From Silos to Synergy: Aligning Community Efforts with Sales Strategies

Nicole Saunders: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to CX Nexus. I'm Nicole Saunders here with my co host
Chris Detzel: Chris Detzel.
Nicole Saunders: Chris, how are you doing this week?
Chris Detzel: I'm good. I like how we do that. It's just I'm Chris Detzel and you're Nicole. It's
Nicole Saunders: like we've been doing this for a while or something.
Chris Detzel: We have, honestly, we've been doing it for a really long time, in some way.
Or fashion, right? So today we wanted to talk a little bit, something a little different, and it's around this thinking around like you and I own community and within an organization, online communities and all the programs that go with those with the community, one of the things that I think community leaders, I wouldn't say everyone, but a lot of folks have a hard time in connecting, community in to the rest of the organization. So today you and I think we should talk a little bit about, you know, how we might connect community into cells and into what they call cells plays and how, and what that means, and how we're trying [00:01:00] to make sure we're not in our own silos.
Well,
Nicole Saunders: and this is a key topic, right? Because of course, every episode of our podcast, we're trying to explore intersections in different parts of business. But I think sales is one in particular that community professionals tend to avoid, right? And the reason is that we know that users aren't going to come show up at a community event or in a forum if they're just getting sold to.
That's not why they're there. They're there to connect. They're there to do other things. They don't want to be constantly pitched at. That's going to disrupt that engagement. It's still important that we think about how community fits in with the sales and the funnel and all of it. Why marketing exists is to help drive sales.
The business is driven by the sales. And so I think that there is, that needle to thread of not being salesy, but not avoiding connecting your community and your sales motion.
Chris Detzel: Yeah. And I think that. You got to figure out where your community plays. [00:02:00] I believe that, there's a few different areas.
I do believe that to some degree community can play in the net new space. But you really have to create programs for the sales organization to do that. We're not going to talk about that specific part today, necessarily. Although maybe we get into that with the sales plays that we'll talk about.
What I'm thinking about and Nicole, tell me if I'm wrong or Hey, look your way off, but is more around that expansion piece, because that's where I think community plays really well because think about it. Community on people come in from a product community. So let's be real, a B2B kind of product specific community.
People come into a community because they have an issue or they have, they need help, in solving an issue or want to figure out how others might've resolved this issue. Or, Hey, I didn't know you're using this piece of the product, tell me more about that kind of product. So for example, when you look at my community, one of the programs and Look, I've spoke about this a [00:03:00] lot, but is our I call them community shows or webinars.
All of that is all connected into our sales pipeline connected Tableau and tells me how much revenue or influence pipeline that the community webinars and shows are producing. This is different. And the outcome is that, right? Like we want to make sure that we can, Provide influence pipeline.
So that's the outcome, but how are we driving salespeople to use these live community webinars that we're doing? And, or even afterwards, because, when I think about expansion, like they're already using the product, but there's other parts of the product that maybe they don't have, or maybe they can use that we want to talk about, not necessarily to sell them, although, be great, but if you get, if you let them know about it, then why not Yeah, at some point, maybe they sell, then that's where I think the sales plates come in and I'll let you define the sales plates here in a second.
But if you feel comfortable with that, but [00:04:00] basically that's where the sales plates come in to say, Hey, we have these existing customers that Probably want to come to this webinar. So let's tell them about this webinar if they're not on the community. Let's go deeper within the organization to tell them about this live webinar But let's also look at the other pieces because there could be a there could be a website You know on our main website that shows a nice product page that tells you all about it or there might be an event that comes up that marketing's doing so How does that all play together and how do you wrap that in a nice little bow?
You
Nicole Saunders: And to your point, Chris, expansion is such a important part for community to be thinking about because we can influence it in so many ways. Ideally, if we're engaging users, they're learning more about the product. There's going to be some natural expansion or upsell or cross sell as they need to add seats or they need to add new features or they need to.
move up a tier of what plan type they're on. [00:05:00] And so it's so important that we get familiar with these things and think about it and understand how our business is thinking about it so that we can be proactive about the way that the community plays into it, rather than, I think, historically, a lot of communities have been a little bit more passive about their influence on expansion where they're building those relationships.
