- Hey there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur,
investor and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video
I'm gonna teach you how to create a customer conference
that absolutely rocks and doesn't stress you out
and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg.
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.
(upbeat music)
So I got two quick stories I want to share with you.
One is with a client of mine in San Diego.
I remember I was coaching them and they had
thousands of customers at this point.
It's key that you have enough customers.
I suggested they create a customer conference and at first
the idea was both exhilarating and absolutely freaking scary.
I can tell by the emails in fear and
text message I got after the fact.
And I will tell you this, they moved forward.
The implemented the five steps I'm gonna share with you in this
video and not only did they have an incredible time and create an
opportunity for their customers to connect,
but they also realized that it is a extremely competitive
advantage for them to execute on this event.
And next year's already planned, it's actually this year 'cause
it was last year.
The other story I want to share with you is LeadPages.
I remember meeting Clay Collin the early days
through Clarity.fm, my previous startup.
He reached out to me for some advice on fundraising.
I got to know more of his business and the first year they
ran their Converted Conference, Clay actually reached out to me
and asked me to keynote their event.
and what was neat was afterwards he said,
"You know, love to get you to sign up for our product," 'cause
I wasn't using it at the time and in that flow they actually
upsold the event.
I just thought what a brilliant way to leverage a moment in time
to add more value to their customers outside of the
digital software side of things.
So what I want to share with you is the five steps to create an
incredible event and get the most
out of a customer conference.
Step number one, upsell tickets.
As I just shared with you,
Clay and LeadPages was brilliant at doing this.
They gave me a discount, or at least offered it.
Obviously, I was keynoting the event so I didn't really need a
ticket, but in the sign up flow after somebody ended up putting
in their credit card information they would prompt the user in
essentially a funnel to purchase a ticket to the upcoming
customer conference at a discount.
Now, why is this so powerful?
One, every new trial of your product or set up a customer is
a potential new attendee of the event.
Two, if you future pace their involvement in coming to your
event then they're already assuming
they're gonna stick around.
So from a churn reduction and customer success point of view,
it is a brilliant strategy.
Step number two, customers present.
This is probably the most powerful thing you can do.
When you look at a customer success timeline,
you know, the first 100 days, trying to figure out what you
can do to activate a customer and really drive adoption to get
them to a point where essentially they're going to
become a raving fan,
if somebody's getting crazy success with your product and
you honor them by inviting them to speak at your event,
trust me, you're gonna build a customer for life.
I mean why would they ever switch off of your platform
since they've already said to the world,
"I love this product.
"Here's how we're using it and getting incredible results."
Now the key is to ask your customers to teach the audience,
other folks just like them, something of value.
May not be directly correlated to their product,
but that would just be incredible training.
You know? 'Cause at the end of the day people
are investing to be there.
They want to learn new strategies and if your customers
have that, encourage them to share that on stage.
Step number three, record all videos.
I've seen so many times at events,
the worst part is they don't record the videos or even worse
to that is they record the videos and
they do nothing with them.
One of my beliefs is if you create incredible content,
especially driven from your customers or from you, the CEO,
or your product team and you're teaching things that are
relevant to them, add that to your
nurturing sequence for new sign-ups.
Maybe they didn't convert on the trials but you can still use
those videos to educate, inform and position you as a thought
leader and case studies of your customers if they're presenting
on stage for years and years to come.
And it's just a great way to build community.
Show them that, "Hey, if I get results,
"maybe someday they'll ask me to speak on that stage as well."
So you want to make sure you record the videos.
Step number four, present awards.
Now this is ninja. Think about this.
There's probably certain levels of achievement within your
product that if a customer hit, you'd want to reward them for.
What you want to do is you want to formalize that.
One of my coaching clients, the founder of Bucket.io does this
with their clients where if they hit,
I believe it's 10,000 and 25,000 leads generated through their
platform at their annual customer conference they
actually give them a plaque, an award.
And what that does is it tells the whole audience,
the whole customer base, that this is the high water mark and
if you can execute and get our product deployed and win and
succeed, we're gonna recognize you for that and trust me,
I've seen tons of other companies do this and the
customers take photos of it.
They share it on social media.
And all it does is really just, this beautiful way of rewarding
an activity you wish all your other customers would achieve
and then informing a market of potential people just like them
that you have a product that drives results which is the
ultimate in a communication program.
So rewarding the customers at the conference by giving them a
plaque of sorts is an incredible
way to just build your community.
Step number five, sell sponsorships.
Maybe you're freaking out because you're like,
"Hey Dan, you're asking me to run an event
"and we're not even profitable.
"You want me to spend five-figures producing something
"for my customers and I'm just trying to respond to all my
"support tickets," or whatever it is, here's the deal.
The way to think about events is if you can pre-sell the tickets,
and I've told you how in step one with the upsell,
that covers the cost of implementing the event.
And then if you can get sponsorship,
that's actually an opportunity for you to generate profits.
Now the no-brainer sponsors is to actually approach potential
partners that you want to work with in the future.
Maybe you know companies that are further along in their
journey and they're sponsoring other events so you reach out to
them but your ultimate goal would be to build a relationship
with them so that someday you could actually ask them to
promote your product to their customers.
So there's a way not only to subsidize the cost to make a
profit from your customer conference but also build
relationships for potential distribution channels from a
partnership point of view.
So quick recap, step number one, upsell tickets.
Two, customers present.
Invite them as part of your customer success process.
Three, record all videos.
Four, present awards to show customers what's possible.
Five, sell sponsorships to actually make a profit and
potential new partners.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this video I want to share a
resource that will really take your engagement with the
customer to the next level.
It's called the Customer Success Timeline
and it defines the first hundred days.
I got this framework from my buddy Joey Coleman.
He's got the seven phases of a customer relationship.
Those are mapped on the timeline with opportunities for
you to design the steps.
One of those steps should be
inviting your customer's to present.
Potentially gifting them a ticket if they hit a certain
level of achievement within your product but the worksheet will
help you design that and really build an incredible
adoption curve for your customer.
If you liked this video, be sure to click the like button.
Subscribe to my channel and if you know somebody that could
really benefit from it, share it with them directly.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.
(claps hands) Boom.
(loud crash)
Wanted to do that one for forever.
Forever.