TRANSCRIPT
Gary
Nobody cares what your product does. They care what it does for them.
The first time I meet the CEO of a B2B software vendor, I often share this line with them. Most founder CEOs have a strong technical background, and they’ve created wonderful technology to solve problems that they’ve seen in their careers. So they love their technology.
Thing is, people don’t buy technology.
They buy solutions to their problems.
The other overused maxim in my lexicon is that people don’t care what a vendor has to say. They care what their peers have to say.
Customer advocacy teams have historically been responsible for customer reference programs. These help sales teams, as their prospective buyers seek out peers to talk to during their final decision making process. They identify customers who are willing to tell stories of their success with your product.
More recently, advocacy teams have taken on so much more. Managing customer advisory boards that help define a product’s roadmap. Identifying those customers willing to do so much more on your behalf. Speaking opportunities. Sharing their stories with the media. Attending and participating in customer events.
I’m gratified to be joined in this episode of What Great Looks Like by two veterans of the customer advocacy world, Colleen Reidy of Veracode and David Coates of Forter, both of whom understand that customer advocacy, done well, is not transactional, but rather it’s relationship driven. These two get the best both from and for their customers, which sets them apart in the industry.
Colleen and David. Thanks so much for joining me today. Please tell our viewers a bit about yourselves and what you’re up to these days.
2:30
Colleen
Hey. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss my passion for customer advocacy.
Again, my name is Colleen Reidy and I currently lead global customer advocacy at Veracode in Massachusetts.
I spent the better part of two decades honing the art of building customer relationships and to growth and brand strength. I’ve created programs from scratch or enhanced and scaled existing advocacy programs at now four technology companies.
3:00
David
David Coates here. Not quite as tenured as Colleen. Only 15 years in the customer marketing and advocacy space, but similar to Colleen.
Super passionate about this whole arena. Really building the programs at Forter has been my passion in the last five years. So it’s a growth company with great customers. And just to be able to focus on the relationships, because at the end of the day, business is personal. That’s been really awesome to see that come into more of the mindset of leaders in the industry.
And, to be part of that journey has been kind of cool, in the last 15 years as well.
Gary
And then the two of you were the first two people I think of when I think about customer advocacy and the passion, you know, for that relationship building. But let’s start the conversation with some definitions so that it’s clear for our viewers what’s the difference between customer advocacy and customer marketing?
3:53
Colleen
Well, thank you for noticing. There is a difference because not everyone, not everyone does. They kind of bucket them together. They get the basic, thought process here is customer marketing is getting your message out one to many. So you have a message. It goes out to all of your customers. And I think, you know, customer advocacy is 1 to 1.
So building those relationships over time with customers and, you know, the best possible combination is when you’ve got two great programs and advocacy can fuel a good, strong marketing program and customer marketing program and make it even stronger.
Gary
What are the goals involved in those different programs?
4:36
David
I’m not necessarily going to talk about the difference between the two programs.
What I think is more applicable is what are the kind of goals. And I think one of the things that’s been really interesting about the evolution of the industry is as a practitioner, we’ve had to move from a measurement of things, right, measurement of activity into really understanding how does the work we do impact the company’s goals.
So their North Star metrics. And it’s different for every single practitioner. Right. Which is always interesting. So from my perspective as a growth company, we’re very focused on how do we get those customer advocates mobilized to really help support the new business process and make sure that as we engage with people, at the end of the day, people buy from people.
How do our advocates really reinforce the value that not only that we generate, but the value that they’re building for themselves in their organizations as well? So we’re very much trying to focus our goals on issues like influenced pipeline and acceleration and those types of metrics that the business cares about. Those primarily, the goals were oriented right now.
5:43
Gary
It’s really interesting that you think about it that way. We talked in one of the earlier podcast episodes about the difference between KPIs and OKRs, and it sounds like you’re going down that OKR path where you’re really attributing the results of the program to those high level company goals. And can I ask you, is it really about pipeline for new business?
