What is Pay for play? action-packed thriller

There are more than 100,000 vendors who provide a staggering array of IT products and services to corporations world-wide. The global IT market exceeds $5 trillion. 

Navigating this complex landscape is overwhelming for IT buyers and CIOs, so they turn to IT analysts for help identifying alternatives, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, structuring contracts, and negotiating deals. Analysts help them sort and sift through the dizzying array of options and select the solutions that will best meet their needs. Industry research shows that IT Analysts are trusted above all other sources of information by IT buyers. 

However, the credibility of analysts is not without challenge. PAY FOR PLAY is a charge frequently leveled at analyst/advisory firms, but rarely (if ever) proven. Vendors who fare poorly in analyst research and see their sales impacted often lay the blame for their performance at the feet of analysts.  "That analyst must be on the take" is the exasperated claim.

In the advisory services market, PAY FOR PLAY refers to the unethical practice where a tech market analyst provides biased recommendations to buyers in exchange for payments or favors from IT vendors. This can involve artificially promoting one vendor, so their sales accelerate, or unfairly criticizing another, so its market share falls. Such accusations can severely damage an advisory firm's brand, which hinges on its perceived independence and impartiality. 

This novel examines What If?   

• What if an advisory services company was built specifically to exploit Pay for Play?
• What if analysts ignored ethical boundaries to engage in Pay for Play? 
• What if analysts altered research to benefit or destroy tech vendors for personal profit?
• What if analysts secretly made massive investment decisions based on insider information and falsified their research to manipulate and move markets? 
• What if billions of dollars in sales, market capital, and intellectual property were at stake? 
• What if the illegal trades fed a multinational money laundering enterprise and were used for industrial espionage?  
• What if one man, with a history of violence, was manipulated to engage in pay-for-play, then in a moment of moral clarity, fights back?

Bill spent over thirty years in the IT analyst and advisory industry, holding leadership roles in research, consulting, and sales. He supported hundreds of IT vendors and generated over a billion dollars in revenues for the advisory firms he represented. 

His teams helped IT vendors build markets, deploy cutting edge technologies, and solve complex business challenges, and they were richly rewarded. Under Bill’s leadership, they generated tens of millions of dollars in commissions while the vendors they supported amassed trillions of dollars in sales. During his tenure, Bill collaborated with thousands of analysts and experienced nothing but the highest standards of personal and professional conduct. Marcus Shea, and the criminal practices of LAG and Perseid, are purely fictional. 

In his role, Bill travelled to all the exotic locations in Pay for Play. He also attended every wrestling match his two boys competed in. From elementary school through high school, both his sons spent more time on the wrestling mat than any other activity. Their summers were filled with wrestling camps, club teams, and matches. Family vacations were sandwiched around big meets. For years, Thanksgiving and Christmas meals were spartan events in an effort to help them stay on weight. 

Bill was never one of those mat fathers who screamed at refs, argued with coaches, or confronted other parents in the stands. He learned to appreciate the dedication, sacrifice, and honor of the wrestler. His sons introduced him to MMA, and it has become a shared passion for them that endures to this day. They always cheer for the athletes who emerge from the wrestling discipline, appreciating the grit and perseverance they bring to the sport.

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Analyst Relations and Influencer Strategies | Bill Gannon | Substack