A Community-Building Checklist for Modern B2B Sellers

Building a community might seem like a monumental task. The number one question we hear from sales reps wanting to build a community is, "Where do I even start?"

The good news, I tell them, is that you likely already have.

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

They're all 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.

But before bringing everyone together, you need to do a bit of groundwork — a few basic steps to set yourself up for success.

I always find it helps to compare building a community to building a product. When you're first starting offf, you'll want to get feedback early and often, build with your users, and be transparent to help build trust.

Your earliest community members are like early adopters. They're invested in what you're building, have strong opinions, 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 pipeline and sell through 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 profile) are already active in.

Your prospects may have already formed, or joined, their own communities. From Slack, to LinkedIn groups, or even hosting events—you want to learn where your prospects are 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, you run the risk of community goals not being met, poor adoption, and conflicting priorities. Community members will feel it, and attrition may be high.

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.

Determine how you want members to behave.

Create guidelines/rules/a code of conduct to encourage that behavior (and don't forget your ToS and Privacy Policies!). Create an internal guide for how you will respond to members violating your guidelines.

Create a high-level engagement plan.

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 how much engagement from each category you would like to see.

You can also track community engagement as a touchpoint in your CRM. You might track comments, shoutouts, or event engagement as part of your sales engagement.

Do industry research.

What 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. 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.

For sales reps, these might be members that 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.

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. You can start by creating content based on the conversations you've been having with potential members.

If you can, try and create a good amount of content upfront and seed some of it before members join your community space, and slowly trickle 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, 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. They are a key channel you can get referrals from your community.

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.

You want to build pipeline with community. You want to get more warm intros. But you need to start asking for it once you've provided value.

A 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.

You're going to want to regularly audit which community channels are driving the most sales conversations.

For instance, maybe community events drive the most engagement. When you host events, you might notice an uptick in demo requests. You want to know where your efforts are converting, and double down in those areas.

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.

You should always plan on getting feedback and using that as a basis for iterating, but you can do it less frequently as your community becomes more established and active.

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.

Be patient.

More often than not, community building takes time. You may not see a 'return' on your investment within the first few months, maybe longer. It can sometimes feel like shouting into the abyss, and it's also typical for participation or engagement to feel very low from what your expectation may be.

Rarely will you find a community that has 80-100% active members — anywhere from 10-50% active membership is totally normal. So perhaps 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. If you're ready to learn more about Go-to-Network, you can read our sales guide.

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