As the leader of your reference program, how’s your relationship with your CRO? More and more companies we work with have invested in a relatively new CxO role: the Chief Revenue Officer. While this title has been around for at least five years, it’s becoming more mainstream, and customer reference program managers need to take notice. These execs may be the answer to many of your most nagging challenges to reaching full program potential.
The CRO role began as a catch-all for “all things relating to revenue,” but with a lot of variation from one company to another in terms of specific responsibility, scope, and authority. One thing is consistent, and that’s who the CRO typically reports to: that’s the CEO. Because CROs are, in effect, second in command, the individual has a lot of influence. In addition, they are the bridge between Marketing and Sales. A dream goal of any company is perfect alignment between Sales and Marketing. In reality, there’s still friction and misunderstanding when it comes to how these teams interact, their priorities, and their obligations to each other. Years ago, when I was a restaurant manager, and the relationship between the front-of-the-house (dining room) and back-of-the-house (kitchen) had the same issues. In that world, I believe the restaurant manager was essentially the CRO, minus the cool title.
How then does the CRO play a potential role in customer reference management? She plays a sort of overlay role working with Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to achieve harmony and maximize revenue. It is no longer a matter of the department heads operating on their own islands, sometimes getting along, sometimes not.
As a customer reference program manager within the marketing team, you know the challenges of getting Sales and perhaps Customer Success to adopt better practices relating to customer references. The CRO can play a role in optimizing processes, implementing productivity tools, and establishing metrics that move all the players in the right direction.
The goals you have are:
The headwinds you encounter are:
The CRO’s top 10 list must include revenue growth, and we know that customer references fuel wins. That’s why it’s so essential for you to link your program’s efforts to company growth goals. If you are a savvy program manager, you’ll be able to enlist the CRO in addressing those headwinds that are holding you back. It’s implicit that a customer reference program is mainly in place to help Sales, but a CRO will want specifics. If you can demonstrate that, for example, the program’s four main growth goals all support the company’s four main revenue goals, as well as finetuning the reference database, documenting success stories, and collaborating with stakeholders working on the same goals, you’ll be golden.
An effective CRO will knock down obstacles and articulate why the reference program is part of her mission. The CRO will take the lead as a shrewd arbiter, diplomat, and problem solver. They can paint a big picture and make the cross-functional connections that others can’t. It’s worth your effort to allocate some time to cultivate a solid relationship with your CRO and see your program thrive.
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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