Lesson 3 - Learn Your Power Users

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This lesson is all about understanding your most successful customers. Who are they, and how do they use your product to achieve their goals? We’ll discuss how identifying and studying your power users can provide valuable insights to guide your prospect conversations. Your assignment will involve researching case studies or interviewing a happy customer to understand their journey and results. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Daily Quota. I'm your host, Nicholas Hill, and in today's lesson, you're going to learn your power users. Now, your power users are not just normal day to day users of your product. These are the tip top of the funnel when it comes to your most engaged, most active, most adopted users out there. So think about people that have a high sophistication level with your product. These are folks that are using it for some of the most complex use cases that you can think of. Think about people that have a lot of tenure with your product. People that are maybe multi year veterans that have been using it since its inception. Think about people that are giving you a lot of feedback on the product. So this could be someone that is, um, they are active on community forums. They're sending you emails with wishlist items or filling out community wishlists. They are, um, emailing you to ask about getting into beta programs. They're early adopters. You can see them, uh, asking questions about new features, right? When they come out. Um, when you look at usage statistics, you will see that they are using the product more often than others. Um, all of these can be traits of a power user. Let me make sure I didn't miss any over here. Um, high engagement, sophistication, feedback, providers, early adopters, community involvement. Absolutely. Now, why should you? Engage with your power users, right? Why are these folks so important? One, they are the ones that are going to give you honest and constructive feedback on what's resonating and what's not. So as a salesperson, you don't want to just go to someone and say, Hey, did you know, is this message landing with you? Most people are going to be polite. They're going to say yes. Um, or, Hey, what do you want to see from our product? Or what are you not seeing? Or. What are our competitors offering that we're not, um, power users are going to be the ones that actually answer those questions. They're the ones that are going to give you raw, honest feedback on what's going well and what's not, um, you can leverage your understanding of a power user to predict the usage of, of other users. You can start to see kind of trends in how your product is being used. As I mentioned, these folks are normally early adopters, right? So if you see that they're starting to use the product for a specific jobs to be done or use case or workflow, um, take note of that, write that down. Maybe you can reach out to other folks that are like that user, um, and let them know that that's a possibility. Uh, let them know that other people are using it in this way, and maybe you can, uh, increase usage in other, in other, uh, prospects or customers. Um, another thing that you can do is you can use these power users as champions. Uh, we're going to talk about medpick and champion building and all of that good stuff later on. You're probably, you might already be familiar with medpick. If you are, you know how important champions are. Um, power users can be excellent champions as long as they have power influence

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otter. ai Um, a power user can, uh, they know that your product inside and out, and they can speak to its value within their organization. So, uh, it's a great way to leverage them. Um, and then another thing that you can do is, um, you can leverage these users as a case studies or testimonials. So when you think about, I realized that's a little bit more on the marketing side, but every good salesperson knows the value of a case study, proof point, testimonial, right? So if you, um, if you have power users of your product. You can reach out to them and say, Hey, I noticed that you're an avid user of our solution. I'd love to record a brief interview with you. Um, and if you're comfortable, I'd love to send that out to some of the folks I'm talking to and let them know about some of the great things our product can do. And a lot of people are more than happy to help you with these things as long as it doesn't require too much of their time. Um, alright, so I think I've covered all the different ways that you can engage with power users, valuable insights, understand their usage patterns. Um, yeah, it helps you understand upsell, cross sell opportunities for other prospects. Uh, you can leverage them as proof points, market trends. Yeah, good stuff. So how do you actually identify a power user, right? The first is, uh, look at your analytics tools. Sure. Um, you can ask your product team, your product marketing team, your revenue marketing team. Um, what analytics do we have on who our power users are? Uh, what are they using us for? What are their top used use cases? Um, so you can ask these basic questions, but the more you dig in, the more you're going to learn. So I would encourage you. Um, look at, you know, things like