S2E17: How to Build Meaningful Customer Relationships After Purchase -- ft. Ken Rapp, Founder of Bluestream

Main Insight Implement a continuous discovery and improvement process to effectively engage customers post-sale, driving revenue and fostering long-term relationships.

Guest Bio Ken is a dynamic entrepreneur and commercialization leader with a proven track record of founding businesses, creating new markets, and delivering significant shareholder returns. Passionate about addressing unmet needs with practical solutions, Ken specializes in launching products, building scalable business models, and cultivating thriving company cultures. As the founder of Bluestream, he focuses on connecting businesses with their customers after the sale through innovative SaaS platforms.

Key Takeaways

• Adopt a Continuous Discovery Process: Implement a cycle of discovery, choice, execution, and learning to adapt and grow your business.
• Define Clear Objectives: Start with clear goals, whether they’re revenue targets, product launches, or other milestones.
• Ask the Right Questions: Use both open-ended and closed-ended questions to gather comprehensive data from your customers.
• Listen Actively: Prioritize listening over assuming answers to truly understand customer needs and preferences.
• Tailor Communication Styles: Adapt your questions and interactions to match the communication styles of different stakeholders.
• Be Willing to Pivot: Stay flexible and ready to adjust your strategies based on the insights gained from customer feedback.
• Implement and Iterate: Choose a path based on your discoveries, execute it, and continuously refine your approach based on ongoing learning.

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Transcript

Keirra 
Today I am sitting down with Ken. He's a dynamic entrepreneur and commercialization leader. He's founded businesses, he's created markets, provide significant shareholder returns. And Ken is passionate about, um, matching an unmet need 

Keirra 
with a practical solution. And he has experience includes launching products, building scalable business models, and creating cultures that enable employees to thrive. And I'm super excited to chat with you today 

Keirra 
Ken. 

Ken
Thank you. It's awesome to be here. 

Keirra 
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit about how and why you got into founding Bluestream 

Ken
Sure. So I really have a passion for helping companies scale from what I call unmet needs. So it's really interesting to me to focus in 

Ken
on, uh, what might be right in front of us as a need, but because there's no practical solution, we live with that problem. Uh, and so I've done this a couple of times in my career, particularly in the scientific communities with some automation and some software SaaS 

Ken
platforms. And now being here, um, at Bluestream, we're really focused in the consumer sector, where companies and businesses that provide products and services to 

Ken
the consumers, um, don't have a way to connect with the consumer after the sale that is engaging and productive and valuable. And so the unmet need that we're solving is to connect companies with their customers. After the 

Ken
sale, around the product, around timing of being a new owner of a product, or about how to take care of a product. There are tons of touch points where a company could engage with their customer. However, there isn't an easy way to make that happen, and we've all 

Ken
experienced the solution to this unmet need when we might have downloaded an app that was for 

Ken
um, an automobile. And we it helps coach us through the learning curve and then the maintenance schedule and that kind of activity, that app development to that that auto company was millions and millions of dollars, which means that most many, many companies, small and mid 

Ken
and and large, but not super large companies just can't get that done. It's it's you need a software development team to do that. And so we've built a platform that makes it super easy to just, um, load up some of your, what we call owner journey messages, uh, into 

Ken
our cloud. And then we'll automatically using conversational AI and dynamic interactive, uh, text messaging with consumers will help them have an awesome initial unboxing onboarding experience and then a great maintenance and care program to take care of the product 

Ken
they have. 

Keirra 
Mhm. Okay. That's very, very interesting. So 

Keirra 
in your journey with growing bluestream, what would you say has been the main insight that has helped you like promote the business and kind of grow it 

Ken
That's a great question. So I think if I look back in my career, it's similar. It's that it's not a straight line and there are many things out of our control. And so learning to 

Ken
uh, process information and, and what reading the tea leaves in a way that we learn and improve and then try new things is is the key. So, you know, it's it's funny that you asked that question. Many people talk about pivoting in businesses and what 

Ken
pivoting is so good for a business because it's all about what I call discovery 

Ken
So you go out and discover what you need to know about about your mission and your direction and listen to customers. You then choose the best alternative for what you're trying to do, your objective, um, and then you live with that choice you've made for a while and learn and go back to the 

Ken
beginning. Discover, choose and live. So as I think about Bluestream, the initial founding of the company, you know, was because the founder had a cracked guitar. It had gotten very cold in the Boston, New England area and very dry, and his guitar cracked. And he wondered 

