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I’ve raised the Dreamforce flag six times and proudly call myself a veteran! It’s all muscle memory to me now, having spoken at countless keynotes. But every second revolves around keeping business innovation fresh. And it just keeps getting better and better!
Dreamforce veterans, you know what’s coming up: a long week full of excitement, keynotes, new ideas, old friends and tired feet.
But Dreamforce “season” also heralds the time of ISVs scrambling to get their apps listed in the AppExchange in time for Dreamforce. And trust me, six years of prep and presentation taught me a thing or two about best practices (and moreso: what to avoid).
Since we first heard “There’s an app for that,” countless business apps have competed and screamed for attention. If you are listing one, I am sure you have the screaming part under control. However, if you are introducing a new app this year, here’s my two cents on coming out a winner:
This sounds like boring advice, but bear with me. What do I mean by small problems? Things like APEX errors, uncaught exceptions, and especially support calls. I cannot stress the importance of paying very close attention to the little things. If people report bugs, install issues, or don’t like something… acknowledge them! Communicate quickly and openly with your customers and prospects and follow up on all the little things. It will make a difference.
Like it or not, by being in the AppExchange, you are supporting Salesforce as much as your own product. When a customer of yours has a question, you want your team trained to understand both your product and Salesforce. Any integrated product involves multiple technologies, and you need to be prepared to support both.
This is a common one people over look. Many companies take the "set it and forget it" approach to AppExchange listings. While this might work for a rotisserie chicken machine on an infomercial, it simply doesn't fly in the AppExchange. You need to keep your listing full of recent information, updates, and actual collateral. If every piece of content on your listing says "call this 800 number to talk to sales," no one will care about you. Keep your listing looking good and full of content, real user stories, and updated info. And speaking of AppExchange…
The AppExchange is great because it allows customers to rate things. However, in this day of social media, make sure that you respond to all reviews (both positive and negative), and work to get customers to leave real feedback. There are all sorts of ways to get customers to engage and leave feedback, but no matter what, pay attention to the reviews.
Did you know that you can push patches, as well as major versions of your managed package, to your customers? If not, research it. You need to do this carefully and implement a solid, inclusive rollout plan, but keeping all your customers on the most recent version is extremely useful for support, and keeping customers happy. Be careful to manage the process, or you’ll lose trust.
Salesforce is a very strong marketing company. That's hardly a news item by itself, but when you consider how that manifests itself in their business model, it means that you would be wise to include yourself in their marketing activities. From my point of view, this might take the form of events, or sponsorship, or customized outreach, or partnering. Make sure you are involved in the Salesforce community at as many levels as you can be!
Any tips to share? Fill up the comments section below with your best practices.
Ready to learn more? Come chat with me at my presentation About to launch a product in the AppExchange? Congrats! Now what? On October 15 at 4:30 PM. Click here to register now.
See you soon!
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