David
It is about pipeline. And it’s even more nuanced than that, right? Because what we’re actually trying to do is look at where do we apply the right customer story at the right time to help influence a deal. And some of it is being able to generate pipeline. It might be events or whatever else. But increasingly we’re seeing it as acceleration because as you all know, the faster you can get new customers in the door and start billing, the more revenue it generates for the organizations.
We’ve really been focused more in the last 6 to 9 months on how do we support the sales team? As I think about accelerating deals through the various stages.
Gary
I love that that goes back to episode one of this podcast series where I talk about sales velocity, and I’ve seen too many businesses where marketing throws the leads or the opportunities over the wall, and sales kind of takes it from there.
But what you’re describing is how marketing can impact sales velocity by working together with sales throughout the opportunity cycle to close those deals faster.
Colleen
Yeah, but if I could just add that customer proof points are everywhere, right through the organization. You know, to David’s point, it’s important to align customer proof points, customer evidence, acts of advocacy along every stage of the opportunities to move more customers into the business.
Right? So if you partner with leadership and say, okay, this is super important that, you know, we are going to focus on these three things this year. Well, we you know, we have that opportunity to nurture the customers who we know will align with those goals. And it’s very organic, right? If you do it properly, it’s seamless.
And I think to take it one step further, if everyone in the company is aligning to those three corporate goals, then, you know, we’re all not competing against each other’s goals, right? We’re all mapped to the same North Star, if you will, and customers included.
David
That’s why I say something about OKRs as well, because, okay. Is this something we were introduced to in the last 2 or 3 years. And actually, I’m a huge fan because what I see matches evolution is not only do you have your objectives for your team and your key results, but you can also apply that to individual team members. And one of the things that’s happened organically is we started to get alignment in collaboration, not only within marketing. So we share joint key results between ABX and events, and obviously customer marketing. But we’re starting to see key results being shared between different organizations. So the customer organization and the marketing organization or the product organization and the product marketing team. So I’m a huge fan of OKRs. And it’s a great way to keep your team aligned, over the course of the year or six months, however you set them.
8:52
Gary
And it’s a great way to validate the activities that you’re doing because we all get asked to do a million different things, right? It gives us the opportunity to ask you know, what? What problem are we trying to solve and how does it map to our OKRs. And that keeps everybody focused, right?
David
Yeah. Just one of the things I just want to reflect on as well, which is being kind of cool evolution I would love to get Colleen’s perspective is increasingly, as we build our pipeline of advocates, our pool of advocates, I start to think about them as a little bit as a bullpen in baseball, if I can use that analogy. Whereas we’ve got some customers who tell a story in such a way that I know that if we’re looking to try and accelerate a conversation from discovery into maybe, you know, proof of concept or a contract that is certain customers I know a great at telling that part of the story.
Whereas if we’ve got later stage prospects who are maybe on the fence about signing and maybe they’re in reference, maybe they’re there’s something else. I’ve got other customers who are my closers, effectively that I know I can get involved because the way that they tell the story, it kind of seals the deal. And so what’s been really kind of neat and Colleen, I’d be interested in your perspective here as well is, is as I now look at how we utilize or use advocates throughout the course of the sales process, I will now start to say, all right, who be best in this situation or we’ve got to close this, who would be best in helping us do this?
And how do you create the way not only for us but also for the customer as well?
Colleen
Yeah. So you absolutely have to tier your, your advocates, to map those different opportunities. And I think it comes back to, you know, everyone has their own reason to get up in the morning, right? Everyone wants to do something.
And if you build an advocacy bullpen, if you will, or program, right, and you and you make sure that you’ve got all the right personas in there and some of them are much more comfortable talking about technology, and some of them are much better about talking about the business as a whole. And we’ve all got those handful of closers if you will, right.
