Technology

Evangelism 101

Christian Buckley
Dir. Partner Management, Rencore, USA
About Me Director of Partner
Management, NAmerica
& Asia-Pacific @Rencore

12-time M365 Apps

& Services MVP +
Microsoft Regional Director

Board member @TekkiGurus,

Advisor @revealit.tv &
@WellnessWits

Blog+Podcast at buckleyplanet.com
Find me online IN/christianbuckley
@buckleyplanet
What is a
Technology Evangelist?
Coined by the Macintosh Computer
team in the early 1980’s, it was
described by Guy Kawasaki as
"using fervor and zeal (but never money)
to convince software developers to create
products for a computer with no installed
base, 128K of RAM, no hard disk, no
documentation, and no technical support,
made by a flaky company that IBM was
about to snuff out."
Thi s Photo by Unknown Author i s licensed under CC BY-SA
 In his book “Crossing the Chasm” author
Geoffrey Moore stated that the role of the
evangelist becomes critical when addressing
what he identified as the "chasm" that exists
between early and mainstream adoption.

Thi s Photo by Unknown Author i s licensed under CC BY-SA

Thi s Photo by Unknown Author i s licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

What does a
Technology Evangelist do?
It depends on what you want to achieve

If you’ve been considering adding an evangelist to your team, you

must be clear on your desired outcomes:

• Improved branding?
• Thought-leadership?
• Partnerships and alliances?
• Product or service feedback?
• Competitive intelligence?
• Corporate strategy?
• Community development?
• Internal cultural improvements?
WHAT
Technology Evangelists
can do for you
1. Help improve
your products
As an Evangelist, you spend a lot of time
out in the field talking to people,
learning, and sharing your insights with
the rest of your team.
• Feedback loop from partner and
customer into product
• Deeply involved with future versions
• Pioneer best practices to create
collateral and help support customers
• Develop customer data and validate,
provide gap analysis, provide design
guidance, advocate for product changes
2. Grow your
Community
You are essential to building/expanding
the community in which you work.
• Enrich and expand your partner
relationships
• Provide thought leadership
• Product champion and influence through
blogs, forums, conferences, articles
• Build lasting connections with key
leaders in the community
3. Build
Partnerships
You are uniquely positioned to identify
and qualify strategic partners, and to
build and maintain these relationships.
• Recruit partners (ISVs, SIs, professional
service firms, independent consultants)
• Track and support partner activities and
their customer needs
4. Enable
Customers
A key role is to help with customer
enablement – that is, to ensure that
customers who purchase your
products or services are using them
and are happy with them.
• Work closely with customers on adopting
and extending your tools or services
• Provide guidance to support, as needed,
to help them understand the business
issues a customer is trying to resolve
Technology Evangelism is about creating

ADVOCACY
HOW
Technology Evangelists
do what they do
1. Community Development

The most obvious aspect of the tech evangelism role is

involvement with your industry, helping raise your company’s
visibility by helping build and support the community.

• Both online and offline activity

• Answering questions
• Providing feedback
• Developing goodwill
• Build trust
2. Thought Leadership

For most tech evangelists, thought leadership is demonstrated

through content creation and may be tied closely to overall content
marketing strategy.

• Generate content
• Develop goodwill
• Build trust
• Provide opportunities for genuine conversations
3. Product Management

Be the face of your company, and a voice of the customer.

• Prepare mockups (or wireframes)

• Outline customer and partner requirements (sometimes formal PRDs)
• Experiment with tools and tech to flesh out ideas and help your product and
engineering teams to more fully envision where the company should go.
• Better understand the competitive landscape, help your team understand
different customer and partner perspectives.
4. Partner Development
Another important role is deciphering what other players within the industry
do, and figuring out how, together, both companies might reach their individual
goals more quickly.

• Talk to other vendors

• Identify new and novel opportunities
• Make introductions between partner prospects and your team
• Outline how you think the two companies should work together
• Monitor the relationship over time to see how you might help the relationship
to be successful.
5. Customer Enablement

Finally, a critical aspect of the evangelism role is to ensure that

customers who have paid for your products or services have the
educational tools and resources necessary to be successful.

• Provide additional training, support or consulting to customers

and partners as needed
• Provide goodwill and support
• Be the resident expert
• Answer any questions
• Be the expert on industry norms and best practices
WHERE
to get started
Locate your Experts
and Champions

• Look internally
• Outline your goals
• Give them some level
of autonomy
• Learn from the outside experts
How to be successful as a Technology Evangelist

• Love what you do • Provide product and program

• Give your time
• Be honest about what you
know and don’t know
• Create great content
• Become an advocate for your
local community
feedback
• Keep competition in check
• Get creative
• Recognize others
• Constantly expand your
knowledge

• Be consistent
Thank you!