And we talk about how it influences customer retention and things like that. But I think a lot of community professionals are like I grew the community. Somebody else's job is to connect the dots into the other aspects of the customer journey or to close those sales. And there's no reason that we can't be helping with that and influencing it.
And, you think about just like you were just saying, there's a whole ecosystem of things that every company offers their customers. There are probably webinars coming out of multiple teams. There's probably trainings. There's probably meetups. There's all sorts of content. And you want your community to be the central sort of clearing house for that, where people can access all of those pieces.
But let's focus on this piece of sales plays. So you and I have both been thinking about [00:06:00] how we integrate our communities with the sales plays at our companies. We were talking a little bit in the pre call that Sometimes this is also the term campaigns can be somewhat interchangeable. Some companies use sales plays and campaigns differently.
Some of them are very similar, but it's this idea of making sure we've got a playbook or a strategy of how are we going to communicate things to users? Get them the right information at the right time. And use that to push them along a sales funnel or conversion funnel. How are you thinking about sales plays at Rails?
Yo
Chris Detzel: glad you asked. I think that one is, I really wasn't thinking about sales place to be honest. I didn't even know what it was until
Nicole Saunders: had other things to work on first, right?
Chris Detzel: That, but it was also like. We were calling it in marketing campaigns. So marketing does these digital campaigns around certain parts of the product or certain, different things.
And then and then sales was also doing what they call campaigns [00:07:00] and. To them, a campaign was using email cadences to send out emails about a specific thing, right? Tomorrow they'll send out an email that introduces this kind of thing, a week, if they haven't replied, then sends out another email that says a certain thing.
And then, so that, that's what they were calling campaigns, but they realized with really smart people, hey, look, We're all calling this campaigns, and it's really confusing because so they decided to call it sells or sells playbooks or so play sales place and so so now that's settled and we all know what that is, but what happens is You've got all this really good content from marketing.
You get all this really good content from sales You get this content from community. You got it's all everybody has really good content, but it's not always completely connected And as I been thinking about this for a while and, one is. You can't do this by yourself, right?
Sales, isn't going to listen to you. If you say, you should use put community in this thing. [00:08:00] And so what I did was, and I think that's important for everyone. I'm not a sales guru. I'm not a. You know they we have a training organization that sits in cells and that trains our customers and our partners and our employees On all of these things and there's people within that training department that is does sales enablement and focuses in on sales enablement so what I did was there's this really nice person and She is this program manager that can help program manage Shit out of stuff, right?
I was like crazy. So I was like, hey, look, you're really good at this thing Why don't you come in and help with this expansion kind of big initiative that we have going on around that? And she did and now she's creating something really cool and she's run off with it, right? And so now we have these weekly meetings or so and we talk a little bit about This she's got this nice little spreadsheet that links every single sales play that links all the marketing [00:09:00] campaigns and All these things and then she has these documents say hey this email says this email says that this is the date We did these things So one it was trying to find the right person to help me do that and it becomes persons.
So as many people now, And there's a lot of people very interested in what's going on. And so you can lose kind of control, or at least the understanding of everything that's going on. So I know I. That's how we identify sales plan. That's how I've started really thinking about how you embed community, in this case, community kind of stuff, like our sales organizations.
Now, I just spoke to our, one of our VP of sales our VPs today. And a VP today of sales. And they're like, look, community is so important to what we're doing from a sales standpoint. And this is probably the first, second year that I've really heard that from salespeople, because the thing that you said earlier, About, community professionals, including myself, has had a hard time [00:10:00] driving into the sales organization.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but what I'm saying is, I am, I push myself to do it because, I just don't have all that knowledge in there. Here I am thinking about pre pipeline, moving moving this from pre to to post, to all this pipeline talk and things that I've never really understood and knew.
Now. I'm not an expert, but I'm learning a ton and I think it's key for community professionals, leaders to really just have to be in sales, but you have to show, you have to show that, you can collaborate with folks like cells and marketing together and show your values. But if you're on a marketing team, like what they care about is pipeline.
