I interviewed the master of community building Kristen Engelhardt!
She shared lessons from her time at Automation Anywhere and Salesforce.
We talk about the idea of “Total Addressable Community” a lot.
It’s one of my favorite topics bc “community” (as it relates to B2B) is actually “communities”.
Kristen gives a ton of great lessons:
1. Focus on driving content to one part of your TAC.
You get better payoff with a focused approach to community-building. Kristen says, “The most successful communities we've seen are when you identify what part of the TAC you need and want to focus on to drive transformation together. It may be we're going to focus, like in Salesforce on the administrator, and we are going to surround them with the input into the product and the career support and the peer ecosystem to make them wildly successful in their role. And we found out by listening, by hearing what they're trying to solve for, that we could advance their careers and their companies through an investment in them. And in return, they share their expertise, they share their content, they speak on stage for us, they tell our brand story through theirs, but they also help us drive the business. And you get that magic flywheel.”
2. Arrange a forum for deeper audience listening.
Create a space to talk with customers and ask questions beyond your product. At Automation Anywhere, they created their Pathfinder Workshop, which is now scaled globally and has had a massive payoff.
Kristen says, “We have a bright, hard line between that program and our upsell, our pipe gen, and our version of the ACV. And all of that came about the community workshop as our number one go-to-market lever because we took the leap and listened beyond the product: ‘What are you trying to do as an automation leader?’ So I love that example and the team did a phenomenal job listening, building, iterating together.”
3. Prioritize the four pillars of community building: Destination, programs, content, and learning.
These depend on how mature your business is. Kristen says, “For an early stage company, don't go out and build a destination right away. Start with the product tour or the dinner series.
If you are already mature and you have so many connections and your community, your part of the TAC is saying, ‘Where do I give and get help? Where do I connect with more thought leaders? Where do I get that content?’ That's when you want to invest in the destination.
So make sure you're prioritizing your pillars based on where you are and where your community is.”
Link to the full ep in the comments!