Feature Update : Unlimited Calls with Free Growth Mentors
With any platform, you always have to keep both sides (supply and demand) in mind and do your best to make them both happy.
We hope we’re doing just that with our new feature release.
The Problem
In the beginning we had no limits on calls with free mentors.
Someone could sign up and book a call with every single free mentor.
Good for them, right!?!
What a bargain! 74 one-on-one sessions with high level growth marketers and startup professionals.
So here we see the see-saw tipping way to the advantage of the demand side.
If every member booked a call with all of the free mentors, the mentors would get bombarded with calls and the enjoyment of helping the members would probably fizzle out pretty quick.
Why would the desire to mentor fizzle out?
When calls are scheduled willy-nilly and without any thought or strategy behind them, they generally don’t amount to much.
As a mentor, you want to believe that you are truly offering value on a call and want to help the mentee solve problems and succeed.
If you are a marketing automation specialist and someone books a call with you and wants to talk about something totally not related (like getting funding) you feel a bit helpless and frustrated that you can’t help.
Motivation goes down when you feel like you aren’t actually making a difference.
On the other hand, when someone carefully selects you because of your experience and skill-set and the session goes fabulously, you feel like a million bucks!
How about the other side? Gotta maintain balance!
From the mentee side of things, we saw mentor binging not going well for them either.
I really hate to compare our platform to an all-u-can eat buffet, but what the hell- here goes!
When you walk into a buffet your eyes get big and you are like, “I want that and that and then that for dessert oh and I’ll eat two plates of that for sure.”
No bueno, my friends.
In a span of a few hours you are going to talk about email marketing, having a growth mindset and then bootstrapping life?
Your brain will be on over-drive and most likely none of what you spoke about will be taken to heart and implemented.
As with life in the buffet line, you aren’t really enjoying each individual item and it all kind of blends together.
The First Line of Defense
Members are required to give details about what they want to speak about when requesting a call and encouraged to give as many details as possible (so the mentor can assess if they are a good fit).
Mentors can decline any session that they don’t feel they are a good fit for and we encourage them to do so. They are donating their time and we want them to feel good about the assistance they are giving.
If someone is binging and scheduling calls that don’t seem like a good fit, the mentors have the final say to whether they accept a session request or not.
This line of defense didn’t sit well with us though because then the mentors had to hit decline on the session and write a message explaining why they weren’t a good fit.
Our mentors are all nice people and nobody likes to hit decline and feel like they are letting someone down.
5 hours Free
Our first attempt to curb the binging abuse was to add a 5 hours of free sessions limit.
This was nothing that we programmed into the platform, we would just keep an eye on things and mention it to users who were getting close.
Meh, ain’t nobody got time to sit around and babysit.
Also, we didn’t want our members to feel like they had to be careful and stingy with how they booked their sessions. “Do I really want to use one of my calls on the topic of mindset? Maybe I should be focusing on more revenue related topics…”
This was like letting you see the buffet, but telling you that you that you only had 10 minutes.
Mindful Scheduling
We believe that with the help of our detailed filters, match making assistance and the extensive information on the mentor profiles, that users can find the perfect fit for them.
So to help you remain calm in the buffet line not be tempted to mentor binge, we have implemented a ‘session request queue’.
Members can have up to three free calls scheduled at one time.
We’ve done some user testing and everyone thought that this was a fair number.
Now when a member already has 3 free calls requested, they are not able to book any additional free calls.
Paid calls are fair game! You can binge on those all day long.
Once a free session is completed, you are able to schedule a new one.
This allows people to continue to book calls and continuously learn from the mentors on the platform over time.
To sum things up : Members can book as many calls with free mentors as they would like, but they can only have 3 in the queue at a time.
How to make the most out of this new feature
Most of our members cite prioritization as something they would like help with. Not knowing where to start or what order to work on things. This queue will help you with that.
- Stay focused on one area at a time and find solutions in that area before moving on and confusing things.
- When you are mentor
shoppingbrowsing, really take the time to look through their profile and read the reviews from their previous sessions. - Ask us! We are always happy to point you in the right direction or answer questions you may have about mentors.
- Make a habit out of scheduling calls. No need to binge all at once. Think long game!
The GrowthMentor admin team is super accessible on live chat, Slack or email- so please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions about this or anything else GrowthMentor related. We like questions -they keep us on our toes!
