Dan Martell - June 04, 2018


How To Run a Great SaaS Customer Conference

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Clay Call Leadpages Joe Coleman
How To Run Effective Weekly Sync Meetings For Startups How To Perfect Your SaaS Pricing Using The 10-5-20 Rule

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

184.27

Word count

1,524

Sentence count

68


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dan Martell shares how to create a customer conference that doesn't stress you out and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg. And actually, it's gonna make you a profit. And be sure to stay to the end because I'm gonna share with you the customer success timeline worksheet that helps you define the first 100 days to rock it for your customers and add more value.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur,
00:00:01.960 investor and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video,
00:00:04.940 I'm gonna teach you how to create a customer conference
00:00:08.040 that absolutely rocks and doesn't stress you out
00:00:11.240 and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg.
00:00:12.740 Actually, it's gonna make you a profit and be sure to stay
00:00:15.420 to the end because I'm gonna share with you the customer
00:00:17.620 success timeline worksheet that helps you define the first
00:00:21.680 hundred days to rock it for your customers and add more value.
00:00:30.000 So I got two quick stories I want to share with you.
00:00:39.920 One is with a client of mine in San Diego.
00:00:42.880 I remember I was coaching them and they had thousands of
00:00:45.800 customers at this point.
00:00:46.680 It's key that you have enough customers.
00:00:47.800 I suggested they create a customer conference and at first
00:00:51.640 the idea was both exhilarating and absolutely freaking scary.
00:00:55.480 I can tell by the emails and fear and text messages I got
00:00:58.260 after the fact, and I will tell you this,
00:01:00.460 they moved forward, they implemented the five steps
00:01:02.860 I'm gonna share with you in this video
00:01:04.360 and not only did they have an incredible time
00:01:08.500 and created an opportunity for their customers to connect,
00:01:11.080 but they also realized that it is
00:01:13.200 a extremely competitive advantage
00:01:16.380 for them to execute on this event.
00:01:19.180 And next year's already planned,
00:01:20.740 it's actually this year because it was last year.
00:01:22.720 The other story I wanna share with you is Leadpages.
00:01:24.760 I remember meeting Clay Call in the early days
00:01:27.220 through Clarity.fm, my previous startup.
00:01:29.860 He reached out for me for some advice on fundraising.
00:01:31.900 I got to know more of his business.
00:01:33.700 And the first year they ran their converted conference,
00:01:37.540 Clay actually reached out to me and asked me
00:01:39.600 to keynote their event.
00:01:41.360 And what was neat is afterwards he said,
00:01:43.640 you know, love to get you to sign up for our product
00:01:46.280 because I wasn't using it at the time.
00:01:47.740 And in that flow, they actually upsold the event.
00:01:51.880 I just thought, what a brilliant way to leverage
00:01:56.620 a moment in time to add more value to your customers
00:01:59.860 outside of the digital software side of things.
00:02:03.000 So what I want to share with you is the five steps
00:02:05.160 to create an incredible event and get the most
00:02:07.340 out of a customer conference.
00:02:09.440 Step number one, upsell tickets.
00:02:12.940 As I just shared with you, Clay and Leadpages
00:02:16.100 was brilliant at doing this.
00:02:17.880 They gave me a discount or at least offered it.
00:02:19.920 Obviously I was keynoting the event
00:02:21.320 so I didn't really need a ticket.
00:02:22.680 But in the signup flow after somebody ended up
00:02:26.480 putting in their credit card information,
00:02:28.040 they would prompt the user in essentially a funnel
00:02:31.960 to purchase a ticket to the upcoming customer conference
00:02:35.060 at a discount.
00:02:35.900 Now, why is this so powerful?
00:02:37.560 One, every new trial of your product or sign-up customer
00:02:42.480 is a potential new attendee of the event.
00:02:44.940 Two, if you future pace their involvement
00:02:48.680 in coming to your event, then they're already assuming
00:02:52.260 they're gonna stick around.
00:02:53.220 So from a churn reduction in customer success point of view,
00:02:56.460 It is a brilliant strategy.
00:02:58.760 Step number two, customers present.
00:03:02.160 This is probably the most powerful thing you can do.
00:03:05.260 When you look at a customer success timeline,
00:03:07.380 you know, the first 100 days, trying to figure out
00:03:09.500 what you can do to activate a customer
00:03:11.800 and really drive adoption to get them to a point
00:03:14.180 where essentially they're gonna become a raving fan.
00:03:16.420 If somebody's getting crazy success with your product
00:03:19.420 and you honor them by inviting them to speak at your event,
00:03:23.320 trust me, you're gonna build a customer for life.
00:03:26.760 Because that's, I mean, why would they ever switch off
00:03:28.920 your platform since they've already said to the world,
00:03:31.120 I love this product, here's how we're using it
00:03:32.960 and getting incredible results.
00:03:34.140 Now the key is to ask your customers to teach the audience,
00:03:38.040 other folks just like them, something of value,
00:03:40.400 may not be directly correlated to their product,
00:03:42.840 but that would just be incredible training, you know?
00:03:46.040 Because at the end of the day, people are investing to be there,
00:03:47.920 they want to learn new strategies and if your customers
