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Getting Buy-In From the Actual Users of Your Product, Not Just the Buyers

I had lunch with a friend who was lamenting the challenges of selling to execs and then selling into the lower-level users of his startup’s SaaS product.
His startup is gaining momentum after some initial hurdles, but the area he sees with the most need of improvement is around lower-level buy-in from the organization. Getting leadership to buy into the vision and benefits is, for the most part, easy. (Rare is it when a startup comes to the table with a “bad” idea.)
Once the message comes down from the execs to the mid-level managers and those under them, that’s where friction builds. This isn’t a surprise as these are the users on-the-ground who are typically working hard to implement all the other initiatives the execs have thrust upon them.
Especially in a product that is iteratively (even if many times) better than an incumbent, the challenge is usurping the established process and the known benefits andrisks. Not knowing the unknown risk is one of the greatest challenges for new users.
My buddy also shared that it’s fascinating how execs continue to believe driving transformation from the top down as “bosses” works. This might have worked in the past, but in today’s millennial-driven workplace, dictatorship rarely works. Instead, environments fostering collaboration and exchange of ideas and feedback excel.
Some thoughts on getting buy-in from lower-levels:
  • Understand the change management aspects of an organization including the culture at each level – don’t fail at these principles
  • Consider the benefits for each consumer of the product (execs, mid-level managers, lower-level users, etc.)
  • Almost more important than benefits, consider the risks. Why would the user not want to use the product? There are jobs at stake, work-life balance, etc.
  • Empower and promote the main users of your product. Provide them with support, and make them feel valued. If they feel valued and love you, they will can be a powerful ally in the company

At the end of the day, to properly sell, ensure customer success, and retain customers, it’s imperative to consider the benefits and risks to each level of consumer and user. Be empathetic to each consumer.

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Do These Change Management Practices To Ensure Failure

On Tuesday, I shared a post on one of the greatest overlooked challenges by startups, and in particular, first-time entrepreneurs — considering change management. 
It’s imperative to consider the change management piece of any service or product — change management being the leading the transformation of the people within the organization. This is especially important with customers with multiple layers. 
Executives may be motivated to use a product or service for the benefit of the enterprise, but if the solution fails to integrate easily into the workflow of the “employees”, there’s a high likelihood of low adoption. With low adoption comes missed value which yields customer churn.
Change management involves a lot. I’ll take some examples from a SaaS perspective since I’m more accustomed to this arena — some key areas where a startup will surely fail:
  • Cumbersome UI/ UX. Said before many times and saying it again: UI and UX are now MUST-HAVES. Interfaces must be intuitive with clear calls-to-action. Bonus points for engaging UX will drive emotional evangelists.
  • Dramatic shifts from today to tomorrow. With Body Boss, we gave a lot of data and power to the coaches. We were able to chart out where players were after any session. However, most coaches weren’t accustomed to receiving that type of data continually. We didn’t guide coaches on how to interpret and make the data actionable. In many ways, we challenged coaches to absorb and use data that had never received before. Better practice would have been better reporting to drive focus and action to only the important data points.
  • Failing to consider the different consumers of a product. In consulting, you have the buyers who may be the execs representing some functional side of the business. Then, you may have a VP of Information Technology who had evaluate the software for security, for implementation, etc.. Then, there’s the end users of the system who may be front-line workers or managers who actually use the product. They all represented groups that consumes the product, and thus, it’s important to understand the benefits and risks of each group.
  • Not providing/ communicating (or very minimally) the vision and value of through the organization. That is, failure to share the value and get buy-in from the levels of the organization involved will, again, spur low adoption.
Obviously, there are many more ways to encourage failure through poor change management processes. Successful startups build a product and service that considers the people of the organization —their motivations, fears, and workflows.
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One of the Great Challenges Overlooked by Entrepreneurs

One of the biggest challenges often overlooked by first-time entrepreneurs is change management. This was always a challenge when I was a supply chain consultant, and it was incredibly true as a founder of Body Boss.  

In consulting, I made recommendations, set strategies, and led implementations for transformations set by company execs. The transformations almost always had great intentions and great financial benefits that would otherwise seem like no-brainers to work. 
However, the greatest challenges weren’t the systems and processes to implement. Instead, the greatest challenges were leading and managing the change within the people of the organization. Different backgrounds, different skill levels, different motivations… everything impacted the people. The efficacy of leading change with the people dictated the success of transformations. Bain & Company cites “more than 70 percent of major change efforts typically fail” (see Results Delivery), and it’s largely due to change management.
Technology startups looking sell to businesses or consumers face a similar task in considering their products and services, especially in multi-layered organizations. In today’s world of quick-to-implement SaaS solutions, the effectiveness of change management can be a major component of user engagement and retention metrics (i.e. Day 1 returning users (“D1”), D7, D14, etc.).
When thinking about change management, entrepreneurs would do well to:
  • Consider the usage and implications to every layer of an organization that will use the product/ service — from executive buyers to core users
  • Communicate clear benefits, and ensure delivery of said benefits
  • Provide timely service in the event of missteps, bugs, or failure
  • Nurture adoption of the product/ service with all levels of users (getting started wizards, email notifications, other)
  • Create a simple, streamlined user experience (UX)
  • Understand and mitigate the risks to each [level of] user — considering your solution is from a new, questionably “viable” entity
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