

Online Connectedness: The vast majority of enterprise-level influence is conducted offline, not online. But online influence is increasing and our methodology incorporates this in one of our eight measures.

Peer Citations: The key influencers in any marketplace operate as an elite. They are often known to, respected by, and networked to, others among the very top influencers. Networking amongst other influencers is a frequent signpost of the respect attributed to that individual, and therefore, of their influence.

DR: How can you compare the influence of individuals in different categories, e.g. vendors to analysts?

NH: It’s a good question. In many ways of course they can’t be compared. They conduct their business in such different ways, with such different intentions, interacting with such different people, that it can seem pointless to try and compare. Until you consider that we’re not suggesting that you compare their activities at all. We’re comparing their likely effect on the decision-maker, how far we believe their views have the power to move a decision along the scale, away from selecting one supplier and towards the selection of another.

In no way are we judging their validity in the process. Some categories will naturally score much higher on certain criteria than others, regardless of the individual merits of each person. We trust that using multiple criteria to measure influence will balance out such anomalies.

DR: Thanks much Nick and I hope that does provide clarity to many who have inquired about the process.