The key to getting the best customer stories

Hey, it's Mark, and we're trying something new on the Proofpoint. For the first time, I'm handing things off and letting someone else run with it for a bit. Over the next few episodes, you'll get to hear from Alex Eaton, who leads product marketing at user evidence. Alex has been having some really solid conversations with some of the best customer marketers in B2B, and getting into what's actually working, what's changed, and how teams are using Proof to move deals forward. It's all stuff that I'd want to hear if I were still trying to figure this out on my own. Hope you enjoy it. All right, I'm here with Yadine Porto de Leon from Heroku. Yadine, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, Alex. This is fabulous. I'm super excited. Yeah, glad to have you. So for the folks listening and just to start off, could you give us a brief intro to just your role and kind of the scope of your role in everything you handle at Heroku? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Don't worry. I won't give my CV through this intro. Yadine Porto de Leon, my role is part of Salesforce and the Heroku team, which is customer advocacy and thought leadership lead, rolling into the CMO. And so customer stories is a really, really important part of what I do, which I think is what we're going to be talking about today, Alex. Absolutely. And the broader world of customer evidence with stories being a part of that, right? And we had a little conversation before we started about the different ways in which that looks beyond just testimonials and such. But I'm excited just to dig in to start off with what would you say, and you can use your definition of coolest here, however you like, but what would you say is the coolest thing you are doing just generally with customer evidence right now in your role at Heroku? Well, yeah, when it comes to really digging in and finding out what people really think and what's actually helping them move them, you know, I like to say, answering the question of who is it for and what's it for is really important. And I'm a big also fan of jobs to be done, which Clayton Christensen framework. And finding that is what is helping people make progress with what they're trying to make progress on is one of the key things that I want to unlock. Because when I create something, I like to have that something be something to help someone move along on their journey. And in order for that to even understand what that journey is, I have to be able to connect with them and to be able to connect with a lot of people have to be able to scale that effort. As much as I love talking to people, I can't talk to you know, 50,000 people within a five day period. I definitely need some things to be able to help me scale that effort. And so that's really at the core of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help people make progress with with their careers and with their companies and with their products. And that's you know, that's the foundation of my philosophy. I love it. It's truly making the customer of the hero, which is in a sense helping them with their own job. Right. And you also mentioned the scalability of it and something we've said and I've said here is that the survey has not gone out of style like it's been around for so long. But when it comes to scale, there really hasn't there isn't a better technology right now for that. I'm curious if you would agree with that specifically and where the survey is right now. Like with the technology, I think as a tool, yes. And I think the reason why you can have something like this tool, the survey tool be effective is if you have the trust of the audience that you are speaking to, I think it's a critical thing. So it almost doesn't even matter what that tool is, though the survey is extremely efficient and highly effective way to connect with an audience that trusts you, that wants to be contacted to you, that wants to interact with you and lets you do that at scale. So it's very powerful in that circumstance. There's a lot of implied work there with trust and then yes, you know, oh yeah, it's a big one. We can do a whole whole like talk just on that. Yeah, for sure. If you had if you could give a quick sound by on if someone is struggling with that trust, obviously that's a massive just general business issue, right? There are bigger things at play. Is there something you would say as a quick answer for where you'd start with trying to rebuild it if you didn't have it? Well, yeah, there's a couple of different pieces of that. One is a quote that I always like to share. It's from someone named Seth Godin and go to listen to Seth Godin and the Kimbo podcast if you want to get more of this too. And it's if you're in marketing, for example, or in anything really, instead of using your audience to solve a marketing problem, why don't you use marketing to solve their problem. It will make you think completely differently. And most people scratch their head and say, what does that mean? Well, go find an answer. How can you what you do in your day-to-day job actually help them? And if you can figure that out, that trust will be built. And to do that, the execution part is the other part that I mentioned, which is show up every day, deliver value bit by bit, drip by drip, and continue to show up and continue to deliver value and continue to try and answer that question. And if you're answering the question is like, well, you know, what's it for is like, oh, it's for to make my chart on the QBR go up into the right. It's like, no, that's the wrong answer. It's to make your customer's chart go up in the right, whatever that is. Yeah. I grew up on the Sefgo in school of marketing. So that's fabulous. Oh my goodness. I can geek out on that all day. Yeah. We're supposed to be helpers, right? At the end of the day. Yeah. And then changed how I view marketing as well. You've talked about kind of your approach here generally. How does that approach siphon into creating content and specifically customer content and just your your philosophy around what you create or what you want to create? And I'm I'm a huge content creator. I think it was ever since I was a little kid, I was like podcasting. So back then I had like this tape cassette deck and dating myself and I would just like record a podcast equivalent, you know, as a little kid and I'd go around and play it for everybody. The distribution wasn't there. I think that was the big thing that, you know, Apple came on distro and RSS and all that. That was fabulous. But anyways, the content creation and really something that I'm passionate about because I love to create something that then lights up people's eyes