Name: From transactions to partnerships: The power of co-creation with customers
Uploaded: 2025-04-30T19:15:12.522Z
Duration: 48 min 52 s
Description: From transactions to partnerships: The power of co-creation with customers

Transcript for "From transactions to partnerships: The power of co-creation with customers": Sales isn't just about pitching. It's about partnering. Assuming what we call a mindset of cocreation moves you from selling to toward creating with, which has a profound effect on customer relationships. That's what we'll be talking about in today's webinar from transactions to partnerships, the power of cocreating with customers. I'm Jim Hall, and I'm chief evangelist at Mural, and I'll be your host today. And I'm very lucky to share the stage with our special guest, Seema Jain. Hello, Seema. Hey, Jim. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back together again on stage. It is. Before we get into it, just a couple of housekeeping items here. First of all, if you have a question for Seema or for myself or anybody else, put it into the q and a chat in your webinar software. We're also gonna be recording this session. And if you've registered, you you'll get notification about the recording when it's ready. And if you have a technical issue, you can also put that in the chat, and we'll be answering that as we go along. So with that, Seema, tell us a little bit about yourself. Awesome. Okay. Will do. Well, hi, everyone. My name is Seema Jain, and I have been in sales in customer success consulting for over twenty years. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the best deals, the ones that really last and deliver value, aren't the ones that you pitch perfectly. They're actually the ones where you build a solution with the customer. And that's what we're here to talk about today, how cocreation can transform your sales and discovery conversations and how Mural can make it a lot easier than you think. Great. And you're Yeah. Go ahead. No. Go ahead. No. Go ahead. Oh, I was gonna ask about you. You're currently at Salesforce, but I know you have this extensive history working with all kinds of different companies. And I just wanted to hear a little bit about your experience. Yeah. Absolutely. So I started my career at IBM in Blue Wolf where I partnered closely with customers to to collaboratively design what we call the art of the possible. So getting them thinking bigger, especially in the process of, you know, sales pursuits. I was a true road warrior constantly on the go, visiting customers on-site, to run workshops, and that's actually when I fell in love with Mural. I realized I could run those same high impact workshops remotely without losing the collaboration or energy, and it also didn't take me away from my family. Yeah. That's Yeah. Today, I'm at Salesforce, like you mentioned. I work with some of our largest customers in consulting sales and delivery, and a core part of my role is leading discovery conversations with customers, helping them articulate their goals, their challenges, their needs, and what success looks like. Yeah. That's great. I wanted to get into the topic of today's webinar specifically around cocreation. Before I do that, I wanted to say hello to our friend, Mark Tippen, and he's gonna help us actually visualize this conversation as it goes. Mark, are you there? Yeah. If he joined us. He's here. I don't know if we can hear him, but we we see him. We see we see him. Alright. Well, Mark Tippin is gonna be helping us out, here, Seema. Yeah. So thanks for that background, about your your interest in your career. It's certainly fascinating. We're gonna hear a lot more, from you, and we have an example. We're gonna actually demo a template that you recently created. But I wanted to unpack the word cocreation a little bit. First of all, what do we mean by cocreation? Yeah. It's a good question. Just to kinda, like, ground us and level set. And I I think like, let's just go back to the basics. Like, I think thinking about cocreation in a sales context is when you work with your customers to uncover their needs and their challenges and their vision. Like, where do they wanna go? The current state to future state kind of journey. And it's not just a q and a session where you take notes and you go back to craft something on your own. It's really about building together in real time. And when we cocreate, we're shifting the whole dynamic. I think it goes from selling to a customer to actually partnering with them. And you're creating a space where they feel heard, valued, and part of the solution, and that's so powerful. Yeah. That's great. And if if folks Google the word cocreation, they may find a more formal definition where it's actually kind of a strategic imper imperative around cocreating or innovating together with customers. But I think the way that you just, framed it, I think, is is a broader use of the word cocreation where it could be maybe we can say micro cocreation, right, where you just you're just doing a couple of activities together and cocreating the answer together. Right? You're not necessarily cocreating an entire solution or something that that big. Is that is that how you think about the word too? Yeah. You know, it it I think it can be done in increments where maybe you're getting to something big at the end of it, but you're starting kind of in these, like, incremental conversations where, you know, through each cocreation session, you've actually kinda then step back and you're like, wow. We did create, you know, quite a large vision by ourselves. And so, yeah, it's not certainly, you know, something you have to do in in one workshop or one session together, but it really builds. Right. So what's the, why why does it matter? Why why is cocreation important to you, Anthony, and everybody listening too, hopefully? Yeah. I think, you know, in in my years of experience kind of, doing this and shifting my own approach, I would say it has really helped me build trust. And when customers are part of shaping the solution, they just simply open up more. They don't feel like you're trying to sell them something. They feel like you're trying to solve something with them. Like, you're you've