All they care about is the pipeline. So we have to care about that too.
Nicole Saunders: We do. We could probably do a whole episode sometime on just how to learn things because I feel like part of being a community manager is knowing at least a little bit about darn near every part of the [00:11:00] business and every business function because you touch so much of it.
But coming back to the sales plays, one of the key things I think that defines it and makes it a little bit different for my campaign is that it's, It's a repeatable action, right? We can say, Hey, whenever there's a community webinar, we're going to market it this way and we're going to generate leads this way and we're going to track it and do follow ups this way and connecting those pieces together.
Or even moreover, seeing how, what you're working with fits into something preexisting or something bigger that the sales of the marketing organization has planned out. And making sure that you're really pulling all of those pieces together can be a big job. You really have to understand what your business's sales strategy is and what their plays are so that you can figure out where it makes sense for you to plug into that.
The goal of these things really typically is to try to get a lot of leads, get a lot of opportunities, get a lot of expansion opportunities, that kind of thing. And so I think [00:12:00] about the fact our community events. Typically are focused on basically support issues, right? Things that people that already use the product need help with.
It may not be a new feature. It may not be a big expansion opportunity, but we know that by enabling them to do the things they need to do and showing them where they could be getting additional value out of the product, it's going to help them stick around. And we're going to create that relationship where we can expand.
What we historically haven't been as good at is actually tracking that and figuring out, okay, When is the right time for an AE to reach out or to have a conversation like that? And so I think that those are some of the pieces that everybody needs to look at and plug into it. So Chris, when you needed to learn about the sales plays at your organization, how did you do that?
Who did you talk to? How did you start learning about that sales motion?
Chris Detzel: One is you got to start talking to salespeople or, you renewal reps. Gotta go
Nicole Saunders: make some friends, [00:13:00] have some coffee. You've got to
Chris Detzel: talk to the leaders within that. You've got to understand your own kind of marketing organization.
And, like it just takes time. Like I, I feel like I've had so many conversations since. January of this year. So it's what almost July. It's late June. And and so I think it's just a matter of being on meetings. You got to push yourself to drive those meetings. I have to I was just told today that, hey, look.
Chris, in July, in July, you're going to have to run, uh, the go to market kind of expansion call or meeting, right? So we'll have an hour or two kind of present on what we're doing from an expansion standpoint and how it's connecting together and everything else. So this is why it's very interesting to me right now.
It's because I have to do it. And, talking about it helps. And I think that, It's what we do best, right? Like it's building those relationships, community leaders are really good at that, I think. And it's really just trying to dive into what problems they're, not just problems are solving, but you can understand their [00:14:00] lingo, you can understand what they're trying to do.
And you get to just try to figure out, Hey. What value can you bring? The thing that I own is community, right? And so I can bring and drive the programs that I have within community, but how do I start connecting that? And it's Hey, you guys are doing a campaign on the Databricks connector, I'm doing a live show on that too.
Why isn't it, can we add community? You don't want to be accusatory. Cause like people can't, people won't do it. If you become accused or you just have to be open and say, Hey, look, how do we connect it? If you're doing a email on the Databricks connector we're doing a show on July 11th about it, and so the PM is going to go deep and and show people how to do it, use it.
There'll be demos and everything else. I could probably get a hundred people live on this show, 200, 100 to 200 people live asking questions and things like that. In a way you might have to sell it, I think it's just a matter of building those relationships, seeing how you can connect.
And look for me, people. Believe in community [00:15:00] within the organization mostly, right? And you have that going for you, and I think that's key as well as has your community shown value in the first place and something that you mentioned earlier. And I don't disagree at all.
Like you said something about community, you go deep into the product, right? Like the existing features and everything else. We do that as well. But. In my mind, you can do webinars and things like that around new features, because people want to know about those features, right? Even if it cost them something, it's hey, we got this Databricks connector.
It does this, and this, and it's going to help you do that, this, that, or the other. Is there a cost? Yeah, it's going to cost X. And if you have data, if you have Databricks or Snowflake or whatever, it's You're gonna have to get it. You know what I mean? It's just, this is what it is.