Ken
why didn't that guitar manufacturer. Why weren't they in touch with me? Why weren't they helping me prevent what happened? By giving me tips and education, and even some product suggestions on how to prevent a dry guitar and a cold New England winter. And 

Ken
so it started. He started the company and did some some custom work and did a project or two. And then we realized that, boy, maybe it's more than guitars. And so we had to shift our thinking, and we went out and discovered by listening to two more guitar companies and 

Ken
accessory companies in the music industry, we broaden it out into pets. We brought it out into 

Ken
um, RVs and both any, any product or service. And then we had that whole map up on the, the whiteboard, you know, of of information and data coming from the market. And we made a choice to work toward building a SaaS platform that was easy to turn on and run 

Ken
and get data, help companies get data about their customers and the ownership journey of a product. Well, that led to some more discovery because as we learned, we live with that decision that we were going to build a SaaS platform. We then got what I call on the field of play and 

Ken
really found out what our customers wanted. And from there, we've then gone back to discovery and made new choices. And now we've got a very successful platform growing in the market. So hopefully that answered your question. But it's the same thing. It's it's not a straight line. It didn't go on 

Ken
the whiteboard from here to there. It didn't happen that way. It was a little left, a little right, a little left. And but it's all about in my career I've found discovery and then making good choices. After you've done enough discovery and then living with your choice for a while and learning, and then going back and rediscovering to 

Ken
continuously improve 

Speaker C
Mm. 

Keirra 
Okay. Okay. I see when I discover and then 

Keirra 
use that to keep improving after you've lived with your discovery. So 

Keirra 
would you say that those are like if I had to like start doing that, you know, kind of step by step. Um, and I wanted to implement this into my company. Let's say I worked at a business to business software company, like, I'm a head marketer, um, or I'm a CEO. Like, what? What would I do 

Keirra 
kind of step by step to start implementing this kind of discovery process, um, in such a way that it's most beneficial to me 

Ken
So I think, um, we typically start with, what are we trying to aim at? So kind of begin with the end in mind by Stephen Covey. Uh, and, and decide where are we trying to go, whether it's pick some revenue numbers or pick logos or 

Ken
or product launches milestones. And then from there we we, we start thinking about what are the questions we should be asking to help us understand the the parameters around getting to that vision or that that milestone. And 

Ken
it's amazing how one question and some listening and learning from our audiences will lead to more questions. And it's when you've gone out with enough questions and gotten enough data that you start to see the picture, that it's a it's just a marvelous process to 

Ken
then choose a path together with your team, um, and then go out and execute and live with your choice and, and learn and then do it again. So it's, it's this fanning out of information to have the whole picture, you know, on, on the wall and then 

Ken
fan it in and make your choice. I liken it to, um, being a CSI detective, you know, and, and we we've all been exposed to, uh, how, you know, there's a corkboard or a whiteboard where there's, you know, the first fact goes up there, and then the 

Ken
next fact. And how do they connect together with maybe some string or some some lines? And ultimately the picture gets clearer on, you know, how to execute, to choose to execute your plan, uh, live and learn from that and then start the process over again. So it's a continuous 

Ken
improvement process. 

Keirra 
I love that that makes so much sense. So generally figuring out what we're aiming for. What like target we have, whether it's a revenue number or a product launch or a milestone we want to hit with the company. And then rather than saying, okay, what's the plan? You're 

Keirra 
asking? What are the questions that we're going to ask our customers to try to understand how we're going to get to that vision or milestone, and then you use that to expand your data set, understand the problem better. You understand like what the customers want better. Then you pick 

Keirra 
something to implement based on that. And then it's just like making small tweaks and improvements over time, like from your actual experience 

Ken
Yeah a couple of comments there. So absolutely. And 

Ken
and first, um, I'm from, you know, my my position, my what's in my DNA is to get out on the field of play and talk with customers, because early in my career, I learned that you can solve a non problem for customers. And you know, we're 

Ken
talking about building a business here and being an entrepreneurial looking to solve a problem. I've had entrepreneurs that I talk with and even in my early career had some ideas for products, but there were really no markets for the products. And, you know, it was just a great idea 

Ken
And maybe it was a great idea, maybe it wasn't. It doesn't matter from a product perspective. Sometimes we we have a need personally that we solve a certain way. But there isn't a market, there isn't a business there. It's a, um, very customized one off or a few off type of situation. And 

Ken
in our in my case, you know, we're looking to build something special in a large build a large business, a software company that grows and scales and helps, you know, tens of millions of consumers and, and, um, tens of thousands of businesses, you know, you can't you can't have a 

Ken
problem that isn't real, that isn't real to them. So get on the field of play and start asking questions. That's what it's all about. Start asking questions 

Ken
So once you have, like you said, the data up on the up on the whiteboard, you start to get the insights that will help you, uh, put some hypotheses together and, and, and try some things. So I'm, I'm very much on get on the field of play and 

Ken
then learn and and improve and and continuously head towards your vision and your, your objectives 

Keirra 
Mhm mhm mhm. 

