User Analysis

Carlos

Carlos is a 24-year old CEO of an early stage startup in social selling. He is single and very dedicated to his business so he spends most of his time working on developing his business, specifically looking for investors for his business. He is a salesperson because he is "selling" investment in his company. As the CEO of a social media startup, he is very socially minded, so he manages his relationships with potential investors on a variety of different mediums (Twitter, LinkedIn, Email, Phone).

He builds long term relationships with these investors across these platforms and in a variety of different stages. First he spends time reaching out to them in "low touch ways to remind them that [he] exists." He knows from experience that sending someone an email is like putting a todo on their list, so to stay sensitive to his contacts he uses social media to build the relationship in a friendlier way, using liking and retweeting to "build relationship karma". Once he has built this, he is ready to start making the sale so he intends to use a deeper form of communication, like email, phone calls, or meetings. He always wants to "get back to a deeper channel... to have a human relationship." Finally, he needs to continue the relationship over a long period of time. In order to do so he needs to stay attentive to their relationship history in order to make sure the investors feel attended to and are ready to jump in.

He wishes he had an easy way to see the history of their interactions so he could pick up a relationship after a while of non-contact. He tries to manage about 20-50 relationships at a deep level at any given time, and can keep in contact with as many as 100 at a time. He also wishes there was a way to see the conversion between the effort he spends at the beginning of the relationship and those that make it deeper over a long period of time. Finally, he needs a way to keep tabs of all of these different contacts and where he left off with each one, because it might be many weeks or even months between contact with very busy investors.

Lessons Learned:

• Long term sales require moving the client through a variety of different stages
• Social interactions are fundamentally different from email, phone, meetings
• People can only manage a finite amount of relationships, they need an easy way to pick back up later
• Most salespeople spend their entire day managing relationships in this way
• All methods of communication are necessary because they all have a slightly different purpose
• It is very difficult to prioritize different clients at any given time without being able to see the whole picture

Chong

Chong is a 21-year old college student studying computer science and interface design. At a young age, Chong started designing websites and started his own freelance design firm. Through it he has managed many clientele. Chong first got started by doing voluntary work for people in his hometown. From there, he began building out his clients through personal recommendations.

Now, at 21 years old, he has a good reputation and no longer seeks recommendation, rather they are loaded upon him. For each of his potential clients, he does some background research by looking through their various social media profiles to discover what they have worked on in the past and if he would be interested in working with them in the future. He even sometimes is introduced to potential clients solely through Twitter. Lately, however, Chong receives more requests than he can possibly handle. Generally he tries to order them based on a priority which is a mix of how well he knows the person who referred them, and the potential upside of working with that client. He has a limited amount of time to make that decision, and generally uses social media profiles to help him make that decision.

Chong's relationships with these clients are very short-lived and intense. At first he needs to engage with the clients a lot, but after 2 to 3 months will have made the sale and won't need to contact them for several years. Although requests are often coming to Chong, he still has to build the relationships and sell himself on that person (essentially using the relationship to decide).

Chong mentions however, that none of his communications with his potential clients occur over social media beyond the initial introduction. The rest of his communication occurs over email so that it is consolidated in one location and easy to search through.

Lessons Learned:

• Chong uses social media to vet potential clients
• Because of the difficulty in aggregation, most of his communication occurs over email
• Chong is introduced to potential clients over Twitter or other social media
• Chong generally works with his clients for about 2 to 3 months, and then does not often work with that client for several years
• Short-term salespeople jump between clients frequently, they don't want to get hung up on one for too long

Nadiya

Nadiya is a 26-year-old public relations representative at a large marketing firm. She sells to a wide variety of clients, ranging from small retail businesses in suburban shopping malls to large production and media companies in Los Angeles and New York. Nadiya’s primary role is to enhance clients’ social media presence using a strong online visibility strategy targeted specifically for her clients’ industry and market.

Nadiya’s job inherently requires a wide variety of social media interactions with clients, including promoting clients using her company’s extensive marketing reach, as well as facilitating future connections between clients and partners to further develop the client’s business. This requires regular updates with her clients as new products come out, as well as creating a strong social presence across platforms. Nadiya needs to redevelop her interactions with clients over time to match their changing needs, as well as reselling the importance of her company to the client's success.

Lessons Learned:

• Interactions can be difficult due to the repetitive nature over multiple platforms
• Client interactions can change based on the need of the client

User Classes

Long Term Salespeople

• Primarily focused on fewer, high-quality relationships
• Relationships require interactions on the scale of several weeks between contact
• Overall goal is a number of strong professional relationships, built up over time
• Users like Carlos who "sell" to investors for the long term
• Users like Nadiya who want to build a long-term relationship with multiple clients
• Relationship requires knowledge of the history of interactions

Short Term Salespeople

• Primarily focused on a large volume of interactions, and shorter relationships
• Goal is to quickly build a relationship and make a sale
• Clients require few, but immediate interactions in the short term
• May move between clients very quickly
• Users like Chong, who sell something specific and want to make as many such sales as possible
• Relationship requires discoverability of information about the clients quickly and easily

General Properties

• Facilitates interactions between user’s company and company’s clients
• Business-minded, required to maintain good relationship with client even beyond initial sell
• Communicates with clients using various social media tools

Goals

• Manage many modes of communication from one place (all)
• Be able to deal with large scale number of clients in an easy way (all)
• Easily get a sense for the history of the relationship, even after a long time of non-contact (long-term)
• Be able to prioritize hundreds of different contacts (long-term)
• Quickly discover new information about clients to decide if they are a worthwhile investment (short-term)
• Communicate quickly and effectively with clients (short-term)