Yeah, it's a small cost or whatever but then, people are, oh, okay, and then they'll go to their boss and say, hey, I need this Databricks connector, that RealTO has, because it does this, and this, and that, and the other, and it's so easy to connect and whatever, right? So you gotta create the buzz, you gotta create the excitement, you gotta do all [00:16:00] those things.
Sorry, I got a little off, but, I get very excited about this stuff.
Nicole Saunders: No, it's good. We all love the passion. So it sounds like one of the things that you and I are both thinking about in terms of connecting with sales plays is our community events, right? Because and I think it's because they're point in time things where you can point people to it.
You can have them register for it. You can track it a little bit easier than pointing to A discussion space and online forum. And I think that's where you're just getting into play of you promote things in the online community, you have the event, and then you can do some follow up and continue the conversation in the online community.
How people move fluidly through those. When we think about those events, it seems like there's a lot of value in making sure that you are co planning your events with those other teams in mind. So that. It's not a, Hey, here's a sales play. We're running, or here's a campaign or here's a product marketing thing.
What are you guys doing? Let's cross promote, but it's really a, Hey, what are the [00:17:00] things that we need to cover in the next quarter, which things should come out of which teams and how should we do that? And I think that if you start with that planning. As a group from the beginning and that idea that we're all going to work together to facilitate the things that we need for our customers and for our prospects, it's a lot easier to fit your things into those campaigns and those sales plays because you've actually planned the event in such a way that it is a part of that.
And not an add on or an afterthoughts.
Chris Detzel: I love that. And I'll be honest, like that's not my forte, I'm
Nicole Saunders: no,
Chris Detzel: I I think that's exactly right. And I think I've heard that at least 50 times in the last few years. , I have, I think that, doing that is so important and I think you need somebody.
Does it have to be you? I don't know. I think maybe, I also think. That, if you can find somebody that's a very good [00:18:00] planner and organizer, because, look, saying that's easy, but it's really hard to do. I don't know about you. Have you felt, trying to get this person, from marketing, the PM the, a PM, maybe somebody from cells, somebody from training to get them all together and a sales leader maybe or something.
And then, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. Then they have their opinions and you have your opinions. And then trying to gather all that is and making it happen in a cohesive way is really difficult.
Nicole Saunders: It is. And where I think about it is at the end of the day, who are we as community professionals?
We're relationship builders. We're here to make connections. We're here to build relationships. And I think we tend to think about that a lot in terms of relationships with our community members,
Chris Detzel: but
Nicole Saunders: especially as a senior leader in a community, some of the most critical relationships you build are with your internal teams.
If you can build those relationships, it gets [00:19:00] a lot easier to have those conversations about, Hey, plug into things. I'm so always approach things from how can I help the other team. I try to never go in and start with can you guys plug the community in this thing? But I try to go in with, what are you trying to accomplish?
Who are you targeting and what gaps do you have or what challenges do you have? And then I try to identify some places where I might be able to help. For example, if they're saying, you have this great sales play coming up, but we don't have a piece of content to anchor it around. I can go and say you know what?
I have this great piece of content. It's this community event that's coming up. What do we anchor it around that? I'll do the content generation. I'll put all of this together. If you will help me get people there and follow up with them afterward and figure out what the sales flow is or what the attribution model needs to be, or something like that.
And that tends to go over really well. It doesn't work every time for sure. But I think that if we start by building those internal relationships, [00:20:00] And then really go in with that mindset of how can I help knowing that they'll help us if we help them first, I think that can go a long way to really knocking down some of those silos and getting teams to work together a little bit more effectively.
Chris Detzel: Yeah, I absolutely the kindness is the key in the way you said is very kind. I think that's very good and I do love that and truly believe that I always, I remember, I used to work at this company called Forrester research and one of the analyst, we took to I was taking him to client sites and stuff and we went to one client and he goes, he's French and he goes Chris kindness is strategy.
No, he goes, we all should be kindness, kind to people, like kindness is key, and I love that, and it's always, I'm not always kind, I need to be thinking like that. I think the other piece though is, if you have, you definitely have to go in there and help them do all those things that you said, because I think that's the most important thing.
