Pulse. To us here at Gainsight, it’s the most important thing we do all year. We spend about 11 months of the year planning this conference and one white-knuckle week in May pulling it off. It’s intense, but intensely satisfying. We believe in the intrinsic value of the event and the community we build through it. At its heart, Pulse isn’t about prospecting, pipeline, or closing deals—it’s about nurturing a growing revolution in the way companies do business. We’re definitely drinking our own Kool-Aid, here.
But what’s Pulse to you?
We know what we get out of Pulse—community development, expanding the Customer Success movement (and hopefully our TAM), and a heavy dose of pure, uncut fun. Hopefully you get those things too. But maybe for you, Pulse is just a series of marketing emails for yet another industry event. Why should you spend the time and budget to attend? What’s the return on your investment?
There are five main value propositions for you:
1. Session content for every stage of maturity
Are you a jack-of-all trades, guerilla CSM at a scrappy startup? Or are you the technical linchpin of a well-oiled machine servicing thousands of clients worldwide? No matter what post-sales role or what size and vertical your company, you will have directly and uniquely relevant content for you. We’ve sent out thousands of detailed surveys and have had countless conversations with Customer Success professionals from around the world to find out what’s most relevant across the entire post-sales spectrum.
On top of that, this year we’re taking meticulous care to craft an agenda that expounds upon previous Pulse conferences to add exponential value for repeat attendees. We want Pulse to grow alongside you as you return year-after-year. Pulse 2017 will have advanced sessions with a level of depth and continuity you haven’t seen before. If you went last year, you’ll be able to attend all three full days without having to repeat a session or topic.
2. A structured networking scheme
I’m a pretty firm believer in the value of growing your professional network at every opportunity. There’s no more reliable way to increase your worth as an employee or leader than to increase the number of people you have a personal relationship with. As you go through your career, those relationships will help augment and fuel your success as well as the success of every venture you’re involved in. If we didn’t have any speakers or sessions, Pulse would still be worth every single penny purely because of the networking opportunities you’ll have with more than 4,000 colleagues in dozens of industries.
That said, networking isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish logistically even at a networking event like Pulse. How do you know who to talk to? How do you know how to break the ice? Who’s going to be the most in sync with your goals and your company’s needs? The timing and the environment makes all the difference when it comes to meeting new people. We’re utilizing new technology and working with experienced partners like DoubleDutch, Slido, and others to enhance your networking experience. We’re deliberately expanding our after-hours agenda to create more high-quality chances to get the right names and numbers in your rolodex.
3. Speakers with specialized knowledge, experience, and skills
You can watch Ted Talks on YouTube. Why go to a conference for pre-packaged keynotes and ideas you can see on the Internet? That’s been one of the biggest questions we’ve kept in the front of our minds as we build out our speaker roster. It’s not enough to have heavy hitters (though you can rest assured, we will have some very heavy hitters at Pulse 2017), you need speakers who can give you net-new knowledge that’s directly applicable to your challenges.
Every single one of our speakers from the opening keynote to the last breakout workshop is coming primed with specialized knowledge, tactics, and insight tailor-made for you to apply in your post-sales role. We can’t wait to unveil the speaker roster. Trust me; you’re going to be impressed.
4. The latest research and metrics on the state of Customer Success
Customer Success is dynamic. Month-over-month, the landscape evolves dramatically. We’re committed at Gainsight to a scientific, metrics-based approach to continuously evaluating that landscape. We keep the data at the heart of everything we do, including Pulse. As we build out the schedule, pricing structure, roster—all of it—you can expect us to show our work on paper.
That’s also why this year, as with every year, you can expect us to make data analysis a consistent and salient feature of the conference. We’ll have special sessions breaking apart the most recent data Gainsight collects on the state of the industry. In partnership with Salesforce, TSIA, ServiceSource, and other highly respected companies, Gainsight and Pulse are the source for the most credible bleeding-edge metrics on Customer Success.
5. Help establish the Customer Success role
As that old 90s one-hit-wonder goes, “you only get what you give.” You’ll obviously get a lot out of Pulse, but you also have the chance to give back—not to us, but to the entire Customer Success community as well as future generations of post-sales professionals. It’s like this: what we establish now, in the (relatively) early days of the field can build a solid foundation for the continuing growth of the field. That can only benefit everyone, as we gain more and more legitimacy and influence across industries and around the world.
In some ways, this is your last chance to say “I was there when…” with Pulse. We’re going into our fifth year, and as a part of that we want to deliberately honor those of you who’ve been with us in the past. We’re taking a lot of steps to reward returning attendees as valued alumni. If you’ve been to Pulse before, expect VIP treatment.
BONUS: As if those five reasons weren’t enough, you can expect a very big surprise announcement coming soon with perhaps the greatest value proposition of all time! I’ll update this post, so be sure to check back or check your email for some news so incredible I’m going crazy trying to keep the secret.
