Sales flywheels

Community-qualified leads

Create systems where community members can raise their hand when they want to learn more about making a purchase. Or infer it from their activities. Ensure a friendly, context-rich hand-off from community to sales. If the member becomes a customer, give them space in the community to talk about their experience. Other members will benefit from it and may themselves become interested in talking to sales.

Example flywheel motion

  1. Community member Sunita has been using the free version of the product
  2. Sunita regularly attends community events and are slowly increasing feature adoption in the product
  3. During an event, Sunita mentions to community builder Buzz that she potentially needs a higher plan
  4. Buzz makes an introduction for Sunita to Account Executive Alfred
  5. Buzz compiles Sunita’s community history of activities and notes (including questions, concerns, and praise) and hands this data to Alfred
  6. Equipped with this knowledge, Alfred helps Sunita solve her company’s needs
  7. In the community, Sunita sees another member with similar needs to her own and offers to introduce them to Alfred for further conversation

Metrics to watch

  • Product users in the community
  • User activation of member users
  • Deals closed from community members

Identify and partner with deal champions

Customers become community members and community members become customers. For bigger deals, however, sales teams often need champions within a company to keep deals moving along. Enter community members with a Deal Champion role. These are community members that have a high love and work within organizations that require a “high touch” sales process to close a deal.

Example flywheel motion

  1. Developer Peggy tries the product
  2. Peggy joins the product’s Discord community
  3. Community Builder Buzz nurtures Peggy’s community journey through events and community support
  4. Peggy’s organization marked as prospect by Account Executive Alan
  5. Based on Love, Peggy is marked as internal champion
  6. Buzz introduces Peggy to Alan
  7. Peggy helps Alan navigate the complexities of internal politics
  8. Alan closes and onboards
  9. Peggy’s teammates enter new customer flywheel

Metrics to watch

  • Active community members in Organizations
  • Number of official Deal Champions
  • Deal Champion activities
  • Deals closed with Deal Champion involved

Onboard new customers into the community

A product’s community is a large value addition to a new customer. When a customer signs up for a product, there’s an onboarding flow (either guided or in-product). Using that flow to encourage community activity is a way of providing additional value to that customer. By providing value within the community, that customer is more likely to increase their product usage and enter into deeper relationships with the product.

Example Flywheel motion

  1. Jerry signs up for product
  2. During onboarding, Jerry is pointed toward community for resources by sign posts in the application
  3. Jerry receives value from the community in the form of questions answered, community events, and inspiration
  4. Jerry’s product usage increases based on community feedback
  5. Jerry enters community-generated lead flywheel or sales champion flywheel (for higher plans)

Metrics to watch

  • Product users in community
  • User Member presence
  • Product usage/activation