But I also think [00:21:00] if you could figure out how to get, high level, whether it's an executive or VP or something like that on your side, that runs, you know, that area, if you can be at that level that's going to be very important, right? Because then, they can give you a rubber stamp.
They could say, Hey, Nicole that runs community does this thing, they're doing some awesome stuff, they could just say some words and I'll automatically, people start listening a little bit more, and so I think. No, you've got to show the value, but I think getting some of that leadership type of buy in, it doesn't have to be an executive.
It helps. But, executives are all over the place, man. So you have to go one step lower sometimes to, to that maybe VP or senior VP level to, to maybe get some help,
Nicole Saunders: well,
Chris Detzel: I don't know.
Nicole Saunders: And speaking of buy in, one of the things I think about is so what are the potential impacts of doing this?
Chris Detzel: Yeah.
Nicole Saunders: What happens when you start to coordinate your community and work, get into sales you start to be able to really demonstrate the influence of [00:22:00] community and it gives you some power and it gives you that ability to get more buy in from senior executives because you're showing that the community isn't just a nice to have, it's not just a ticket deflection channel, but that it's a place that can really help drive revenue for the business.
And so if you're struggling to get buy in from your senior leaders, lean into sales first. Yeah, because if you can show that impact, then you can get more buy in to do maybe some of the more touchy feely soft skill kinds of things that we all want to do with our communities to make people's lives easier and their days better and that kind of thing.
We tend to look at it the other way around. A lot of community professionals tend to want to really be community first and sales comes later, but you're going to get a lot more influence with your business if you can show the impact to the business. And it's not just a matter of metrics. It's a matter of actually setting up Where your community plays in a way that it can actually drive some revenue.
Chris Detzel: I [00:23:00] think that's exactly right. And something that you mentioned is, data and just tracking and that is super important. And to, to some degree, an extreme with that said. It can't be the only thing that you do. I've heard sales leaders, even as of recent say, Hey, all those beam counters were, you know what I mean?
They're not out there in the field. They're not out there doing, so you have to be careful. I'm not, you have to tell that story and you have to be able to be careful about the metrics. Metrics are key, important, and probably, to be able to tell your story, especially to your boss and to others because there's no doubting the data, right?
Can't doubt the data, depending on if it's. Good quality data. But point is you have that is your secret weapon, but be careful, and how you use that data, and it just, be able to talk that language is also key. It's the data says nobody's doing these things and we need them to do more things.
And it's okay, look, like I know they're [00:24:00] doing their things. Okay. Chris, get off my back kind of stuff. So you got to watch it,
Nicole Saunders: you do.
Well, Chris, any closing thoughts on sales plays, community, and bringing them together?
Chris Detzel: Look, it's hard. But you
Nicole Saunders: got to try,
Chris Detzel: you got to look, you got to get closer to the business.
And, in this case it's the sales organization and, it's probably one of the hardest office, the hardest, but it's pretty hard. For community leaders to really think that way, right? I mean i've had the hardest time and i'm just now starting to get my head around it getting better but you know allow yourself to Push into a new direction and collaborate with folks that you never have before whether it's product sales I don't know marketing or engineering, my next one one day will be engineering, you know because those guys do a lot of cool stuff, but They seem to be the let the lead, like I want to get them engaged, involved somehow, but the point [00:25:00] is like, you just got to push, and the key is business outcomes and how does community help within those kind of areas?
It's going to help. Just be creative, that's really it.
Nicole Saunders: Yeah. All right. We'll leave it there for today, but lots more to cover and more episodes coming soon. So thank you as always, everybody we're listening, please make sure that you subscribe or follow. We're still getting this podcast off the ground and getting a few followers under our belt would help a lot.
If you liked the show, please leave us a five star review. There are a few things that help us get more listeners, more than getting in those search results. And those reviews are critical to that. And as always, if you have an idea, something you'd like to talk about someone you'd like to hear from, questions for us, you can drop us an email.
We'll make sure to put a link to that in the show notes. Otherwise until next time, I'm Nicole Saunders.
Chris Detzel: And I'm Chris Detzel. Thanks everyone.