Who is the most important audience for selling your AppExchange app?

For most of our partners, Salesforce administrators (admins) are the answer.

And what a fantastic audience they are.  Not only do they drive much of the traffic on the AppExchange, but also admins are true app enthusiasts.  They are highly motivated to boost adoption and optimize the user experience for their Salesforce instance.  And the AppExchange delivers a turn-key way to do this.

I interviewed Mike Gerholdt who is a highly accomplished admin.  In fact, Mike is an AppExchange All-Star as well as a Salesforce MVP.

Mike shared valuable advice about delighting Salesforce admins.  Here are some of Mike’s perspectives:

• Your app will not be successful on the AppExchange if you fail to connect with admins. This connection can be made with your messaging, content and online interaction.

• An admin’s job is to manage their organization’s Salesforce instance.  Successful admins go well beyond the mundane but important work of resetting passwords and changing permissions (captured humorously in this fun video staring Mike).  They train and inspire their users around the power of Salesforce.  And they introduce new apps into their organizations to extend the value of Salesforce.  As Mike puts it, “A successful admin knows when to click instead of code.”

• An admin’s business knowledge is often a mile wide, and an inch deep.  This is the nature of the job, because admins need to understand the fundamental needs of every function across their organization, and match solutions to them.  The lesson here for your AppExchange listings?  Keep it simple.  Create messaging that an admin can quickly and easily understand.  That admin will then be more motivated and better equipped to introduce your app to the ultimate purchase decision maker(s).

• Your most important piece of content is a great demo video.  The first place Mike goes on an AppExchange listing is to the video, to really understand what the app does.  Mike is immediately turned off if all he can find is an advertising video that does not show the app in action.

• A free trial is another important AppExchange element.  A five or ten day trial does not have value for Mike.  He encourages a 30 day free trial which allows time to test out key features and engage decision makers in the organization to take a look.

• Some of Mike’s favorite AppExchange listings/apps are Conga Composer, Silverline CalendarAnything and Milestones PM.

I encourage you to subscribe to Mike’s blog and follow him on Twitter.

And now that you know more about admins, stay tuned for upcoming posts with more detail about how to create messaging and content that will connect with this critical audience.