Cloud Native Ecosystem Sales Enablement

Maintained by:

"The advent of cloud native has empowered engineering leaders to procure and purchase software that helps them ship faster and reliably. These engineering leaders are different from the usual high ticket item buyer and an understanding of their persona is critical to success when selling DevOps software." - Priyanka Sharma

The Champion Persona

Sub section of the Buyer Personas

/handbook/marketing/brand-and-product-marketing/product-and-solution-marketing/#buyer-personas
Wider than Dir./VP. Anyone with overview of multiple teams and their productivity is a Champion

Potential titles

Director of Eng, VP of Platform, Systems Architect, Snr. Manager, Team Lead

Ability to buy

Their direct boss can cut million dollar checks without needing to heavily involve CIO. Need to go through procurement still.

Responsibilities and promotion criteria

Lead multiple teams and have insight into cross-org productivity challenges
Promoted for shipping fast and reliably AND for introducing systemic improvements

Self image

Primary work self-image: technologist. They always want to be on the cutting edge and know the latest
Well-compensated and aware of it but humble and down-to-earth in general about socio-economic factors Intellectually elite(st?)

Where to find them

Online: Twitter, HN front page, passively on LinkedIn (hate InMail)
Meetups: Papers We Love, Some Kubernetes events, Small group events hosted by high end technologists like Bryan Cantrill, workshops
Conferences: KubeCon, Monitorama, Strangeloop, PromCon, GrafanaCon, SRECon, GopherCon, etc. (systems conferences)

What they appreciate

Conversations about our Kubernetes ecosystem, the latest trends in cloud computing (serverless, monitoring, etc)
Straight shooting
Empathy for their struggles
Demos and technical knowledge (strategic level ok and appreciated)

What they don’t like

Pitches that sound canned
Mass email

My engagement strategy

Be a peer (tweet, talk)
Teach them something new
Talk tech - be up to date
Be credible (cite papers, reference industry experts)
Be ready to do a demo at moment’s notice
Help - contribute generously
Sell intellect and empathy, the $$ will follow

What you can do

Scope

Identify the sub-sections of personas that are the most lucrative for you

Leverage

Find peers the personas trust. Join them and ask to tag along

Converse

Reach out consistently and loop in the peers from time to time. Responsiveness is the key to success.

Cloud Native Ecosystem Sales Enablement

Maintained by:

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