Where you know that the customers are as happy to make you successful as you are to make them successful, and that mutually beneficial relationship can, can really shine in those and those opportunities. But yeah, you’ve got to get your bullpen so that you’ve got the right personas, you know, the right people at the right place at the right time.
Look at your ICP, you know, where do you need to have folks to fill in and make sure you’ve got those gaps covered from a practitioner or a, you know, somebody who’s working with the product all the way up to those folks who are writing the checks. Right. And everybody in between.
11:35
Gary
I like that analogy too, because what in effect, having all those different arms in your bullpen also means you’re not overusing any one of them.
And these are people who are giving freely of their time. And, I know in the past I’ve talked a lot about the same one gets requested all the time. Are we overusing that person? Is that how you manage that as well, so that you’re using, again, to Colleen’s words, the right people at the right time?
12:00
David
Yeah. I’m going to caveat this by saying I’m not a great process or operational person.
So one of the things we’ve been trying to work through is utilization. Right. Like to that point, how do you make sure that you’re not burning out the bullpen? And so we spend a lot of time actually mapping out how many asks we’re making of different folks, what we’re asking them to do, what the value is for us.
And coming back to Colleen’s point, really kind of understanding what motivates them as individuals because Colleen’s right. There’s some people who want to be on the stage. They want to benchmark what they’re doing with their peers. They love telling this story. And for other folks, maybe they’re not allowed contractually, or maybe the corporate team isn’t willing to let them do it.
Or maybe they’re just not comfortable doing that. Maybe there’s more closed meetings or maybe they’re happy to do a case study or a press release or something, but you’re never going to get them on main stage, right? Because that’s not what they’re motivated by either. You know, I think that behavioral side is one of the things, reasons, I love doing customer marketing as well.
13:06
Colleen
And I think when you find the right mix, right, I think if you start with the goal of, you know, offering the customers a way to empower them to tell their stories about your solutions in a way that works for them on their terms, for, for whatever that is. Just don’t make it transactional. Make it something that there’s something in it for them.
Right? Maybe they want to be a thought leader in the industry. Well, you can help them do that. Maybe they just want to. You know, I’ve had some customers that will take any opportunity to speak with a potential reference call, right. Because they want to build their own network of like minded people, and they can do that knowing that they’re going to have a conversation about security or, or whatever it is that that vendor is trying to sell.
But I think, you know, just making it so that there’s something in it for the customer and taking the time to find out what that is, is the key to advocacy.
Gary
You always talk about relationships. We talk about it, Colleen. And that’s it. It’s not transactional. And David, you got a wonderful phrase that describes the motivation that people have.
14:21
David
Yeah. So I mean, again, it’s a little basic, right. But you know, whatever kind of observed is, people are motivated to Colleen’s point for different reasons and get out of bed in the morning. And I like as I’ve been doing this a little over 15 years, I kind of booked it into three areas right? Invariably, people want to be able to be on their own hero journey within their organization.
And so they’re looking to maybe move up in their organization, looking to get more resources or funding. And so they want to be able to showcase, hey, how am I driving value for the business? And so I kind of talk about that as like moving up, I’ll move up.
We also know that it’s a super dynamic industry right now. The people are really being much more aggressive in managing their personal profiles. You look at LinkedIn and so people are also keeping their eyes open for, hey, how do essentially look at my next opportunity. And I think about that in terms of moving out into the industry to find that next role.
And as we talked about, there are people who just want to be out there talking with their peers. They want to be at conferences, want to be like really in the middle of everything that’s going on. And so that’s kind of the shout out, right, is shout out industry.
So the way I think about it is moving up and moving out or shouting out.
And those are the kind of three buckets, again, a little rudimentary, but it kind of helps a quick acid test of, hey, what is this person trying to do? And what I found and Colleen, I’d be interested in your perspective here is some of our most engaged advocates are doing all three at the same time.