Ken
And I found this uh discover choose live 

Ken
slash execute is just a a way that whenever, whenever we get too far over our skis and think we've got the answer too quickly um, and start building, you know executable plans around that. We go back to discovery one last time just to make sure that we, we haven't missed anything 

Ken
And I'm not talking about spending years on this. It's a matter of days, weeks, months, um, on the right discovery that then makes choosing the best alternative pretty easy to to sell. When you look at all this and you get everybody together, you know, on our team, it's easy to say, yeah, you know, this, this is obvious. There's 

Ken
2 or 3 things we'll test as we go out onto the field of play. 

Keirra 
Right okay okay. So are there any pitfalls that people might fall into as they try to implement this process 

Ken
overall? So absolutely, the in my experience, the number one pitfall is not listening. It's it's believing that you already know the answer or thinking about what you want to 

Ken
say before someone's even shared what they want to tell you. And, you know, in my career, I've learned some very important information that I use to help communication with people to to repeat 

Ken
the question, uh, things like techniques, like repeating the question and asking if you understood what it was your customer actually said or your target interview, uh, person you're talking with actually meant to say so listening, sharing back what you think you 

Ken
heard, asking for clarification. Because too often we go into, you know, a discussion or a dialogue and we know what we want to get out of it. But we're, we're and we're pre-programmed to want to drive in that direction rather than listening and hearing what someone might have to say, which could have some incredible 

Ken
insights. Okay. And if if I could, I'll take it one more step. So, so beyond sharing, listening, clarifying and sharing to make sure that you really understand, we all, as people have different 

Ken
styles. So there are people who are very friendly and people oriented. And so it's important to help them understand how what you're asking might be, uh, helpful to lots of people because that's what's motivating them. They're very 

Ken
much we've heard the term people people, people, they're people persons. And if we don't put our questions in their context, as you start to talk with them, listening to their answers is more about their team. And and we want to if we want to get to the insights, we need to talk about how whatever 

Ken
we're asking would be addressed by their team. Then there are people who are very, very results oriented, and you can tell when you start talking with them that they want to get to the bottom line. And so talking with them about how it affects their people, although interesting, may not get you the insights you 

Ken
want. Um, and so driving toward so the the reason we're having this conversation, quote unquote, is to understand how we could add revenue to your company or increase your number of customers. Those are very result oriented questions. And so it makes the audience more comfortable 

Ken
and you more in tune to gain the knowledge from their feedback. So there's there's some techniques that help you as an interview person asking questions, to ask questions more relevant to your audience when you're doing the discovery to make it more productive 

Ken
Does that make sense? 

Keirra 
Yeah, what you just said actually reminded me of a book I read recently. It's called The Laws of Human Nature, and at one section in the book, he's the author starts talking about how there's different styles 

Keirra 
of communicating with people, like communicating with people making decisions. But he looked at it through the lens of like, masculine styles and feminine styles. Uh, and it was super interesting. And I was a little bit baffled by this because I don't really understand how it works because he like, listed like the masculine 

Keirra 
style of like thinking through a problem, which is like your goal oriented and like results oriented and you think through the system, whereas like the feminine style is like you start to think about how it's going to like affect all of the members of the team or like, how is everybody going to like, harmonize with each other, like, and it's like a 

Keirra 
very and that that second style is a very like common in business. But it was it was like a very interesting lens of looking at things. And then I was also baffled because I just had like the masculine style for like every single one that he listed. So I was like, wait a minute, this. I guess this doesn't like apply. I guess this has nothing to do with your 

Keirra 
gender. It's just like your temperament 

Ken
Yeah, I think that's very relevant. So you've connected that dot there independent of how the author has positioned it. There are different styles to our audiences. And if we're on sort of asking questions that are geared toward one style versus 

Ken
someone's not on that same page, you don't get the value of the conversation as much as you could, as if you thought about that and in your listening skills. So I understand where they're coming 

Ken
from. Um, and it's very relevant. So, yeah, you connected that dot to what I was saying. 

Speaker D
Yeah. 

