Dan Martell - June 04, 2018


How To Run a Great SaaS Customer Conference


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

184.2731

Word Count

1,524

Sentence Count

68


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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.