15:51
Colleen
Yeah. And you’re right. And I think if you create the opportunity and it’s human nature, I don’t, I don’t think I want to do that. You get a customer into your program if you have a branded advocacy program, which I highly recommend, then you can set those guardrails and say, okay, you know, last year you said you wanted to do this, and that’s how that worked out for you.
And next year, going forward, you know, are you still interested in that? And I find it, you know, folks want to sort of crawl, walk, run, right. Maybe they just want to take a reference call or be, you know, interviewed for an analyst report or do a third party review.
But over time, you know, when they start having some engagement in your programs community, I think that they start saying, hey, why not me? You know, I’ll take a chance. And then we try to say, okay, well, let’s get you on the panel first and, you know, see if you like that and then we’ll help you do it.
And, and some folks start, you know, start off, you know, I don’t think I’ll ever want to do that. And then before you know it, the next year, their mainstage at your conference, you know, talking about their success. So it says you have to create the path for them and nurture them. And support them through the path.
17:03
Gary
And that’s really what you’re doing is you’re finding, you’re making it about them and their story, not about your vendor, your company. It’s not “do us a favor.” It’s “we’re here to give you a way to share your success.” And then they choose the path that they want to walk down.
David
And I think one of the things that’s almost a privilege, right, is, you build relationships with these people, but that you’re given more time.
And what I mean by that is we don’t carry a quota per se. Right? I’m not on the sales team or I’m not in demand marketing. So I don’t feel exactly the same pressure where transactionally you’ve got to close business every quarter that I can take a longer term look at that relationship as Colleen just mentioned, that what might be somebody’s goal this year is going to be different from next year.
And because we’re kind of keepers of that relationship, are keepers of the faith in that respect that we can kind of evolve that approach because we do take that longer term view. Whereas for a sales person, the transactional posture might be actually, I just need this person to be a reference. And I’m moving on to my next deal.
18:12
Colleen
And I always think about advocacy as you know, we’re the safe space, right? The customers know we don’t carry quota. I’m not looking to market to them or sell to them. I really want to make sure that they’re the hero of their story. Right. And when that aligns with our business goals and so it’s a perfect combination.
Gary
Let’s shift the point of view of the discussion for a second from the folks who participate in, the advocates who are in the program. And let’s talk about the folks on the other side who are not customers yet. So, you know, it’s no secret, right, that buyers, they don’t want to hear from vendors, they want to hear from their peers, from others who’ve bought the same product.
And so what’s changed in recent years around that? And how has that raised the profile of your advocacy teams even higher?
19:05
Colleen
So in my opinion, what has changed over the last, I would say maybe ten years we’ve been sort of like advocacy is a true field, right. It used to be part of customer marketing, and then everybody had their sort of handful of customers that they could ask to do things.
But I think the whole, you know, third party review system, the analyst reports, those are, you know, 70% of the buyer’s journey is done before you know their name. Right? So they have gone off and done all this research. And if you’re not where your competitors are, right. And when the buyer’s journey begins and you don’t get a seat at the table, then you know you’re going to be left out.
And I think that all of that and to me, the advantage of that is it is the transparency, right. Like humans buy from humans, if they read someone like them is having success with your solution, then it’s likely probably a good fit that they will too. Right?
20:06
Gary
How do you ensure that there’s sort of, let’s call it integrity or authenticity in those review sites? Because I would imagine it’s easy to just ask everybody to go, give me five star reviews and don’t say anything bad. How do you address that?
Colleen
I think it comes back to that transparency like we talked about. Right?
Personally, when I look at reviews on Amazon, if I see 1,000 5-star reviews, it makes me a little bit suspicious. Right? You know, nothing is perfect. I think, you know, customers that go on are prospective customers that read reviews and, you know, some things are going to appeal to them and the cons might not matter to them.
Right. And I think, again, if you empower your customers to share their stories and you know, in the way that works for them on their terms, then you will have that organic, you know, messaging out there without having to do anything else.
David
And there’s a bunch of ways you can activate them to do that. Right? So Colleen, you mentioned community.
