EBC ya at Pure HQ

What a whirlwind! I just made it home a few short hours ago after a quick, unexpected, and incredibly rewarding trip to Pure's Headquarters in Santa Clara. The reason for my side quest?... to support a whole day of customer meetings at our Executive Briefing Center or as we say in the biz, EBC. EBCs are one of the perks of my job. They give me an excuse to see all of my friend and colleagues at Pure's HQ, I get to talk about cool stuff, I get to hear about the cool stuff OTHER folks are working on; but probably the best is that I get to spend all day really getting to know one of Pure's customers (or sometimes a future customer) on a very deep level. And we host a LOT of them at Pure.

Most EBCs I'm invited to are a highly structured affair. Our amazing EBC team at Pure Storage are absolute pros when it comes to creating engaging agendas, inviting all of the best speakers, and in general just creating an experience that makes our visiting customers feel like the honored guests that they are. This was not like most EBCs. On Friday I received a phone call from one of our Field CTOs that went something like this. "JD, can you be in Santa Clara on Wednesday? We've had a sudden change in roster for an EBC and I need someone to help me run the day 1 agenda." Turns out we had a customer CTO and CIO decide to join at the last minute but our schedule was full of deep dive technical content that was probably not going to hit the mark with them. Well the good news is that everyone rallied to the cause and in the end we had a fantastic set of meetings that day before continuing the discussions at the 650 Tavern (yeah, Pure HQ has it's own tavern where the intro theme from Cheers plays every time you order a drink). By the end of the day I felt I had made several new friends.

So what made this such a great event? I wanted to write this post to share some of my own insights that you can hopefully bring to your next EBC, wether you're a Pure account team or a visiting customer.

First, and probably most important is to understand the personas of the attendees. Are we hosting all C-level execs or is a mix of executives and technical folks? In my story above we thought we knew the personas but we got thrown a curve ball at the last minute. Clearly setting expectations for what you want out of the EBC can make all of the difference. Are you a C-level who wants to build relationships and better understand the company vision and strategic initiatives? Are you an IT architect who wants to hear from our thought leaders and subject matter experts? Having this clearly defined as you're crafting an agenda and inviting presenters can ensure you build an agenda that meets the needs of everyone in the room.

Second, be prepared! I was a little late to the party for this EBC and I knew that it would be so much more impactful if my discussions and presentations came from a place of understanding. So I reached out to our internal System Engineering Center of Excellence and asked that they send me a Pure Value Review (aka PVR) for this account. If you're a current Pure customer I'm sure you've seen this document before; likely presented by your local System Engineer. It contains a great deal of useful information pulled from Pure 1, our cloud-based as-a-service data management platform. I was able to gain some great insights into the environment including things like what kinds of capabilities were enabled; what were the most recent support cases, and what kind of systems and environments were being supported. While this document as a whole is probably a little to deep for a non-technical audience; it empowered me with a deeper understanding of the customer from which to base my questions and discussions early in the day. And boy was it powerful! I called back to facts I had learned in this report several times throughout the day.

Lastly, ask lots of questions. The EBC is a highly customized experience. I wouldn't give the same presentation or have the same discussion with every customer. By learning about my guests I was able to weave specific elements of their business and their goals into the conversation at several points. By the end we were engaging in a dynamic discussion of the future for both companies and how we would continue to work together as partners sharing in each-others success.

In my role as a leader at Pure there are few things that give me more pleasure than building new relationships with our customers. I can't wait for the next EBC and who knows; maybe I'll see you there.