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Customer Marketing & Advocacy Question: Incentivizing Reference Nominations

  • January 16, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 29 views
K

Hello, 

Are there any Customer Marketing or Advocacy peers here?

I’d really appreciate your thoughts and experience around collecting reference nominations from internal teams.

Our current challenge:
At the moment, employees at our company are not incentivized to provide reference nominations. That said, we know many Sales reps, Onboarding Managers, and even Customer Support teams have strong visibility into happy customers who could become advocates, not to mention Customer Success and Account Managers.

I’m aware there are tools that allow employees to nominate customers in one click as references and then track who nominated whom, which is a great starting point. However, my main question is around incentivization.

Question: Do you have an incentive program in place to reward employees for reference nominations? If yes, what does your approach look like?

  • A fixed reward (e.g. €X per nomination)?
  • A reward only once the nomination is confirmed (e.g. the customer agrees to be a reference or joins the program)?
  • A contest-style approach (e.g. top nominator in a given period receives €X)?

I’d love to learn what has worked well for you, and what hasn’t.

Thanks so much in advance for sharing your insights!

      2 replies

      revathimenon
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      • revathimenon
      • Gainsight Community Manager
      • January 17, 2026

      I know ​@JeniA has a really great advocacy program running in her community.

      Would you be able to share some thoughts here, Jeni?

      Where focus goes, energy flows.
        JeniA
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        • JeniA
        • Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
        • January 20, 2026

        ​@Katya It’s a great question, and I have a few thoughts. 🙂

        1. We’ve never incentivized colleagues for providing names of customers who would be good references. A couple of thoughts specifically on this:
          • People shouldn’t need an incentive to do the right thing by the customer. (I get fairly annoyed, personally, when everything needs to become a contest just so people will help with what they should be already doing.) 
          • Before considering making it a contest, try reframing the ask. Instead of “Help us get a list of customers who can serve as references,” try, “Let your customers know about this opportunity to share their knowledge with others. Help me highlight those who are doing awesome things with our product.” When you rephrase the ask to be doing what’s best for the customer, people kinda look like jerks if they don’t show support. 
          • Contests bring quantity, but not always quality. When looking for references, QUALITY is of the utmost importance. 
        2. We’ve always built our references program by asking customers if they want to participate. It’s a direct ask right to them. 
          • This way you know from the start which customers actually want to participate. 
          • Let customers know if they want to participate, they can reach out to you or their CSM (arm their CSM with the info they need). Again, their CSM kinda looks like a jerk if they don’t get the customer info about the program when they reach out. 
          • Ask follow-up questions of customers who want to help. You can collect what you need from them to begin to determine if they’d be a good fit.
        3. I’ve always advocated for getting to know customers - especially if you’re on the Community team. One of the reasons is what you’re highlighting. You don’t have to go elsewhere (as much, or at all), if you know your customers. 

        I hope these things help! Happy to answer any follow-up questions. :) 

        ❤️ Jeni
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