Let's Talk Enablement. Software Enablement with Erez Shilon

Less than 10 min read with plenty of insights! Let's get to know Erez Shilon a little better.

What do you think is the best way a company can share its know-how with its customers and employees?

I think there is a range of options starting from the good old fashioned webinars and release notes to smart email campaigns, blogs and thought leadership materials to in-app notifications, walkthroughs and guides. The really good companies use multiple ways and compliment each communication to its users and employees with new information to keep them engaged.

What methods would you use to encourage a knowledge sharing within a team?

‍For internal knowledge sharing I find that there are a few important steps we need to look into: The product ideation/problem discovery -> The product functionality/solution discovery -> Product Design & Development (Building it) -> Go to Market (GTM). For each step there is a different type of knowledge we wish to share in order to get feedback and align the team in the proper way, when the group is small enough (Ideation/Solution discovery) meetings, documentation and even short video recording for a-sync communication is good enough, but as we progress with our product development process, the groups become larger and the communication and knowledge sharing tools change into webinars and enablement as mentioned in the previous question. In my previous products, short 'how-to' videos and in-app notifications were great.

‍What measurements and KPIs do you think should define your Product Engagement goals? Would they change by Product type/Industry?

I think KPIs change not just by product type (B2B, B2C) or industry verticals, but also for the product maturity level. If we're in the product/market fit stage we would use a different set of KPIs from a hyper growth product or a product with a big customer base which is struggling with retention. In many situations in the past I found myself using the Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users as a better KPI than Retention/Churn rate as it's not a lagging indicator. I also think that each PM should highlight the most important features/flows about their product and measure the usage/user engagement with them to know if users find value in those. One way that worked well for me is to identify these features/flows by following the 'bright spots'. When a PM isn't sure about the most important features/flows (when everything is top priority, nothing is top priority), you can start by looking at your best users/customers and see what they do often, this should give you a good sense of your most important features. In my opinion, the best KPIs are the ones who represent the value your product is delivering to its users, and not just engagement which is usually your own (or your company's) vanity metric. For example, if we develop a product which finds bugs in web apps, and we see our WAU is growing steadily, but we're not measuring how many bugs were found/fixed with our product, we might be focusing our attention on the wrong KPI. In other words - measure the 'why' not the 'how' :)

‍Since we know sharing the Knowhow is a team effort and we are big sports fans. What is your most memorable team sports moment?

I lived in the US in my early 20s, as a young emissary with the Jewish Agency, I had many local friends and they used to invite me to watch football with them every weekend. To be honest, I didn't understand the rules for the first few months, but I would watch it with them since they were my friends. All this changed when I had the chance to go to an actual game and sit in the crowd. I don't know what happened - but this was when I really understood how it's played and started to enjoy the game! Maybe being there in person and fully immersing myself in the experience helped.

‍If someone wants to connect with you, what’s the best way to do it? Social/Email etc?

‍Best way to contact me is either email: Erezshilon@gmail.com or Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erezshilon/

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