got their best interest at heart. You're really trying to listen and learn and understand their problems, and that goes such a long way when, it comes to building trust. And then second, I think it makes customers feel truly understood. When you're interacting and mapping things out together, you're not just hearing what they say. You're getting a deeper read on what they mean, and that's where a lot of misunderstandings fall away early. Like, we've all been in these sessions where, you know, maybe you say something, but then the person that's, you know, taking notes or or listening, maybe just interpret, like, your exact meaning behind it. And when you're cocreating and I can, like, jot down the sticky note or express myself exactly the way I want in Mural, That just makes me feel so much more understood. Mhmm. And then third, it creates a shared understanding. Sales becomes a team sport. It's not really, a situation where it's like you versus them in both on the same side of the table solving those problems together. And that leads to, like, the last point around it just simply unlocks innovation. And when you invite the customer into this creative process, they bring ideas, contacts, and even solutions you wouldn't have uncovered, through a standard discovery interview. You you walk away with insights that make your solution sharper, smarter, and, frankly, more likely to win because the customer sees their fingerprints all over it. Yeah. Yeah. Some really great points there. I love the, dimension kind of what I what I'm gonna refer to as kind of the the telephone game effect. Right? The customer said this. I wrote it down in my notes, and then I might tell it to somebody else or summarize it in an email. And through that, it it it the the words actually transform, and then you might be off. But if the customer literally writes their own words down as you're going along, you have a higher fidelity input from the customer. Right? Exactly. And and then I also love the idea of the just the buy in and the agency that if you're working on something together, it's not it's not like you said, you're on the same side of the table. And I think that's that's super important when we talk about customer relationships. %. Yeah. So so let's let's talk in a little bit more specifically about sales. So how can sales, in particular, benefit from cocreation? Yeah. You know, I worked, really closely with the CRO for a number of years and, got really kind of, close to understanding, like, the key metrics, that that he cared about and the things that he wanted to measure on as he was taking this up to, like, the ELT or the board of directors. And I think some of the metrics that these cocreations will drive in that context is, first, you get to shorter sales cycles because you align faster. There's not like, you know, like you mentioned, Jain, like, team of telephone. You're getting that alignment very, quickly. You build stronger relationships that lead to bigger and longer term opportunities that translate to larger ACV or average contract value. You differentiate yourself in competitive deals because the process just feels different. It feels like a partnership. You built that trust. The customer feels understood. It's not a pitch. Like, you're not talking heads showing up in a Yeah. Presentation format. This really is a collaborative exercise, and that's gonna translate to an increase in your win rates. And then you face fewer surprises post sale because everyone had a hand in setting those expectations together. So it's not just about, like, closing the deal faster. It's also about closing it smarter. Right. And the quality the quality matters. So you're getting good quality deals and quality relationships. Well, the the founder of Mural, Mariano Battan, who you know well, Seema as well, used to say, show don't tell. So let's get away from the talk about co creation. I just wanted to, get some of those out there. Mark's gonna make a nice little diagram out of this as well too. So if you're watching the webinar, you'll have a summary of this little conversation. But, Seema, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna follow you in the mural canvas, and you have a a template for us. Right? And you're gonna walk us through this. Yeah. I do. And this is kind of an approach I've used. I did kind of, like, spruce up the template a little bit, but the method that's kind of underpinning the template is something that I've used, throughout my career. And so let's walk through it. Before I do it, just wanna kinda highlight a few things I do ahead of a mural workshop, just some best practices. Mhmm. The day before the session, I always like to send the customer an email inviting them into the mural, and I just wanna make sure they can access it. You know, sometimes I'll I'll create a little icebreaker exercise where I'll have them, like, drop a sticky with, like, the book that they're reading or where they're traveling to next. And it's just an easy way for them to jump into the mural and make sure that they can, like, see how to collaborate and that, you you know, really collaborating is as simple as, like, a double click on the mural. And then navigation is kind of like a Google map. And so if they've got that, groundwork established before the session, then it just means that we can jump into the workshop, you know, all that faster. And so let's bring this to life. I wanna show you how MURAL transforms a typical discovery call into, like, a true cocreation solution where your customers aren't just answering questions. They're actively shaping the conversation alongside you. And one other shout out or or, I guess, call out is Jim and I were kind of, like, renaming the the baby, if you will, and this has been called, like, discovery workshop for a number of years. And we both kinda realized, like, that's actually not really, like, customer first language. Right? Yes. And I think, you know, saying the word cocreation will also confuse customers. I kinda like vision and prioritization workshop, but what we'd like to do is if you're listening right now, as we're going through this, see if you have an alternative name for what would you call this, not internally, but what would you call this to the customer? Like, what would you describe this as to the customer? And is vision and prioritization workshop the best thing to say? So as we're going along, think about that. And if you have an idea, put it into the chat, and and hopefully, we'll get some of those at the end, Seema. But let's let's move on. I'm still following you if you wanna walk us through that template. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just gonna quickly run through some, like, placeholders I have here in the template. This slide is a placeholder for you to briefly present who's joining from your side. So, you know, keep it simple, just names and roles and how each person supports the session and what, you know, you'd be looking for here. It just sets the tone, and helps the customer know who's in the room and why. I always like to start the workshop with the purpose, and it's really simple. It's about building a shared understanding of where the customer is today, what they're trying to achieve, and what's standing in the way. And together, we uncover needs, we prioritize pain points based on business impact, and lay the foundation for solution alignment and a mutual action plan. I'm gonna walk through the quick agenda of the session, and so let's take a quick look at at what we're what we're gonna do in this workshop. So, we start with the situation snapshot, and this is a chance to get quickly grounded in what's happening right now. So what are they working on? What's top of mind, and who's involved? Next, we got the persona pain points, and this is where we start to understand what's not working. We'll surface some frustrations and blockers anchored in, like, real user experiences, not just business outcomes, and then we'll rank those pains, in terms of how painful they are, kind of relative to one another. And then from there, we will get business impact, and we map those pinpoints to things that matter to the business, like acquisition, retention, cost, and expansion, to really connect the dots between pain and strategic value. And then we'll explore the critical event and decision process. So what's creating urgency and then who needs to be involved in a decision. And okay. I think we're seeing the screen again. So we just went through the agenda. And, Jim, if you wanna just follow me again, we'll start with the next slide. Alright. We're together again. Thank you. Alright. So I I do like to start sessions with an icebreaker, and the template here includes the prompts like, if you could instantly master a hobby or skill, what would you choose? Obviously, you can pick any prompt that you like. I just find that icebreakers open up the room, spark creativity, and start building some of, like, that psychological safety. And when people share something personal and imaginative, even, like, just for a second, they're more likely to contribute openly during the session. Alright. So now let's get into kind of the method. So when you start a discovery session, you always wanna ground the conversation by asking where are we today. And you can use simple prompts like what projects are in motion, what are your top priorities, who's involved and why. And the purpose here is to get a real world snapshot, what's actually happening on the ground with our business from a vision and day to day perspective. And this builds credibility because you're showing up to listen first. And this is where you might hear things like, we're launching a new onboarding platform or we're expanding into new markets or we acquire a new company that needs to be integrated. And whatever comes up, this is kind of like your starting point for gaining alignment and and sets the stage for the rest of the conversations you're gonna have. Alright. So from here, when you move into the persona pain point section, this is where the gold really starts to surface. And so you'll guide customer here with prompts like, what's frustrating stakeholders or end users? What's inefficient, hard, or broken? And here's the key. You don't, wanna just stay at kind of, like, the business level. You really wanna anchor these pinpoints to real people. And for the design thinkers in the room, like, this is all about, you know, gaining that empathy. And when you think about personas, you'll wanna be specific. Like, what's not working for the sales rep, the support agent, or the onboarding manager? And, Jim, you literally quite literally wrote the book on jobs to be done, but I I love that framework as a way to kind of uncover those pain points because you shift the conversation from what's abstract to what's actionable. And you're not just identifying problems, but you're understanding who feels them and why it matters in the context of their day to day. Yeah. And and this we filled this out. I just wanna point out that this was filled out. But if you went into a session, this would be blank, and then you'd invite the customer to come in here. And as you're typing one sticky note, they're right next to you typing the other sticky note. And just this little activity, it has that table shifting effect where that you're on the same side of the table. Right? And it's amazing how that happens with just a small little motion like this. Yeah. Absolutely. You know? And it's like you're like, I've got two kind of personas here, but you could have multiple depending on the number of participants you have in these sessions. And it's a really quick way to kinda get, like, a a high level understanding across the business. And, you know, this is done, obviously, with stakeholders in the room that aren't these end users. And so at some point in your process, you know, I always recommend going back and speaking to the end users yourself or looking at, you know, survey information or conducting focus groups. But at at at the highest level, this is a great way to quickly get a a summary of what's going on with end users. Right. And do it together. Right? So I think I'm gonna copy these pain points over, right, for the next, exercise? Yeah. Yeah. So let's maybe just pick one, like, you know, Okay. So pain point here, like, low quality leads if we take that one. Take that one? Yeah. That was a pain point for the sales rep, and, you