{"id":47305,"date":"2026-08-17T15:55:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/?p=47305"},"modified":"2026-08-17T15:55:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:55:50","slug":"users-groups-are-competitive-weapons-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor-part-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/users-groups-are-competitive-weapons-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor-part-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Users\u2019 Groups Are Competitive Weapons! Advantages of the Incumbent Vendor \u2013 Part 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

Users\u2019 Groups are like biological organisms: They want to grow and succeed. Each new customer who joins an active users\u2019 community makes that community stronger and increases its collective knowledge. This is another important set of relationships and social capital!<\/p>\n

Customers talk with other customers, sharing success stories and solutions, as well as roadmap preferences and new functionality requests. There is great comfort and safety in a community, along with a feeling of greater leverage with the vendor when the group as a whole agrees on a position.<\/p>\n

In addition to user-user interactions, Users\u2019 Group meetings also represent opportunities for you as a vendor to establish and develop deeper relationships with your customers. Customers expect to meet with sales and presales people during their buying processes, and with customer success folks during implementation, rollout, and beyond. However, Users\u2019 Group meetings provide opportunities for additional vendor teams and players to connect with customers, potentially including management, developers, product and marketing players, customer support, and other teams. These relationships increase your social capital \u201cbank account,\u201d generating more reasons to resist change.<\/p>\n

I encourage early-stage companies to establish Users\u2019 Groups as early as possible, even when there are only a dozen customers. And if you are a more mature vendor without a Users\u2019 Group, you should start one right away and encourage every existing customer to join!<\/p>\n

In our expedition analogy, this would be like the vendor hosting regular post-expedition gatherings, with the clients sharing their experiences and stories with one another. Participants will not only reinforce their positive experiences (as well as push the vendor for improvements), but they\u2019ll learn about new, intriguing destinations, often selling one another on these opportunities much<\/em> more effectively than the vendor can.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s very<\/em> powerful reference selling\u2026!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Resources:<\/p>\n

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7<\/p>\n

https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/blog\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Doing Discovery \u2013 page 192 in particular!<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes\/dp\/B0B8RJK4C2\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Users\u2019 Groups are like biological organisms: They want to grow and succeed. Each new customer who joins an active users\u2019 community makes that community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-47305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advanced_topics","tag-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47307,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47305\/revisions\/47307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}