What’s the catalyst for most customer marketing initiatives? From our experience it’s usually something like this from a sales or marketing executive:
“Sales can’t find references because they’re in people’s heads, or spreadsheets.”
“Sales doesn’t know where to find customer videos or content. It’s on our corporate site, Dropbox folders, GoogleDocs or who knows where.”
“As a company we do a terrible job with references. We need to fix it!”
When the marketing or sales executives get behind the idea of improving reference selling it’s typically viewed as a transactional, matchmaking function: a seller needs a reference for a call, reference program sources the reference and fulfills the request. Rinse and repeat.
It’s understandable. Most executives worked at other companies where this matchmaking service existed. The idea of this function having strategic value didn’t occur unless a seasoned program manager came into the picture and did some evangelizing.
Why bother establishing a strategic program?
What isn’t often understood is the caliber of individual needed to build and maintain a program that delivers measurable results that CxOs can appreciate.
Would an intern or newly graduated college student be asked to inhabit a title like that? Would a company hire someone to lead a critical function like the demand generation team with no demand gen experience? Of course not. That would be unrealistic and unfair to the employee. And the program would fail.
Many skills are needed to balance the short and long-term demands of a customer reference program: relationship management, creativity, business analysis, project management, data management, diplomacy & tact, persistence, training; all with an emphasis on continuous improvement. Sounds like a consultant skill set, right?
We routinely help our client contacts hone their program management practices by coaching and sharing a variety of best practice resources, facilitating peer networking, and encouraging the attendance of relevant conferences. Our most recent resource is a diagram that illustrates and describes the many facets of the program manager role. Beyond our own clients, we thought this would be helpful to share with any manager tasked with owning a program (new or established).
If you read our Getting UnStuck! eBook you’ll know that a successful program manager must allocate time to the right activities, some daily, some weekly, monthly or quarterly. It’s all about balance.
If you are the program manager today and not getting a lot of executive mindshare, it’s likely because your manager has a) no idea what running a program entails, and b) you’ve been unable to quantify program contribution to company growth. We hope this helps you explain part (a). This post addresses part (b) and performance metrics.
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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