Just Getting Started Workshop

Alyse Chiariello

NICE | inContact

David Sroka

Point of Reference

The Customer Advocate Universe

Reference

Help Desk

Customer

Advisory

Boards

Customer

Communities

Customer

Awards

Customer

Content

Customer

Events

Executive

Briefing

Center

Customer Advocate

Program

a.k.a., Customer Marketing

Customer Reference Program

Advocate Marketing

Maturity Model

• How we’ll use it today

• How to use it in the future

Program Vision

• Strategic or Transactional

• Stakeholder Services

• Related Programs

• Outcomes

Your Program

Vision is your

north star

Program Vision Pitfalls

• Formulating vision in a vacuum

• Not formalizing your vision

• Not sharing with leadership

⚫ ⚫ ⚫

Staff Composition, Organization &

Perspective

• Scope + Goals = Program Staffing

• Competing / Complementary responsibilities

• Seniority / Skills

• Time Management

Ideally

Success Factors

• Executive Support

• Relationships

• Company Culture

• Politics

• Baggage

Program Manager Attributes

• Relationship-centric

• Likes salespeople

• Fearless about asking

• Persistent

• Manages upward

• Passionate about advocates

• Face of the program

• Bandwidth / Time

• Tech savvy

• Service mentality

• Time management

https://www.point-of-reference.com/cap-manager/

Staffing Pitfalls

• Gaps: experience, skills, personality profile

• Over promising relative to bandwidth

• Juggling incompatible roles

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Managing Upward

a.k.a. Executive Support

• How to build the relationship

• Align program to company growth goals

– What’s important/what’s not

• Don’t trust execs to set goals

– Or to reach out/think of your program

Managing Upward Pitfalls

• Assuming leadership will get what you do

• Under communicating

• Not securing a executive sponsor

• Not conveying value in CxO terms (alignment)

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Field Relationships (internal)

• Advisory board

– Who?

– Member responsibilities

– Benefits to the program

• A matter of trust

• User Adoption

User Adoption

• Awareness

• Education

• Data quality

• Incentive / FOMO

Field Relationship Pitfalls

• Being unknown

• Not soliciting regular feedback/direction (adboard)

• Not following through on commitments

• “If you build it they will come…”

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Customer Reference Relationships

• #1 - Build your database

• Customer “WIIFM”

• To reward or not to reward?

• Recruiting strategy

• Case Study

• Customer Quote

• Guest Blog

• Logo Use

• Media Interview

• Name Drop

• Press Release

• Reference Call

• “Snapshots” (slides)

• RFP

• ROI Study

• Site Visit

• Social Media

• Speaking Opportunity

• Video Reference Interview

• Video Testimonial

• Webinar

• Reference “Forums”

Reference Activities

Customer Relationship Pitfalls

• Being unknown

• Not building direct relationships

• Not showing gratitude

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Horizontal Integration

• Identify reference consumers

• Synergy

– Opportunistic or Planned

• Priority: respect customer time

– One contact, many deliverables

Related FunctionsYou Need Needs You

PR

Analyst Relations

Investor Relations

RFP/Proposal Team

Events Team

Content Development

Customer Advisory

Boards

Customer Success

You Need Needs You

User Group(s)

User Communities

Customer Briefing

Center

Awards Program

Referral Program

Product Marketing

Executive Team

Customer Success Partnership

SALES

• Reference Calls

• Site Visits

• Presentations

• RFPs

CUSTOMER

MARKETING

• Speakers

• Videos

• Case Studies

• Webinars

• Social Media

CUSTOMER

SUCCESS

• Health Insight

• Account Access

Horizontal Integration Pitfalls

• Not synchronizing with stakeholder peers

• Not promoting program value

⚫ ⚫

Program Promotion

• Make a plan

• Carrot and stick

– Policies and rules

– Fun and games

• Communicating success

Program Promotion Pitfalls

• No promotion after launch

• Assuming the program sells itself

• Not sharing wins for the program

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Program Metrics

• Outcome vs. Activity metrics

• Know your audience

• Executives: What matters?

• Leadership and bias

Program Metric Pitfalls

• Assuming data isn’t important to execs

• Not connecting achievements to CxO goals

• Sharing irrelevant metrics to each audience

• Confusing activity with outcome

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Content Strategy

• Alignment with growth goals

• Alignment with Sales’ needs

– By sales stage

• User conference “gold”

Content Strategy Pitfalls

• Content doesn’t support company goals

• Content isn’t what stakeholders need (feedback)

• Content isn’t resonating with prospects

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Information Systems

• Managing Data & Content

• Leveraging CRM

• Automating processes

Data Wrangling

• Building the Database– Internal sources

• Nominations

• Customer Success app

– Customers

• Communities (e.g., Influitive)

• Sat/NPS/TechValidate surveys

• Email campaigns

• User Conferences

Reference DB

Related Technologies

Customer

Reference

Management

CommunitiesCMS/

Sales

Enablement

Customer

Success

PlatformsCustomer

Review

Sites

Marketing

Automation

Survey

Tools

Gift

Fulfillment

Lead

Referrals

Customer Reference Management

Content / Sales Enablement

Communities

Referral Marketing

Gift Fulfillment

Customer Success/Experience

Marketing Automation

Customer Reviews

Survey Tools

Soft

wa

re/S

erv

ice S

olu

tions

Information Systems Pitfalls

• Not automating enough

• Not thinking about the full ecosystem (martech stack)

• Underestimating the importance of data

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Outside Expertise

• 3rd Party perspective

• Domain research

• Best practices

• Services & Tools

Community Resources

• LinkedIn Groups– Customer Reference Knowledge Sharing Network (1,432 members)

– Customer Reference Professionals (1,000)

– Summit on Customer Engagement (962)

– Advocate Marketing Group (956)

– Success-Story Marketing (939)

– Customer Insight and Advocacy (752)

– Customer Reference Program .org (487)

– Customer Advocacy & Reference Professionals (1,030)

– Worldwide Customer Marketing Networking Group (467)

– CAMP Boston (188)

• Offline User Groups: Bay Area, CAMP Boston

• Events: Summit on Customer Engagement

• Vendor blogs

Outside Expertise Pitfalls

• Too much time spent reinventing the wheel

• Not building a network of peers

• Only calling on your network when you need

something

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Wrap Up

• Build Your Plan (maturity model)

• Build your network

• Follow Up questions?alyse.chiariello@niceincontact.com

david@point-of-reference.com

• Post-Workshop Resourceswww.point-of-reference.com/jgs2020