that gets them excited, that gets them to be able to point to it and say, yes, that's what I've been talking about. Or that's the idea that I had in my head. Now it's out into the world. Now I can either take an ingest of myself or I can share with other people who I've been trying to tell that story to. So storytelling, critical component of that. And so when it comes to creating content, I always want to have like three things. I always tell people, I want a strong point of view, I want an opinion. What do I think about this topic next? I want stats. I want to be able to say an X number of people think this X number of people think that and have some statistically relevant way and ability to engage the market in general. But then really critically is the story. It's the third part. Got to have a story. And that is someone has a quote. Someone has a way that they were successful. Someone says this was my journey and this is how I ended up there. And someone else can go and take that and listen to that story, apply that to their own circumstances and then help them move forward even if it's just a little bit. I've always been torn on this term storytelling in B2B. And just because I feel like the, you know, people struggle to actually do it. People love saying it, saying they do it on actually. What is your take on what effective storytelling actually looks like in the day to day before, you know, that's very much from the consumer point of view, right? If I'm able to take something relatable that I can bring back to my job, what about for actual marketers or salespeople in their day to day? What do you think storytelling looks like for them if they're interfacing with a buyer or if they're working on a campaign? That's a super fun question. And I like that you framed it that way because it encapsulates a few different things. Trust was one of the big things, of course, that encapsulates it. And so it's a motion. It is a way of doing things. Storytelling is a way of executing. So from a very practical standpoint, storytelling is not just telling your product story. Not, hey, look it, let's kind of create a way to talk about this new product launch or this new release. What it is, it's a one first, it's listening in its discovery. First it's understanding what your customer story is, because that's where you're going. What you're doing is you're building a bridge from your story to theirs. And that's the practical piece. That's the storytelling. And it could take many different formats. Some people like, well, I crafted this great customer story and he talks about they had this problem and they were at this challenge and here was the solution. It's like, that may not help anyone because it doesn't build the bridge. They may just want a bullet point of says, how did they do it? Oh, they connected this thing to that thing and that thing and this thing. Oh, wow. That is really cool. I never thought of doing it that way. Now you've built a bridge from their story to your story by helping them make progress. And one piece of that is if you can articulate their problem better than they can articulate it themselves, that builds trust and that helps build that bridge. So start by figuring out how you can articulate their problem to them better than they can themselves. And sometimes it starts off with listening. Well, most of the time actually it starts with listening. And so that's a practical thing is and, you know, so storytelling. It's funny because it sounds like it's something that you do, but it's more of a way of operating and listening is a big part of that. You can listen and then you can tell their story back to them even better than now they have something they can take to another person who's in a room that you're not in and continue to tell that story better. And that story they're telling connects to your story. So practical thing. I love that. And that's, that's why we love books, right? And that's why the same human ideas get shared in different iterations over and over and over again throughout human history. And they don't go out of style is because you're just looking for that new way of putting it that gives that right person the moment, right? That's why we're able to repeat general themes is because it just, you just have to speak to it in the right way. And maybe they have that one new way of framing it that just shifts a little bit forwards. And that can be huge for people. So I love that. Yeah. For, you know, a buyer circumstance, right? As well. It's super impactful. So let's talk about storytelling and how you have used user evidence to do that. I'm curious what the impetus was for you to really fold in UE to your overall customer evidence process. And could you kind of take me through the process of, you know, what changed now that you are using it and kind of how you're changing your workflow or how are you thinking about customer evidence with our tool in play, if you will. Yeah. And the scalability was a really important thing. And I kind of talked about that earlier in the conversation was I want to be able to talk to everyone. I want to be able to listen to everyone. So I'm telling effective stories because I really understand the audience. To do that, I need a tool to be able to scale that effort because I love talking to people but talking to 50,000 people, not practical. I want to be able to see which of those 50,000 people actually wants to talk to us. First of all, they're the ones who will actually complete a survey and give us the information, hopefully that we're looking to be able to then communicate better. And the primary focus of that for us specifically was getting quotes. We wanted to get, not just testimonials. We wanted to get real stories, real opinions, and that's, I think, one of the key ones. Wanted opinions, not feedback, not, you know, like, Hey, I want this new feature, but really like either A, this made my life better because of this reason, you guys may not be thinking about it that way. But this is why I really love the product and I was fortunate enough to have an audience ready to tap into and figure out who wanted to speak up, who wanted to raise their hand and say, I like this because I don't like it because, and who then was also, you know, willing to do something more. And that was a very powerful piece was, yes, we can get qualitative input in those feedbacks and opinions, but we can also find out who the handraisers are and say, would you like to do other things with us? Do you want to be on a pilot? Do you want to get on a podcast? Would you like to speak at an event with us? A huge use case that we were like, well, let's see. Let's put this question on because it would be really cool if we saw what