Google Analytics or Mixpanel. Um, you don't have to learn these platforms backwards and forwards, but some basic reporting, uh, uh, can pull up a few lists of who your top users are, and then you can reach out to them and, and get to know them. Um, CRM data, right? If you look at your CRM data, you might be able to, uh, Find which contacts have reached out to us the most. You can see which contacts are most likely to respond to an email. Um, you can look at sometimes user data will flow right into Salesforce or HubSpot. Um, so look at your CRM data, look at your support tickets. Uh, this is one that not a lot of people think about. Um, if you go to your support team, you can say, Hey, who's reaching out about, uh, early features, beta features, who's reaching out to give us constructive feedback. You'd be, I did customer support enablement for four years. You'd be surprised how often people will reach out, not for help, but literally just to give us feedback because that's the email or the phone number that they found to reach out to us. So look at your support ticket, analyze what people are asking about. Um, and then the last one, just, you know, start to think about, uh, is there, is there something in POCUS? Uh, can you talk to your customer? Oh, sorry. POCUS is a commonly used sales tool, um, where you can see power users in contact. Sometimes your data team will feed those lists. And if you're not using POCUS, it might be a different tool. Um, you could also ask your customer success manager, right? If you're coming in new, but your customer success manager is a little more tenured. You can ask them, Hey, who are the, who are the contacts you talk to the most? Who are our most powerful, uh, users and, and get in front of those folks. Um, now I want to introduce the concept of a persona card because it isn't just enough to know who your power users are. You need to actually kind of codify this. You need to understand what does a typical power user for my solution look like. Um, you're wrong, uh, it's sales, uh, it's marketing and it's sales. You need to be able to build a persona card out and then you can go find other people that are more likely to become power users. And this is where it really becomes more sales specific, right? So what you need to be doing is you need to build out what's called a persona card. If you're rolling your eyes right now and saying, Nick, that's marketing, that's not sales. Um, you're wrong. Uh, it's sales. Uh, it's marketing and it's sales. You need to be able to build a persona card out. Um, and really understand what are the demographics, the psychographics, the behavioral traits of your most common users so that you can more effectively go find those users. So let's go through the details. And I'm going to look over at my notes a lot for this part, because I want to make sure I'm getting every detail here for demographics. You want to be thinking about age. You want to be thinking about gender, location, education, level, and income level, right? So think about, um. Um, you know, what is the average kind of age, occupation, uh, gender, location, um, what are, are, are my, am I typically working with professionals? Am I typically working with working class folks? Um, what is, is it someone with a master's degree or these PhD students? Um, is this someone with a high school education? You want to start thinking about demographic information. Professional details. I kind of slipped into this a second ago, but job title, industry function, um, company size. Am I selling to small businesses? Am I selling to startups? Am I selling to fortune 50 companies? Tenure. Am I typically selling my solution to someone that's brand new? Or am I selling to someone with 15 years of experience? Who's going to be using it for more robust use cases? Um, think about psychographics. What are their goals and aspirations? What are these folks aiming to achieve both personally and professionally? What are their challenges and pain points? And we're going to, we're going to dig into their challenges and pain points in a future lesson too. But, um, what are their values? What are the core beliefs and ethics? Um, and values that drive these individuals. And then ultimately, what are their interests? And if you're a good salesperson, you know that, uh, being able to identify common ground, common interest is huge. So if you can find out what are they like, are they sports fans? Are they theater fans? Are they interested in. Um, scientific and technology news, are they interested in, um, business and investment news? What are the things that really get them interested and engaged in talking? Um, because that's going to help you connect with them. Um, what are their behavioral traits? Think about their buying motivations. What are the things that are driving their purchasing decisions? Um, what are their concerns? What are the objections they're most likely to bring up? We'll talk about objection handling in a little bit. What are their preferred communication channels? This is one that is very important to think about. Do they prefer talking on the phone? If they are, um, if they're on a shop room floor, if they're in manufacturing, they might prefer talking on the phone. They're not sitting in front of a computer all day. They're on the floor doing work. If they're in an office, if they're a knowledge