Successful stakeholder engagement is rarely accidental—it is intentional, strategic, and rooted in trust. In this insightful video, Kristin Sanderson explores what truly drives effective stakeholder engagement and why it remains one of the most critical skills for leaders, project owners, and customer-focused teams today. Whether you’re navigating cross-functional initiatives, managing executive expectations, or building long-term alignment across your organization, this session offers practical guidance you can apply immediately.
Kristin breaks down stakeholder engagement beyond surface-level communication, emphasizing that success depends on understanding motivations, priorities, and perspectives across diverse groups. Rather than treating stakeholders as a checkbox or a one-time update audience, she highlights the importance of viewing engagement as an ongoing relationship—one built through transparency, consistency, and purposeful dialogue.
Throughout the video, Kristin shares proven approaches for identifying key stakeholders early and engaging them in ways that foster collaboration instead of resistance. She discusses why misalignment often occurs, how unclear ownership and assumptions derail progress, and what leaders can do to create shared understanding before issues escalate. By proactively addressing these challenges, organizations can reduce friction, accelerate decision-making, and increase overall buy-in.
A central theme of the discussion is trust. Kristin explains how trust is earned through follow-through, active listening, and clear communication—not just polished presentations or status updates. She outlines how setting expectations upfront, communicating progress honestly, and inviting feedback at the right moments can transform stakeholders from passive observers into active partners.
This video is particularly valuable for professionals working in:
Stakeholder engagement often sits at the intersection of these functions, and Kristin’s insights help bridge gaps between teams with competing priorities. Her guidance reinforces the idea that alignment is not about control or authority, but about influence, empathy, and shared goals.
Viewers will also learn how to adapt engagement strategies based on stakeholder type—executives, internal teams, customers, or external partners—and why a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. Kristin encourages leaders to tailor messaging, communication cadence, and involvement levels to meet stakeholders where they are, creating a more inclusive and effective engagement process.
By the end of the video, you’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of:
If you’re looking to strengthen collaboration, reduce internal friction, and improve outcomes across initiatives, this video provides a grounded, real-world perspective on what it takes to engage stakeholders effectively.
As this infographic illustrates, a mature advocacy program is responsible for continuously identifying advocates, maintaining accurate advocacy data, protecting customer relationships, and aligning with top company goals to accelerate growth.
The infographic contains six key components. Here's a description of each for you to translate into your own talking points.
Every advocate starts as a customer.
The journey begins when account teams, customer success managers, support teams, and services organizations create positive experiences that build trust and confidence.
As customers achieve success, some become enthusiastic supporters of the company, its products, and its people. These customers are identified as potential advocates and introduced to the advocacy team.
The advocacy team interviews these individuals, learns about their experiences, captures important details about their interests and expertise, and creates a searchable advocate profile.
The result is a discoverable advocate: someone who can be found, matched, and engaged when the business needs credible customer voices.
Without this process, valuable customer relationships remain hidden inside co-workers’ heads or team spreadsheets, unavailable to the broader organization.
Great advocates are rarely discovered by the advocacy team alone. It’s really just too much to ask of any one part of the organization. Every customer touchpoint plays a part in cultivating and retaining advocates.
Customer success managers see customer enthusiasm firsthand. Account teams hear success stories during business reviews. Support teams witness customer loyalty. Product teams interact with passionate users who influence future direction.
A successful advocacy program creates a systematic way for all customer-facing teams to identify and nominate potential advocates, as well as a means for customers to self-identify..
Think of it as building a talent pipeline.
The broader the participation across the organization, the stronger and more diverse the advocate community becomes.
This collective effort ensures the advocacy database reflects the full spectrum of customer success stories across industries, products, geographies, and use cases.
The advocacy team serves as the steward of the organization's advocacy data.
Their responsibilities fall into three primary areas.
First, they recruit continuously. Advocates change jobs, priorities shift, and customer enthusiasm naturally evolves over time. Maintaining a healthy advocacy community requires constant replenishment.
Second, they keep information current. Customer stories, product deployments, business outcomes, and willingness to participate all change. Outdated advocacy data quickly becomes unreliable.
Third, they measure and report value. Advocacy programs must demonstrate their contribution to business outcomes such as customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
Beyond maintaining records, the advocacy team actively shapes the composition of the database to align with company growth objectives. This is essential if the program is to be seen by executives as a strategic lever vs. a low-level function an intern can run.
If the company’s strategic direction includes expanding into healthcare, launching a new product, selling through a new channel, entering Asia, or targeting a specific buyer persona, the advocacy team ensures the advocate population evolves accordingly.
In many ways, they function as portfolio managers for one of the company's most valuable assets: customer credibility.
Most organizations initially think of advocacy as a sales resource.
Sales certainly benefits from customer references, but advocacy creates value far beyond the sales organization.
The common thread is credibility.
Advocates provide something no marketing budget can purchase directly: authentic proof from real customers.
Most mature advocacy programs include additional components that extend value for both advocates and the business.
These activities are connected mechanisms that strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create additional opportunities for customers to contribute.
Together, they help transform advocacy from a transactional activity into an ongoing customer experience.
The ultimate purpose of customer advocacy is not activity.
It is business impact.
In Summary
Advocates are valuable assets. The advocacy team's job is to make sure those assets are available when needed, protected from burnout, and aligned with the organization's most important priorities.
When done well, customer advocacy transforms customer success into measurable business value. It is an enterprise capability built on trusted relationships, reliable data, and authentic customer voices.
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