Keirra 
Yeah, it's super interesting. And how do you have any tips on how to come up with those initial questions that you want to ask. And are you in in the terms of business, are you thinking of 

Keirra 
asking these questions like specifically to your like potential customers, potential buyers, um, or are there other people that you might be asking questions to, depending on, like the context of the goal you're trying to achieve? 

Ken
Well, let's say you you want to decide what the pricing is on one of your products or services as you go to market 

Ken
And you know, you know who your persona is that you're targeting and or at least you think you know who your persona is when you go to market. And so you identify that person or that persona of a person, and you then say, okay, I in order to understand pricing, I need to 

Ken
understand a couple of things like competitive analysis, if there's any competitive products, but also the value equation to my customer. So now what you would do is and we do is we put together a series of targeted questions that might be open ended. Um 

Ken
about the value, things like, um, what are some of your objectives over the coming 12 to 24 months to say, a CMO, if that's who we're talking to or chief marketing officer, what are some of your critical objectives? What are some of the challenges you 

Ken
have? Uh, those are those are open ended so they can articulate some of those types of answers. Um, how many people you have closed ended question, you know, well, in my group I have five or I have 30. And so what we're 

Ken
doing in discovery is we're we're using open ended and closed ended questions to get to the value of what it is that we're trying to understand, so that we can then compare that against the pricing model that we might have in mind. And 

Ken
the competitive landscape. So that that's an example where using discover and then getting all that data from enough of the population to then be able to make an obvious choice, which usually they're very obvious, the choices on the path of the path, and then start executing and living on 

Ken
that path and learning and then starting over again to continuously improve that. Did that make sense? 

Speaker D
Yeah. It does. 

Keirra 
Uh, I'm just out of curiosity, have you come across any, uh, like, personal anecdotes 

Keirra 
or examples on when it was just really obvious what to do based on some of the questions that you asked in your information gathering stage 

Ken
Many, many, many times. So but it it's never on the first go. So probably the best answer is to say, you know, we go out and start discovering and oh my goodness, what we thought we were going to do. Um 

Ken
really on the whiteboard was not what the market said that they wanted. And so the, the more refined. So you put together some slides, go out and interview people, ask open ended and closed ended questions and discovery start to analyze the data. And and you have to be brutally honest that maybe what we thought 

Ken
we were going to do is not what the market really needs 

Speaker D
Mhm mhm mhm mhm okay. 

Keirra 
Makes a ton of sense. Well Thank you so much Ken for your your insights. And as we're wrapping up I'd just like to ask, is there anything that you'd like to say to promote your company? Or is there anywhere that you'd like people to be able to Get in touch with you 

Ken
So let me start with, um, please reach out to me at bluestream. So it's Ken at Bluestream with no E on the 

Ken
blue bluestream.io. Um, and you know, we are on a mission to help companies connect with their customers around their products after a sale. And we look at the problem that we discovered. That wasn't what we discovered at first. This is the great example is that there's, you know, 

Ken
$100 billion customer experience market out there. And what it's been focused on is promotional activity, uh, customer and buyer journeys and pre-sale marketing campaigns. And we spend all that money trying to get a 

Ken
new customer, and then the customer buys a product. And after the sale, they go into maybe customer support, uh, rather than we've spent all that investment of time and money to get a customer. They're now owning the product and 

Ken
there's significant engagement opportunities with that customer that will drive cross-sell, upsell and referrals. And so what we've discovered, um, and chosen to do is to solve the unmet need of the after 

Ken
sale product experience. And so we would love to talk with any of your listeners or any of your, uh, viewers about how we could help them, um, open up that relationship with their customers after they've purchased their product to drive revenue drive market 

Ken
share and, and referrals, um, through through that engagement. And it's been delightful to see, uh, you know, we have, uh, it's a very interactive dialogue. You kind of set it and forget it. You set it up once and we help you do that. And then whether it's a bicycle or it's, um, health and beauty 

Ken
products or it's home ownership or even some supplements and health for humans, or it's the fun stuff like playing guitars or owning puppies. Uh, you know, we're involved in those those journeys. We call them owner journeys and after sale product 

Ken
experiences. Um, and it's just been delightful to see the retention of our customers after sale is running over 90% when they get on journeys. Consumers and customers of yours would just love to have the help from you, because that's why they bought something from you in the first place. So love to chat with 

Ken
anyone you know. Ten minutes and we'll know whether or not we can have an impact on their business and market share. 

Keirra 
All right. Sounds great. Well, thank you so much, Ken, for sharing all your insights and sharing your story 

Ken
Thank you for having me. Have a great day. 

Ken