The hardest part of getting buy-in from sales and customer success teams? These are busy people and often advocacy feels like just one more headache when their plate is already full. Read on for quick tips on how to encourage sales and customer success teams to engage with your cohort of customer champions!

Customer advocacy – the process of identifying and sharing the stories of success and delight from satisfied customers to educate prospective buyers about the value a company offers – has enormous potential to meet B2B buyer demand for peer references, and positively impact company revenue. To realize this potential, however, customer advocacy programs must be strategically designed to ensure advocacy efforts support the needs and interests of customers and align to broader business goals.

We all know that every company has a different view and investment in their customer advocacy program (if they even have a program at all). When going through a merger and acquisition (M&A), these are some helpful considerations to keep in mind while adapting your customer advocacy program to the new business.

As customer advocacy professionals, we’re all deeply cognizant of one simple fact: we trust our peers, the lessons they’ve learned and the advice they’re willing to share.

Metrics are an essential business tool that enable each customer advocacy program to evaluate its performance and impact over time. We at Referential track various key business parameters for each of our clients on a monthly and bi-annual basis. One of the most meaningful metrics that we have in our portfolio is Client Lifetime Total Revenue (CLTR).

This recognition of customer advocacy as a business essential is the result of a thoughtful evolution in the concept of “customer references” and a concerted effort to recognize both the myriad of ways customers imbue value back into an organization and the opportunities companies have to provide more value back to their customers.

Whenever things are uncertain, marketing budgets are constantly the first to be slashed, and the customer advocacy program is frequently a prime target.

Most Advocacy Professionals are tasked with the fulfillment of customer reference requests from Sales that are guiding prospective customers through the final stages of a sales cycle. Whether or not your team handles a large volume of incoming sales requests, there are numerous benefits to contacting opportunity owners ahead of them making reference requests.

Here are just a few tips from our global team to think about when establishing or working with your global team!