Hello Veevart Team!

Initially, this letter was supposed to be for the Product Managers and Technical Team, but seeing the implication of it on the overall team, I decided to share it widely.

I’m currently reading a book by Donald Miller called Building a Story Brand. It is simply wonderful. He explains that every brand needs to follow a simple script, a script proved for millennia since it is the same way we tell stories. In every book and movie worth its salt, you will find the structure below:

• Enters the hero - This is our Customer

• Who has a problem

• The Hero meets a Guide (Veevart)

• And the Guide provides a Plan

• The Guide calls the Hero into Action

• The story ends in Success

• And the hero avoids Failure

• Hero is transformed

This triggered a lot of thinking. I wanted every Product Manager to read this because I think our website and content really need a revamp, but this also instigated a lot of different questions for me personally as it should for all of us. After all, we are not here to sell lies. The story we are selling needs to be true.

From the Marketing perspective, the hero is our ideal client profile who is looking for a solution. The Guide (our marketing) appears where they are, asking a specific question, calling the Hero into action (book a call!), and hopefully, they end up with the knowledge of what is out there, how much it costs, and what different platforms can do for them. This is a never-ending job since it is like courting a person:

• Do you want to marry me?

• No.

• Ok, Do you want Coffee?

• Yes,

• Do you want to marry me?

• No.

• Ok, Do you want to go to the movies?

• Yes,

• Do you want to marry me?

• No.

• Ok, Do you want to go to dinner?

• Yes

• Cool, Do you want to marry me?

• Ok.

In Sales, the hero again is the prospect, and our Sales team guides them through a decision process that ends up in a customer for us. This is a very hard job BUT it takes time in a very limited amount of time -our sales cycle is now between 110 and 140 days-.

From the Implementation Perspective, the Hero enters the scene often without knowing anything about data migration, and what it takes to do things and launch a platform. They need clarity and constant guidance; at the end, they’ll have their data migrated and a system that hopefully provides them with the relief they were seeking. Our job here is to ensure that we design a process that provides that hero with the guidance and support they need. This process needs to be as scripted as possible. The hero really, REALLY, needs a thorough and compassionate guide

From the Customer Success Perspective - the Hero has a problem (they never call if they don’t have a problem). But in this case, things are different: they want clarity, yes, but differently from Implementation, they don’t want constant guidance: they want to be transformed by the simplicity of their tool, empowered, emboldened by it. At the end, they want to be independent. There are cases in which they’d want help and a guide, but always, always, after that, they want independence and time saved. They don’t want another hero, the hero is them, not us. Sometimes, this is not something Customer Success can do. This is something that only Product can do.

So enter Product Development. Some said that Technology should feel like magic. And this is super hard. I thought I brought the hero journey here because I think we sometimes feel that we need to provide the Hero with the tool, and not the magic. This has terrible consequences for everyone:

• The client does not feel empowered, not feel that time was saved. The opposite, she/he feels that he has to contact us for everything

• Customer Success starts to put together workarounds that end up blinding product managers from what needs to be done. Also because they have to do these workarounds and fix the scenarios they don’t cover, they end up working late and feeling disgruntled

• The implementation team also ends up feeling overworked, because of workarounds and complaints from the clients about certain functionalities

And all this, falls on the shoulders of our dear Product Team.

People, THIS IS HARD. I don’t want everyone to think otherwise. If it were, we would not be successful. Our competition is also making mistakes, don’t worry about that, this is also the reason why we are being successful. I know you sometimes feel that we are not, because all of the shit that often hits the fan, but our Sales and renewals are there to contradict that thought.

With that being said, I bring this up because helping the Product Team is a task for everyone. We must narrow down issues and put them through the lens of the Hero. And sometimes is the Guide’s job to say no the Hero, to say, focus on shit that matters.

• Can I have green buttons?

• No, focus on discounts, or focus on how fast can you do x job.

Very soon, CSMs will have to narrow down their critical cases to 10. Our Implementation team should also pass and track escalated critical cases for them!

I’m super proud of the speed gained by our Product Development Team in the last few months, but both technical and PM teams need more focused feedback from the teams closer to the customer. At the same time, PMs need to pay attention to usability; after all, 99% of every call or email written to a CSM or Implementation should be an unnecessary call or email.

We need to keep in mind that we don’t want to be the Heroes of this story, we are the guides, and the client after using us, should feel transformed. Anything shorter is a sucky product.

I wanted to bring this so we can all see our jobs through a different lens. We should strive to provide magical moments that transform our Heroes, so they, at the same time, produce less frustration for our implementation and support team.

With Love,

Antonio