“Build a community!”

In my experience, most sales reps’ eyes light up when they hear that sentence – but then they get super bummed, super fast. The reason? They have no clue where to start, and that alone kills the excitement faster than you can say “look out below!”

But hold on, stop the music: You likely already have laid the groundwork for that community.

Those trust-building conversations you've been having with customers or prospects? The events you've hosted with industry experts? The consistent lines of communication you've kept up via newsletters and blogs?

Do a victory lap, because all of these are community selling strategies, and you've got them down. Now all you need to do is get these people talking to each other in addition to you. Doesn’t sound quite as dire as, say, an asteroid hurtling down to Earth, huh? (RIP to our dino buddies…)

But before bringing everyone together, you need to do a bit of groundwork — a few basic steps to set yourself up for success and ensure that what you're building becomes a thriving community.

I always compare building a community to building a product. When you're first starting off, you'll want to get feedback early and often, build with your users, and be transparent to help build trust. All of this builds a sense of community, a vital building block that continues to deliver a solid ROI.

Keeping the product-creation analogy going, your earliest community members are like early adopters. They're invested in what you're building, have strong opinions about what’s working (and not), and will help determine how your community evolves. You've already built buyer trust with them.

So, with that in mind, here's a checklist of how to build your pipeline and sell through your community.

The Sales Rep Community-Building Checklist

Don't be afraid to experiment and iterate, since all companies and communities are different. You don't need to do the steps below in the exact order. Do things in a way that makes sense for you.

Understand which communities your ICPs (ideal customer profiles) are already active in.

Your prospects may have already formed, or joined, their own online communities. From Slack to LinkedIn groups, events to organizations, there exist a wide range of platforms and places (both online and IRL) where your ICP could be spending their time. It should be your priority to learn where they're already naturally hanging out. That's a clue on the type of community format that will be most successful.

Align your community values with your business values.

If there's a significant disconnect between what your community values and what your business values, you run the risk of poor adoption and conflicting priorities. Community members will feel it, and if, as they say, the vibes are off, they may leave in droves.

For example, Commsor believes in a selling strategy called Go-to-Network. Our community should teach sellers how to sell the Go-to-Network way. It should be a place to learn new ideas, and people-first ways of selling. If that’s not the energy we’re bringing to our community…well, you may want to send out a rescue party because clearly someone’s impersonating us!

Determine how you want members to behave.

Active participation is any community leader's goal, but creating a successful community means creating a community with clear behavioral expectations. Create guidelines/rules/a code of conduct to encourage that behavior (and don't forget your ToS and Privacy Policies!). In tandem with that, make an internal guide for how you will respond to members violating your guidelines. No one wants to think about having to handle that sort of thing, but trust – it’s way better to be proactive than reactive in those scenarios.

Create a high-level community engagement plan.

Depending on which online platform(s) you use to encourage community engagement, this plan may be simple, complex, highly detailed and/or ever changing. Whichever way you roll, the important thing is that this community engagement plan includes a wide range of engagement opportunities to heighten the odds of consistent active engagement.

Examples of engagement opportunities:

• Events
• Content pieces
• Newsletters
• Social media
• Discussion prompts
• Rituals (like weekly conversations on a particular topic, check-ins, hangouts, etc.)
• Opportunities to work with and promote members of the community

Create goals for your community, and indicate how much engagement you would like to see from each category.

You can also track community engagement, such as comments, shoutouts, or event engagement, as a touchpoint in your CRM.

Not sure how to prompt engagement? Time for some good ol’fashioned industry research. What interest-based communities already exist that are similar to what you're trying to build? Where are they successful? Where are there gaps that you could fill? Maybe there's a Slack community already dedicated to your niche, but they don't host any events. Eureka! You can build a community around workshop and development events.

Figure out how you want your members to engage.

Do you want people to have synchronous or asynchronous conversations (or both)? Do you want people to write and share long-form content or have casual conversations? This will help you determine what platform(s) you need for your primary community space(s).

Find 10-20 people who represent the type of member you want in your community.

Part of building a successful community is ensuring that it's championed by people excited about what you're building––and bringing in your ideal members on the ground floor is a great way to make that happen.

For sales reps, these might be members who embody your ideal prospect. Or, they could be current customers and power users of your product. Share your ideas for the community with these folks and see what resonates with them. 

Once you have selected your community platform, invite them and work with them to seed content and conversations. Be sure that they're receiving value in return for their efforts, such as discounts, access to exclusive events or networks, and so on.

Create content your members care about.

There's a little bit of guesswork that goes into this upfront, but ideally, you'll have at least a rough idea going into your content creation journey. You can start by creating content based on the conversations you've been having with potential members. After all, if it’s on the mind of a few, it might be on the minds of the many.

If you can, try and create a good amount of content before launch and seed some of it before members join your community space. Then, slowly share the rest (based on the engagement plan you've already created) while you focus your efforts on other areas of community-building.

Be consistent.

Even though you've primed early members of your community to care about what you're building, consistency is critical to build habits and to keep you top of mind. Eventually, you won't have to rely on this as much, but it's important during the early stages. You may get little to no direct engagement on what you are doing, but stick with it, and you'll eventually start to see a return on your efforts.

Find your evangelists.

These are people you trust and know you can ask favors of them. If you need some additional participation or someone else to write something for a change (we’ve all been there), ask them. But be sure not to abuse their kindness, and make sure they're getting something out of putting in the extra effort. Community advocates can be your best sales channel, but only if you activate them.

Connect your members.

At the end of the day, your goal with your community is around relationship-driven selling. You want to build trust with your buyers in your community, especially before you enter formal sales relationships with them.

Make time to facilitate 1:1 or group connections with your early members. You'll need to continue doing this as the community scales, so try and keep track of details about individuals so you can make better, more targeted connections as the community grows. These relationships and intentional connections help form a special stickiness for your community.

Ask for intros or referrals after you've provided visible value in a community.

Building a community is a modern sales tactic designed to help you build relationships with your ICP. But, while you want to get more warm intros, it's best to only start asking for them once you've provided value to your members.

The golden rule? A successful community gives sellers leverage, but only once trust is earned. And trust is earned after you've given genuine value to the members in your community.

Get feedback.

Regularly audit which community channels are driving the most sales conversations. For instance, when you host events, you might notice an uptick in demo requests. It would be safe to say that community events are an effort that consistently converts––so why not double down?

This may not be clear at first, but don't worry. Check in at regular intervals when you're first getting things off the ground to make sure that you're headed in the right direction, and always plan on getting feedback and using that as a basis for iterating. Try not to make specific promises about what you will/can do based on the feedback, but do let people know how their responses will impact your thinking and planning even if you can't implement some or all of the recommendations. Over time, as your group grows from a work in progress to a thriving community, you can do this less frequently.

Be patient.

More often than not, community building takes time. It can sometimes feel like shouting into the abyss, and it's also typical for participation or engagement to feel very low compared to your expectations.

Rarely will you find a community that has 80-100% active members — anywhere from 10-50% active membership is totally normal. My most important piece of advice? Nurture your community, and give it time to grow. Eventually, you'll start to feel the value your community brings to your entire organization.

We're here to help

None of this is foolproof and you'll need to play around with what works best for your community and your organization as you start working your way through this list. The only way to totally mess up is to not try at all (didn’t a certain green movie character say something about “do or do not, there is no try?”) – and as long as you’re building a community of early adopters and evangelists, engaging them through content that provides value, and connecting members to each other, you’re headed in the right direction.

If you're ready to learn more about how community-building is an essential part of your Go-to-Network strategy, you can read our sales guide.