know, one of the jobs to be done, for them was to identify and qualify leads. So we know that if they if the quality lead quality they're getting is low, like, that's that's pretty significant because that's a core part of their day to day. Okay. And so yeah. You know, I like to copy all these stickies and bring them into the next exercise here, a ramping ranking. Okay. Because so you captured all the pain points now from your customer. You've tied it to specific personas, and now you're ready to kind of, like, rank the relative pain, next to one another. And so this is kinda where you ask, like, well, how much does it hurt? And the prompts here are, you know, how painful are these issues compared to each other, and what's the impact on time, cost, or even brand reputation. And so the move here is just to, you know, again, duplicate those stickies, then have them rank them, like, zero to 10. Zero being, it's no big deal, and 10 being, like, this is the worst, you know, imaginable pain possible. And it is it is easy to get kinda caught up here. This can be a difficult exercise, in terms of, like, the placement of pain points. And so if you find yourself in that situation, I I would really encourage participants to kinda go with their gut. We're just looking for, like, a quick scan of what really hurts the most, and we can always validate this, like I said, later with end users and focus groups or research following the session. But this exercise, you know, allows you to do two things. It at first, it surfaces where is the energy around, like, what's truly top of mind for the customer. And secondly, it helps you prioritize which problems are worth solving first. Right. So you would move one of these sticky notes then into the into the pain area or you or you'd ask the customer to do that, I guess. Right? Yeah. I asked the cost you know, I actually kinda try to be a little hands off. Like, when I'm facilitating these sessions, I kinda want them to be the ones, like, typing in the stickies, moving things around. Again, it's kinda like that. You don't want things to get lost in the game and telephone situation that we were talking about. So, yeah, like, making low quality leads is, like, very severe. And then if you look at that sticky around yeah. Let's just pick one, like, too much time spent on admin tasks. Yeah. That one may not be as painful, and so you plot it, you know, in a a little bit lower on the scale. And so you can kinda get a sense again of, like, where where that energy is. Right. And it's about the discussion that happens while you're doing that. Right? It's not about necessarily this got a four and that got a three. It's not about the score. It's about why would you put it there and and it's about the flow of how these things get ranked. Right? Exactly. You got it. Yeah. So I did wanna give you, like, one more alternative, though. And and you could do these in in conjunction, or you could pick one or the other. But I also have one more exercise to kinda look at pain. Pain, the one that we just went through is very user focused, and this one is kind of, more focused around the impact to the business. And so the step here, answers why does it matter to the business, and we wanna understand how these pain points tie back to business outcomes. And so here are the prompts would be things like, how does this pain or opportunity impact new customer acquisition or expansion of customers or retention of customers or cost to serve? And then which of these are our top priority for your team right now? And so, again, you're just gonna, like, duplicate the stickies over, which, Jim, you've already done. And then, again, you're gonna kinda plot them around. You know, again, let's take this one around low quality leads. Like, that might be one that, impacts acquisition. Or if you've got one here of, you know, lack of visibility into customer behavior and interactions, perhaps that impacts your ability to identify that, like, cross sell and upsell opportunity. And so thereby that impacts expansion. Right. You could also you know, you might even put it on the line if it's impacting retention too. Right? Right. Right. And so you're gonna plot all these, stickies on this, business impact quadrant. And and once they're all there, I like to use a voting session to help prioritize again where the energy is around, and that's a piece built right into the mural. And this gets everyone involved Right. And creates a clear view of what matters most. Right. Yeah. And, again, by doing this, matrix prioritization, you're going to have a structured and facilitated conversation with the customer. And and that that generative or that cocreation moment is where you start to build those trust bonds and the and the relationships change. Yeah. Absolutely. And so, you know, this the other thing I kinda wanted to call out is this exercise also serves as a really great baseline, to quantify ROI or anticipated benefit if you wanna get even more granular, like, later on in your sales process. For example, on, you know, the unclear view of the pipeline, you could actually calculate the number of lost or unworked opportunities against your average deal size and win rates to estimate the dollar, amount of pipeline missed. And so at this stage, I would say that's overkill. But, like, as you kinda move into, like, the, you know, conversations with the customer throughout your sales process, and let's say, you know, low quality leads become something that they're really focused on or lack of visibility into customer behavior, you can model those out and calculate those anticipated benefits and use those in your proposal to really kinda show the ROI, and kind of, like, pay off, especially, you know, if you're selling a a a product or a service to offset some of those, those pains. Right. Yeah. That's great. And, you know, I just picked one here, incomplete or outdated customer info, and I was like, wait. Is that acquisition? Is that expansion? Or is that retention? And the answer is it might be in any of those. Right? And then you with the customer, you have to understand the logic for why they might put it in one box versus the other. And you might disagree. You might have this disagreement too between customers, right, if you have multiple people? Yeah. And and you might you know, the reality is you might have a like, that one, like you said, could fit in a few of these different boxes once you kind of unpack it and have a discussion. And so I would actually probably duplicate it or You would duplicate it. Yeah. And then have the participant reframe it. Right. And you say that a lot It's new context. Right. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I love that. Alright. Should we keep going? Any other kind of thoughts on this one, Jim? No. That's good. That's great. Yeah. I love this. So on the critical events, here's kind of where we're diving into trying to push the customer to act now. And so we wanna ask the the prompts what needs to happen and by when, and what's at risk if there's no action. And this step is crucial because it helps us understand the urgency behind pinpoints. You wanna pinpoint the trigger that's motivating them to take action and and more importantly, what could happen if they don't take an, action. And the goal here is to paint a clear picture of the consequence of inaction. So, for example, you know, they might say we're launching a new product in three months. And if we don't solve this data tracking issue now, we'll miss the deadline. Or if we don't address this service delay, we're risk at losing the customer by the end of the quarter. Right? And if they lose that customer at the end of the quarter, like, how much is that worth? And what's the revenue that's at stake? Like, you could kind of go down, like, the, you know, the seven whys, and if if you've done that exercise before to really understand, like, the root cause, of why we need to prioritize this and why it's so critical. And so I put together here kind of, like, an urgency meter, to really drive the point home around, what what is critical. So the red is something that needs to happen immediately. The yellow or the orange here is, near term. So this is action, that is needed soon, but not right this minute. The green is future. There's time, but this still needs to be addressed in the long run. And the beauty of this stuff is it really kinda gives you and the customer clarity on the timing and the cost of inaction, and that's where that urgency turns into action. Mhmm. What would be an example of an event? I think you mentioned one, but if we were to just type it in there, will like a a reorder, I think you said, or a merger and acquisition, something like that? Yeah. Well, we can we can make one up around an acquisition. So we could say maybe the event is like you've you're acquiring a new company, you know, and and they need to be up and running on your platform by July 1. And then July 1 would be the deadline that you would type there. Right. Right. So you go over here and say July 1. Yeah. Great. And it matters because, like, let's say they're you know, you guys share customers or there's a way to kinda, like, cross sell and upsell, you know, products from this acquired company with the, listing product sets. And so it just allows you to take a more holistic approach to your customer pursuits. And, actually, that's gonna feed into this next process around decision process. So, let's keep going, and then I'm actually gonna come to this point around critical event in just a second. Okay. But finally, we arrive at, okay, how will the decision be made? And this is where we map out the decision making process itself. And I like to ask, like, who's involved in the decision? What steps must happen before you get a yes? And understanding this decision process gives you insights into who you need to engage with and how things are gonna move forward. And so you can map out the key stakeholders using, like, these, stakeholder types that I've, you know, put on the on the left here. Got a decision maker, and this is ultimately the person who says yes or no. You have influencers, and so these would be people who sway the decision, but they don't have the final say. Yeah. And then you've got evaluators, and those are the folks that assess the solution and provide feedback but aren't involved in the final decision. If you use a different nomenclature at your company, like, you can, you know, change and edit these stakeholder types, but I think it's helpful to just understand the role that these folks play in the, decision process. And it just, again, helps you kinda figure out who needs to be involved and what actions you need to take. So if we go back to that example, Jim, around Yeah. The acquisition happen. Right? Like, let's say you map out this entire decision process and you realize once we go through all the steps and we look at the deadlines, we're actually not gonna have this, like, buying process complete until August 1. But now you like, go back to that critical event. You just said that we need to have these users like By July 1, I think we said. Right? Right. By July 1. And so now you've kinda got this, like, nugget that will help you kinda push urgency, and sometimes this is a really eye opening moment. It's not just about us pushing urgency for urgency sake. It's like we want the to be successful with their outcomes. And so that might mean that, you know, we've gotta recalibrate around things internally to meet that that deadline. Right. But if you do correct me if I'm wrong. If you're doing this with the customer, they will have seen, oh, we have this thing happening on July 1, but our decision process is gonna not make that possible until August 1. They're probably gonna come to you and go, can you move faster? Or right? So that you you've actually they they've come to the realization themselves. Right? So you don't have to send those annoying follow-up emails and stuff like that. They've already seen that it this is urgent. Right? Exactly. Yeah. They've seen that this is urgent. And, like, not only have they seen it, but they've, like, kind of, like, seen where. Like, maybe legal takes two weeks, you know, and you actually need to escalate it and say, you know, my manager needs to reach out to the legal person and say, we actually need this in two days because of, like, the, you know, the timeline that we're working with. And so that just kinda