worker, maybe they prefer email. Maybe they prefer slack or text message. Um, if they're out doing calls all day, uh, you need to understand what is that preferred communication channel. Um, and then what is their role in the buying process? We're going to talk about the buying committee in a future lesson, but. Are they an influencer? Are they a passive kind of, uh, agree or are they the key decision maker? Are they the economic buyer? The executive sponsor? Are they a detractor? Are they typically the person that's going to come in and kill the deal? Right? Um, although if these are your power users, they're probably not the detractor. Um, and then finally, start thinking tactically about things like media consumption. Where are these individuals? Are they on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit? Are they on GitHub? Are they on community forums? Are they on your website? Um, where are they congregating and interacting? Are they using, uh, what competitors are they likely to use? What other tools are they likely to use in, uh, kind of collaboration with your product or alongside your product tongue tied. Um, and then you also want to think about, uh, any insights they've provided in surveys or reviews. Um, any quotes, you know, what is a day in the life? What are the. Visual, you know, what are the kind of timelines of their workflow? How do they spend their time and their day to day job? Um, all of these are going to be so useful to understand. Now, I realize that can feel like a lot. I promise you it's worth it. If you can really sit down and spend time early in your career, understanding who your personas are, really what makes them tick. You will be able to connect with them. You'll be able to build trust with them. You'll be able to develop your relationships with them. You'll have stronger credibility thought partnership. You'll be able to speak more valuably about your product in a way that resonates with their needs. Um, it's really, really important to be able to do this stuff. Now, obviously, once you know this information, um, you will use it to craft targeted outreach to craft your elevator pitch to craft your objection responses to craft your differentiation messaging against your competitors. There is so much that you'll be able to do. Once you have a full understanding of your personas, but the first step is to build those personas, uh, persona cards. Now, before we jump into, uh, before you actually go do this, let's just go through a quick example. We're going to talk about Tim, the tax accountant. So let's say that we are, um, we are offering tax accounting software. That's the solution for this example. Our persona might be Tim, the tax accountant, and some of the information we know about Tim. Typically, Tim is age 40, male, lives in urban areas. He has a master's degree or a Ph. D. in finance or business. Household income tends to be 150, 000 to 200, 000. Um, Tim works in the finance industry. Normally job title would be like a senior tax accountant. He works at a mid sized firm, typically about 10 to 15 years of experience, or he's in a partnership with one or two other accountants. And when we think about what Tim wants, Tim is aiming to ensure accuracy, security and compliance of tax documents. He's facing challenges with complex tax codes across different states. He values integrity and diligence. Um, he's interested in financial planning. And when you think about Tim's behavioral traits, some of the things that he's motivated by efficiency, reliability, reliability, Um, concerns about software security, making sure that his client's information isn't going to get out. Um, he prefers emails and professional networking sites to congregate with other accountants. Um, he is the decision maker when it comes to purchasing the software that he's going to use. And then when it comes to media consumption, Tim, typically, uh, he reads Forbes, he subscribes to the Forbes newsletter. He's highly engaged during, especially during and right before tax season. And he's provided some positive feedback on the user interface of your product, but typically requests more options for customization. So, that's an example of what a persona card might look like, and apologies if I was looking back and forth on my notes there. But I think that, you know, for, for your sake, you want to first ask your mentor, ask your manager, ask your marketing team, does this information already exist? If it does get it from them, but then validate it with your own experience and your own eyes and your own, um, research that you're, that you're doing. So. Very, very important to create these persona cards, put them in your own words and really, really studied them. All right, it's your turn for today's assignment. You're going to identify your products. Top three power users, um, use the methods given, ask around, um, figure out who your power users are, use your CRM data analytics, um, look at, you know, support tickets, ask your CSMs. Um, any way that you can get that information. Um, and then once you've done that, I want you to draft at least one full persona card with all of the information that we've talked about, um, for your top power user type, your study guide is going to walk you through this. Um, and that is it for today's lesson. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next time.