00:03:50.220 have that, encourage them to share that on stage.
00:03:53.220 Step number three, record all videos.
00:03:57.060 I've seen so many times at events,
00:04:00.420 the worst part is they don't record the videos
00:04:03.740 or even worse to that was they record the videos
00:04:06.800 and they do nothing with them.
00:04:08.360 One of my beliefs is if you create incredible content,
00:04:12.680 especially driven from your customers
00:04:14.440 or from you the CEO or your product team
00:04:17.080 and you're teaching things that are relevant to them,
00:04:19.280 add that to your nurturing sequence for new sign-ups.
00:04:22.680 Maybe they didn't convert on the trials but you can still use
00:04:25.240 those videos to educate, inform and position you as a thought
00:04:30.020 leader and case studies of your customers if they're presenting
00:04:33.160 on stage for years and years to come and it's just a great way
00:04:38.060 to build community, show them that hey, if I get results,
00:04:40.500 maybe someday they'll ask me to speak on that stage as well.
00:04:43.440 So you want to make sure you record the videos.
00:04:45.400 Step number four, present awards.
00:04:48.380 Now this is Ninja, think about this.
00:04:50.280 there's probably certain levels of achievement
00:04:53.960 within your product that if a customer hit,
00:04:57.360 you'd want to reward them for it.
00:04:58.860 And what you want to do is you want to formalize that.
00:05:00.760 One of my coaching clients, the founder of bucket.io,
00:05:04.500 does this with their clients where if they hit,
00:05:06.600 I believe it's 10,000 and 25,000 leads generated
00:05:10.240 through their platform at their annual customer conference,
00:05:13.340 they actually give them a plaque, an award.
00:05:15.880 And what that does is it tells the whole audience,
00:05:18.340 the whole customer base that this is the high water mark
00:05:21.720 and if you can execute and get our product deployed and win
00:05:24.540 and succeed, we're going to recognize you for that and trust
00:05:27.840 me, I've seen tons of other companies do this and the
00:05:30.460 customers take photos of it, they share it on social media and
00:05:33.820 all it does is really just this beautiful way of rewarding an
00:05:38.200 activity that you wish all your other customers would achieve
00:05:41.420 and then informing a market of potential people just like them
00:05:44.740 that you have a product that drives results which is the
00:05:47.260 ultimate in a communication program.
00:05:48.860 So rewarding the customers at the conference by giving them a
00:05:52.760 plaque of sorts is an incredible way to just build your community.
00:05:56.860 Step number five, sell sponsorships.
00:05:59.760 Maybe you're freaking out because you're like,
00:06:01.260 hey Dan, you're asking me to run an event and we're not even
00:06:03.360 profitable and you want me to spend five figures producing
00:06:05.960 something for my customers and I'm just trying to respond to
00:06:08.260 all my support tickets or whatever it is.
00:06:10.260 Here's the deal, the way to think about events is if you can
00:06:14.160 pre-sell the tickets, and I've told you that was step one
00:06:18.100 with the upsell, that covers the cost
00:06:21.840 of implementing the event, and then if you can get sponsorship,
00:06:26.140 that's actually an opportunity for you to generate profits.
00:06:28.480 Now, the no-brainer sponsors is to actually approach
00:06:31.980 potential partners that you wanna work with in the future.
00:06:34.440 Maybe you know companies that are further along
00:06:37.080 in their journey, and they're sponsoring other events,
00:06:40.120 so you reach out to them, but your ultimate goal
00:06:44.120 would be to build a relationship with them
00:06:45.920 so that someday you could actually ask them
00:06:47.960 to promote your product to their customers.
00:06:50.200 So there's a way not only to subsidize the cost,
00:06:52.960 make a profit from your customer conference,
00:06:54.800 but also build relationships for potential distribution
00:06:58.200 channels from a partnership point of view.
00:07:01.040 So quick recap, step number one, upsell tickets.
00:07:04.400 Two, customers present, invite them
00:07:06.700 as part of your customer success process.
00:07:08.640 Three, record all videos.
00:07:11.040 Four, present awards to show customers
00:07:13.880 what's possible, five, sell sponsorships to actually make a
00:07:18.280 profit and potential new partners.
00:07:20.780 As I mentioned at the beginning of this video,
00:07:22.480 I want to share a resource that'll really help you take your
00:07:25.120 engagement with the customer to the next level.
00:07:26.620 It's called the Customer Success Timeline and it defines the
00:07:30.160 first 100 days.
00:07:31.000 I got this framework from my buddy, Joey Coleman.
00:07:33.860 He's got the seven phases of a customer relationship.
00:07:37.040 Those are mapped on the timeline with opportunities for you to
00:07:39.940 design the steps.
00:07:41.440 One of those steps should be inviting your customers to
00:07:44.240 present, potentially gifting them a ticket if they hit a
00:07:47.780 certain level of achievement within your product.
00:07:50.540 But the worksheet will help you design that and really build
00:07:54.080 an incredible adoption curve for your customer.
00:07:57.500 If you like this video, be sure to click the like button,
00:08:00.580 subscribe to my channel and if you know somebody that could
00:08:03.280 really benefit from it, share it with them directly.
00:08:06.340 So thanks for watchin' and I'll see you next week.
00:08:10.180 Boom.
00:08:11.640 Wanted to do that one forever.
00:08:15.140 Forever.