gives you more visibility into, like, where the bottlenecks are in this process and how to collapse those. Excellent. Alright. And yeah. So, and then you had one more slide there. It says thank you. But, those those are the six boxes of of your template. Any other any other, comments about, the that workflow and the template there, Seema? You know, I would just say, like, I I realized, like, there's a lot on this template. And so, I think, you know, I would I would challenge you to maybe start with, like, one thing. If you're new in your new to, like, workshopping with your customers this way, starting with even, like, one thing, like, mapping the problem out together visually, will completely change the energy of the conversation. And once you kinda get, like, acquainted with that, you'll slowly add kind of more exercises to your tool belt and, like, eventually get to, like, this point where you can run an entire session like this. Mhmm. We really think that when customers can see and plan and shape will shape the plan, they start to believe in it and in you, you know, as a seller, a whole Right. And so if you're not cocreating with your customers today, I think you're just missing that chance to build deeper trust and, and win smarter. So, hopefully, this has been helpful in in giving you that that head start. Yep. And we're gonna make this template available to everybody at the end of the session here. So you can have these, the structured frameworks that Seema showed you in a handy Mural template. And I love the advice of just starting with one maybe. Right? You don't have to do all six in the order that you suggested. Exactly. Yeah. You got it. Excellent. We do have some questions. So, I wanted to leave some time to to dig into some of those questions, and we're gonna move over there. We had one from Alex right up front who's more of a clarifying question. Are we talking about the customer's business impact? And then his follow-up was, is this a b to b example? We we just kind of had a an example set of data in there. Is that is that from b to b? Yeah. I did I did kind of, like, think about this from, like, a b to b perspective. Like, if you're, you know, a software company or, you know, any kind of tech company, but, honestly, any a b to b context works here selling to a customer. And so, yeah, it would be the customer's impact. Right? Like, the the impact to their business. So in that example with low quality leads, you know, what's the what's the impact they're gonna face to their bottom line if you don't improve that lead quality? Right. Yeah. So this is a a a deeper consultative sales process. And I I think you mentioned to me too, this might be one of several calls as well too. Right? This this might be one of the early ones when you're trying to build a relationship, but also trying to get some of this foundational information from the customer. Right? Yeah. I would say, like, I kinda like this workshop. I would say as, like, maybe a second call. Like, you have your first call where you're introducing yourself and maybe you're getting kind of, like, a high level understanding of the situation, like, to get to that first box that we had on the template. And then you're gonna tee up this session. You're going to maybe suggest the right kinds of stakeholders that attend this session. And then, you know, ideally, allowing an hour for this conversation, you know, with a group of stakeholders would be ideal. And and you could repeat this discovery workshop across multiple user groups. And so Right. If you're selling into an organization and you've got an initiative across, like, marketing sales, you know, HR. Like, maybe you're having conversations with each of those teams just so you can really flush out, kind of the nuances that exist within each business function instead of, like, tackling it altogether. Right. If that's your only option, you know, to do it altogether, there are certainly ways to do that and make it successful as well. I think that addresses Alina's question because she mentioned, how do you how might you adapt this for technical teams? And and, you know, maybe the answer is that that's a follow-up conversation. But once you have some of the critical events, then you might need to, have a more technical, call. Is that is that how you would see it, or what where would you deal with, you know, a lot more technical questions and maybe even, like, legal and contractual questions and things like there's different types of conversations in the sales process. Right? Yeah. I mean, this one has really been oriented around kind of, like, a business conversation happens, you know, in kind of, like, that stage two, kind of time frame of your sales process. So the deal has been qualified, and now you're kinda moving more into, like, that discovery stage and trying to understand the customer's problem statements and needs. And so, yeah, as it advances and you're then maybe going into, like, feasibility conversations or more, like, technical analysis, I think that generally comes later. And and, you know, I think at a lot of companies, those tech technical resources too are are coveted people. And so you also wanna bring them into the conversation once you really have a clear picture of everything that's on this mural. Right. And the technical teams can have much more, kind of, like, contextualized conversations around the goals and the objectives of the the project or, the opportunity. So so so correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm reading between the lines here what you just said. This can also help with your internal team alignment as well too to get them up to speed and and to get them aligned with the business goals. Right? Because you are gonna have legal quest conversations and technical and all kinds of other conversations. Right? Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. Excellent. Let's see. How do you deal with intellectual property when the solution is cocreated with by the prospect customer? How do you convince them to still pay the full price for this new solution? When a solution is cocreated? You know, I I I would say this probably depends on my and, like, each organization. It's probably more of a legal conversation that I'm probably not the best person to answer. But I would imagine a lot of the con like, contractual agreements you have in place may address some of these concerns. But I don't know, Jim. I think I might have to punt on that one. I'm not I'm not the legal expert here. I don't wanna pretend to be. No worries. I see a bunch of questions around the session itself. So maybe we can talk about that. Alina is asking about the duration of the session. I see a question about what what's the ideal group size there. And then there's one here too about facilitating. Right? So just tell us a little more about facilitating. Like, how long do you need? How many people? What if you're not good at facilitating? How would you address some of those questions? Yeah. Okay. Well, so let's start at, like, how long do you need? I think this session was designed as a one hour session. You do wanna kinda, like, time box it and keep things running, you know, quickly, and and sometimes that means that you're having conversations a lot faster than you would like. I like to use the timer to just kinda make sure that we're running track and make sure everyone in the session also has visibility into, like, okay. We're gonna spend ten minutes on this section. And so, again, it kinda just allows you to go for that volume of ideas and try to get out as much as you can versus, like, perfecting every sticky note and thoughts. In terms of size, in terms of size, I have done these sessions with, like, one other person in the workshop, and I've done it with a hundred people in the workshop. Hundred? Yeah. You know, like, one other person, it's like a very conversational, you know, thing, pretty straightforward. If you're going for, like, that larger format, I would just say it's probably not I I wouldn't say it's, like, the the best practice in a discovery workshop. I would much rather say, like, let's chunk it out into smaller groups. But you sir I think we've all been in situations where you just you don't have a ton of control over situations like that. And then I think what you can do is utilize breakout rooms and, just format your workshop a little bit differently. And so maybe when you're going into, like, the persona pain points, you're opening up, you know, 10 breakout rooms, and you're having each team kind of populate their persona. And then you're bringing them back together, Maybe you're doing a recap, and then you're moving into the next. And, again, use those breakout rooms or or you're giving them even, like, two or three assignments or exercises to complete in their breakout rooms and then come back together. And so you may need to lengthen the time of your workshop if you're dealing with a larger group. Right. But, yeah, I think there are flexible ways to make this work for any group size. Right. But I I would recommend don't try a hundred people at once if you've not tried this one. There's only one or two people, I guess. Right? We're small. We're small. I I I I had a little anxiety just hearing that you did this with a hundred people. That that's a possible. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely possible. How do you get the customer to engage? And, you know, I noticed that that you did have a warm up. But one thing I've noticed, is that sometimes when you invite people into Mural, what they're expecting, they might be expecting a pitch, and they may be expecting bullet points on a slide from you. And now you're saying, hey. Let's cocreate a persona together. They may not lean into it and actually be adding sticky notes as as fluidly as me and you were. Right? How do you get people to actually open up and contribute? Yeah. It's a it's a great question. You know, like I mentioned, I think sending that email the day ahead or a few days in advance and letting them know this is a collaborative session, and we're going to be utilizing Mural, and here's a link. You know, check it out. And then giving them kind of, like, a non business context icebreaker question to answer, like, something really easy. You know? It could even be I've done, like, the map. If it's a global team, like, a map where you just say, like, add a sticky note, you know, and and add a line showing us where you're from, or where you're where you're joining the session from. And I think those things just, immediately get you comfortable in Mhmm. In the product. So that's one way to keep them engaged. And then I think on the day of the session, just spending, like, that upfront five or ten minutes orienting them, you know, into the mural navigation, like, how to add a sticky. And then, again, like, doing a quick icebreaker exercise because I think most people in there and they, like, explore the toolbar and see, like, the fun things you can do, like the GIFs and the confetti and the emoji reactions. Like, it actually becomes quite fun, but it's just kind of, like, overcoming that initial hurdle. Right. And and you mentioned upfront too. I was just thinking as you were talking about that comment you made upfront about this this motion, this idea of a cocreation mindset as a differentiator. And I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's moments like that where people go, I think I wanna work with this team. Right? Because we're we're doing all this together, and there's confetti and and a warm up. But more importantly, they're really listening to me and those types of things. Right? Is that what you meant when you said differentiator? Yeah. I think it's like they're they're listening to me. You know, my my needs and my motivations are, like, reflected and, like, the solutioning and, you know, ultimately, this should translate to, you know, either a proposal or a solution or all of you know, both of those things and probably more. But, it just it makes sure that you're kind of, like, keeping aligned with the customer's goals and motivations throughout the process. And then it does I, you know, I think I always enjoy working with people that I genuinely have fun with and have kind of authentic conversations with, and I think this just, like, creates the forum for that. Right. Right. Exactly. And I know from, for instance, from our friend, Andrew Martie, who's the head