Introduction
Advocates can play a crucial role in driving sales and enhancing customer satisfaction by serving as references and sharing their positive experiences. After building a strong base of advocates and leveraging them for success stories and speaking opportunities, the next step is to connect these advocates for personalized engagements, such as sales references and customer requests. In this article, we'll explore effective strategies for managing these one-on-one advocacy activities, setting the stage for incorporating advocacy into health scoring in our next discussion.
Why does this matter?
Connecting advocates for sales references and customer requests is crucial for several reasons:
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Increased trust and credibility: Potential customers are more likely to trust and engage with your brand when they hear positive experiences from existing customers.
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Accelerated sales cycles: Having ready advocates can expedite the sales process by providing timely and relevant references.
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Enhanced customer experience: Personalized engagements with advocates can help address specific customer needs and improve overall satisfaction.
How to get started
Step 1: Identify and map advocates
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Review current processes: Evaluate your existing processes for tracking and managing customer advocates.
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Create advocate profiles: Develop detailed profiles for each advocate, capturing their experiences, strengths, and areas of expertise.
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Align with sales needs: Map these advocates to specific sales needs and opportunities based on their profiles and past interactions.
Step 2: Facilitate customer-to-customer reference requests
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Implement reference request system: Set up a system for facilitating and managing customer-to-customer reference requests.
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Automate reference assignments: Use automated CTAs to assign reference requests to appropriate advocates.
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Document interactions: Ensure that all interactions related to reference requests are documented for future reference and analysis.
Step 3: Manage end-to-end reference activities
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Simplify reference requests: Create a streamlined process for submitting and managing reference requests to reduce administrative overhead.
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Track reference usage: Monitor the number of times each advocate is used as a reference to ensure balanced engagement.
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Provide support and resources: Offer necessary support and resources to your advocates to prepare them for reference activities.
Gainsight features you'll need
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Rules Engine: To automate the identification and assignment of reference requests.
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CTAs with Linked Objects: For managing and tracking reference activities.
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Data Designer: To create and manage detailed advocate profiles.
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Milestones: To track significant advocate interactions and reference activities.
What’s next?
With a robust system for connecting advocates for sales references and customer requests in place, you're now ready to integrate these advocacy activities into your overall customer health metrics. Our upcoming article will guide you through incorporating advocacy into health scoring, helping you measure and track the impact of your advocacy programs on customer success and retention. Stay tuned for insights on creating a comprehensive health score that reflects the value of your advocates.
Further reading and inspiration