Week 30 | Idea 30 | Plan for buyer, user, end-user engagement
Remember that in any mid market or enterprise sale, there are multiple types of stakeholders. For example, for our product like Rocketlane, which is into accelerating customer onboarding and implementation projects:
- the buyer with the budget may be a CCO, a VP of CS, or a VP of PS
- the user may be a Head of PS, Head of Onboarding/Implementation or a lead in CS
- another key influencer may be from CS Ops or Services Ops
- end-users are your onboarding specialists, engagement managers, or CSMs
While we all know that we need to do an admin training and a user training, we often don't formulate our onboarding plans taking into account what sort of engagement is needed for each of these persona during the journey, taking into account needs of each of them.
Here are some ideas of what is needed for each:
- the buyer needs conversations and updates around their top goals, priorities, and ROI. The steering committee meetings and ROI workshop that we've discussed in previous tips are great ways to engage them.
- The functinoal leader / user persona needs to again see how you are helping meet goals, ROI, and also updates on hitting key milestones on the journey. They will also want to be very plugged in on adoption, reports, dashboards, and also anything you can do for their team to learn / grow. Communicate with them about timelines and milestones, keep them involved actively during setting up of reports, dashboards, and share your adoption plans, as well as any sessions you do for their team to engage and level-up (like an expert session to activate and energise the group). Also maybe have a session for them to talk to other customers who can share how they are getting value - as a way to put them in a frame of mind to pursue extracting similar value for their team. Involve them in finding the right initial end-users from their team who can be internal champions for adoption
- The ops lead needs to have admin training, and also active help in setting up the account, setting up the reports, etc. Help them with best practices sessions, and also work on iterating your plan itself with these folks to ensure they are partners with you throughout the journey.
- For end-users, plan sessions to : (1) energize , (2) train, (3) activate (per go-live plan), and (4) support them through the journey. You need to ensure they come in with the right mindset where they know what they are getting out of this, and why it is important for the company. We've written in the past about selecting the right users, gamifying adoption, and collaborating with them to get your training right. Lastly, ensure you make them successful with your tool. We've covered Reverse demos, but it is also good to have a hypercare phase of regular meeting and enablement for large end-user teams.
The above points are just a framework for you to think about the different persona and ensure you are addressing all of them in your roll-outs. If you have more ideas, do reach out and share your feedback with me in the comments or DM!