of pre, North American presales at SAP. He does these cocreation sessions with his customers, but he found that sometimes people can't access Mural if they don't they don't want to. And and his kind of, gracefully degrading is to just share share your screen. Is that an option that that you've done to as well too where you're not not actually adding the sticky notes, but they can see you adding their sticky notes? Is is that something you've tried? Yeah. You know, I think, like, I that's a great tip. Like, I think if you're kind of in that situation where, you know, folks just straight are just, like, reluctant, maybe it's, like, this first session, they're not ready quite ready, but the next one, then Right. You absolutely can, you know, have them kind of observe a screen share. And and, anyways, as a best practice, I like to screen share as we're collaborating in the mural anyways. I work on a couple different screens, and so I'll keep kind of, like, my, screen share window open on one monitor and then, like, the live mural open on another monitor. And it just allows, you know, folks to kind of see what's happening in real time while actually Yeah. You can absolutely just have them watch if that's if that's the best kind of lowest barrier to entry. But I think, ultimately, you wanna get them up that curve where, again, it's truly not that that difficult. And then if you do have a partnership and an ongoing relationship Mural as well too. Right? So it's it's good it's good to try to get them up to speed anyway. Right? Yeah. Definitely. K. And I just wanna remind folks too that Mural has three different levels of permissions. There are members, fully paid members, but they're also guests, and there's also the visitor links too. Right? You can invite somebody in as a visitor. They don't have to sign up or leave their email, and they can they can still come in. And that depends on your account settings, but Mural does have those three different levels. So you don't have to force your customer to create a Mural account. Right? They can just come in as a visitor and do this and then leave. Yeah. That's great. And that that, like, you don't need to, like you said, create an account. You can just drop in and, and start collaborating right away. Right. Right. Great. Let me see here. I'm just taking stock of some of the questions that are still coming in on the left. Thanks everybody for your question. We didn't get any alternatives here, but, oh, Mark, you're highlighting one for me. Thank you. Mhmm. There. If if changes don't, do not depend a % on you, what advice do you have to manage customer expectations on improvements about managing customer expectations? If she maybe, like, she she used on, like, the format of the participants. Maybe someone who have asked that question can add a little bit more context on, like, the the types of changes they're talking about. Right. Might be, changes changes to the service or something like that maybe, I think. I'm not sure. So if you're talking about an offering, right, and as the salesperson, you may not oh oh, she she just Alex here said, I thought the session was related to expected changes to your product and service. Oh, gotcha. Okay. So, yeah, this is this is more oriented around, understanding customers' needs, like, in the pursuit of a of a sales conversation. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this would be, like you said, a qualified lead or some some lead where you're in an earlier stage of this of the sales process and you really wanna diagnose and get I mean, we call it a discovery, right, on the sales side of things. Right? So so this this is an alternative. This takes place at discovery call. Right, Tina? It does. Yeah. And that was kind of actually, I don't know if we had any great name suggestions that came out of this. That was going to, like, our first question. But, yeah, I think traditionally, it's referred to as, like, the discovery conversation or the discovery workshop. But, yeah, we'd love to hear, you know, ideas for names, alternatives. We thought vision and prioritization might kinda get at the crux of what we're trying to do here. But if anyone on the call has ideas, we are all ears and would love to hear them. Otherwise, it's the vision and prioritization workshop by Seema Jain. You know what? We're right at time too, and I think we got to all the question. Mark, thanks for diagramming all of that. That was amazing to see all that. Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mark. Yeah. But you can access the template, and and it there's a short link here too. It's h, t t p s. You know what? I'm gonna throw this in the chat for everybody here. There you go. It's in the chat for the webinar software. You can get this template that Seema just showed showed everybody. And it has the the all the welcome screens and the warm up and everything there as well too. And remember, if you don't feel comfortable doing that as a whole hour session, just take pick one of them or maybe two of them. Maybe do the persona and the pain matching one. Like, just do a couple of them. But adding a little bit of cocreation to your sales calls, to your presales motion will completely change the relationship that you have with customers. And even just doing one thing, you'll see a markedly notice difference in the relationships that you have. So so we're gonna be back with another webinar in May. On May 21, we're gonna be speaking with Caroline Dodlin from Coca Cola, and we're gonna be talking about aligning marketing and r and d and how this type of visual collaboration and cocreation can help r and d and marketing get aligned. So with that, first of all, Mark Tippen, thanks so much for helping out and and riding shotgun here along with me. And, of course, Seema, it's been great to work with you again, and this is such valuable information as well too. Just thank you from from all of us here at Mural. Oh, well, thank you for having me. It's, it's always a pleasure working with you guys. Alright. With that then, we'll end the session. Thanks everybody for, attending. We are recording this. And if you registered, you'll get a, a a a notification about the recording. Thanks, everyone. Have a great.