In this video, veteran customer-advocacy expert Carlos Gonzalez walks you through how Point of Reference and its advocacy software ReferenceEdge can help you build, launch, and scale a customer advocacy program that drives real business results.
Whether you’re launching your first program or looking to revamp an existing but underperforming one, this session highlights the foundational steps and strategic mindset required to turn customers into long-term advocates.
Why Customer Advocacy Matters
- Advocacy is no longer optional: Today’s B2B buying environment is driven by peer recommendations, customer stories, and authentic user voices. As buyers place more trust in peer experiences than traditional marketing, transforming satisfied customers into advocates becomes a strategic advantage.
- It impacts revenue — and more: Advocacy does more than generate testimonials. When properly managed, it can accelerate sales cycles, improve conversion rates, enhance retention, and even deflect support demand.
What You’ll Learn
In the video, Carlos outlines a clear, practical path for getting started (and scaling) with customer advocacy. Key takeaways include:
- Identifying and recruiting the right advocates at the right time: Not every customer will become an effective advocate. ReferenceEdge helps you spot high-potential advocates — based on fit, satisfaction, and success — at the moment they’re most likely to engage.
- Building cross-functional workflows that embed advocacy in day-to-day operations: Advocacy shouldn’t be siloed in marketing or CS. By embedding advocacy tasks into existing processes — especially in sales and CRM workflows — you reduce friction and boost adoption across the organization.
- Measuring impact and proving ROI: Advocacy becomes far more powerful when every reference, testimonial, or peer interaction can be tied back to business outcomes like pipeline contribution, deal velocity, or support savings.
- Achieving sustainable growth through process and governance: Instead of ad-hoc one-off references, Carlos advocates for building a structured, repeatable program — with governance, guardrails, and ongoing stakeholder buy-in — so advocacy scales as the company grows.
Real-World Value: What Success Looks Like
During the discussion, real examples are cited where companies using ReferenceEdge saw tangible benefits:
- Shortened sales cycles and increased conversion rates thanks to timely peer references.
- Better customer retention and reduced reliance on support, as advocates began assisting peers directly.
- Stronger operational efficiency by centralizing reference activity, avoiding overuse of key customers, and ensuring a healthy, balanced advocate base.
This isn’t about “one-off wins” — it’s about embedding advocacy as an integral part of your go-to-market and customer success strategy.
Who Should Watch This Video
- Customer-marketing leaders planning to launch a new advocate program
- Sales, Customer Success, or Marketing teams trying to align around advocacy workflows
- Companies struggling to turn “happy customers” into repeatable business value
- Anyone interested in learning how to operationalize customer advocacy at scale
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