was happening. That became the most powerful thing actually ongoing was just being able to at scale for very specific audiences in specific ways for a specific email puts, you know, for Gios and all these different things and quickly and easily find out who are the handraisers there. Who is really enthusiastic? And then all sorts of other activity blew up from there of like, Hey, we need people for this analyst day or, Hey, we've doing this event over here. Oh, we need people, you know, at this in-person panel, all these different things and activities that were actually like the most real impact has made was this in-person connecting with individuals, one on one, exchanging knowledge in real time. And that opened the door to people being able to say, now I know I can, I can, I can raise my hand and I can engage. Or if it's on our end, I know who to ask, could I know who wants to engage. So long answer to your question, Alex, but that's where the, that's where the journey started. But this is, that's, that's where, where it's at right now. I love the idea of getting opinions instead of just a great product and love that. Do you have, do you have a tip for marketers on how to get that opinion versus just the great product? Where is there a thing you've been able to do to kind of tease that out or get that out of your customers? Yeah, well, one of course is, and this is the key to most things, anything from running a campaign to a good sale to using AI is you have to ask interesting questions. If you want interesting answers, impactful answers, you have to ask interesting and impactful questions. And so crafting that cannot be understood, saying, Hey, do you have anything nice to say about the product we'll get? It was great. Be super specific. You want something and lead the whole experience up to that up to you're helping them throughout the survey, organize their thoughts. That's what you're doing. You're not, you're getting data like, Hey, what features? Why did you do this? Why did you choose to do that? And so the whole time you're getting them organizing your thoughts with drop downs and radio buttons and selects. And then when they get to the testimonial, they've organized their thoughts. They have a clear idea of why they chose you over somebody else. What impact it had. And so then you get to ask that question because it's on that journey. We've brought them to a place. Now they're ready. Mines are there. Now ask a question. It's very specific, you know, in several sentences or as much detail as you can possibly provide us, where did you start and where did you end up? What was the impact? Be specific. Like give us stats, 50% higher, better cost savings. My team now loves to come to work when it didn't before and be super specific, especially when that at the end of that survey, and you want that really great quote that you're going to put up, you know, on your slide or on your webpage, be super specific and imagine what that quote is going to be and then write a question so you get that and you'll find that person. Once you take them on their journey and give them specifically what you're looking for, you will get that. Yeah, the emotional payoff, right? And even the emotional payoff at the end of a survey and building up to that through the survey is a really important point I think folks can think of for overall survey design. To finish up here, we'd love to talk about impact on Heroku and you've mentioned scalability for your whole operation. Could you talk just a bit about how it's impacted your go-to-market team and what you're able to do and, you know, the voice of your customers being used throughout your org? Yeah, and so it goes very much back to that scalable effort, but it's changed workflows, which means people's habits are changed and people now understand that there's new capability and there's a new resource because there's now information, qualitative, quantitative coming in from the user evidence tool that allows people to grab, you know, a quote, you know, grab a customer, grab a use case and quickly be able to leverage that. So that's product launches. That's the field using that for DEX, for references and the product marketing team, you know, be able to create a go-to-market strategy now that includes, hey, we're going to have at least two or three quotes. We're going to have a couple of good stories and we're going to get that quite easily because we can design something around the pilot that we were doing with customers and also decide something, you know, or design something specifically for enterprise customers or SMB customers and get something specific from that or a specific vertical. We can launch that service just for that vertical and get a couple of financial services. Companies that are saying something specific about this one, get your own. All those different things now are self-service and I load all those different high-valued quotes into, you know, a nice chat interface. So we've got a large learning model that indexes this information and then we can go ahead and create a self-service portal for individuals like in the field or in the product marketing team to be able to go and find exactly what they want. Hey, I want someone in your financial services, use this one piece of it and I want to be able to create a spreadsheet of all the different quotes from all those different people for this criteria and boom, out it comes. And so that self-service scalable portal is enabled and powered by that scalable capture workflow, which is, you know, what user evidence allows us to do. Yeah, it's, it's answers to questions, right? Not just answers to questions a field person might have or a marketer might have around what they need, but then it turns into questions, answers to questions from your buyers, right? And being able to answer in the correct way and as you said, tell a story in the correct way as well for that moment. So I love that. Super powerful. Super, super powerful. Awesome. Well, Yudin, thank you so much for joining today and sharing your insights around customer evidence and your use of UE. We really appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me, Aux. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to The Proof Point. If you like what you heard during this conversation, you probably will like evidently a bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits and get honest about my misses as a first-time VP of marketing. You can subscribe using the link in the show notes here in this episode. The Proof Point is brought to you by User Evidence. If you want to learn more about how our customer evidence platform can help you build trust and close deals faster, check out userevidence.com.