We have a community as well. So we’ve definitely used that as a jumping off point for the peer reviews I’ll review. So the other thing as well is we have a really great customer success team. And so they’re often a really great conduit. And so identifying people who they’re going to give positive reviews, but they’re going to give constructive reviews as well.
Right. So again, I think that authenticity comes not only from the relationships that we build, but also if you’ve got a really good customer success team, they’re a huge engine for this work as well.
Colleen
Yeah, I think that they should be, you know, the best friend of the customer advocacy folks, right? Nobody knows what’s going on inside a customer account like the customer success managers.
Right? They know what’s under the covers there. They know you know who really gets it. They know who will have stage presence. They know who, you know, technically wants to focus on a certain area. Right. So I think if you don’t, you know, David, to your point, if you don’t team up with customer success and sales, right, but in two different ways, then you know, you’re doing yourself a disservice that that customer success team should be the pipeline for your advocates.
22:29
David
Actually, Gary, I’d like to just focus in on something that Colleen talks about, because recently within the customer marketing advocacy community, there’s been a conversation around, you know, where does customer marketing fit within the marketing mix? Right? And there’s a lot of focus being put on account based marketing and events have come roaring back. Right. And so I hate to always come back to spotting analogies, but I’m going to come to another one.
One of the things that the conversation orientated around was if you were building a basketball team, would customer advocacy, customer marketing be a starting player? And so what was really kind of neat is where we ended up getting around to a conversation with my CMO, actually, is that in many respects, your customer advocacy team is like your point guard and that we don’t need to go and score all the points, right?
We don’t need to be the ones who are driving a big number in its own right. But what we do and this to Colleen’s point around collaboration, is we can go and partner with customer success or with product marketing, or with the events team, or with the demand team, and figure out what’s the best way to help the company achieve the OKRs and who are the best customers to bring forward.
And so if we get 15 assists a game and ten points, that’s great. But our focus is on how can we help collaborate with other teams and assist everyone to be successful.
Colleen
Yeah, and I think, you know, if you think about if you take a, you know, a high level view of advocacy, it’s really the through line of the entire organization.
Right. Your executive leadership team has customer relationships. Right. You’re you know to your point, David. You have field marketing and events and opportunities to create great marketing tools and whitepapers and have webinars and get that messaging out there. And if you team up with Customer Success and your product marketing team says, okay, here’s the message we need to drive, and customer success can tell you which customers can help us drive that message.
And then we come in and sort of extract the messaging and get the customers and build those relationships so that they’re happy to, you know, to share their experience on your behalf. And then obviously, sales can, can take and run with all of it. So it’s good if you do it right. It’s good for the customer first.
It’s good for the organization. And you know, it should be good for your career path as well.
24:57
Gary
But what you’re describing is being customer obsessed in all aspects of the business. And that comes up time and time again in this podcast series. And it comes in terms of product, too, because you can leverage your biggest advocates and they’re helping you in your product direction, ensuring you maintain your product market fit for your audience.
How does that fit into your plans?
David
So actually, I like to talk about it. We talked a lot about revenue, haven’t we, because I mean, at the end of the day, that’s a lot of organizations judged by. But I like to think about customer marketing because advocacy effectively hitting two horizons. One horizon is, you know, 6 to 12 months, which is how do you support the sales organization in the short term to help close those deals or cross-sell upsell.
And then there’s another horizon, which is more like 18 to 24 months, which actually gets your point, Gary, which is all around product innovation. Because fundamentally and again, this is the beauty of working in customer advocacy, customer marketing, is you can look on that horizon much more than sales can. But what you’re effectively doing, if you focus your customers in the right area to help discover and validate new products, that’s effectively your next revenue cycle. But 18 to 24 months from now.
And so how do you effectively create a virtuous cycle between horizon one, which is revenue right now, horizon two, which is products further down the line, which then becomes your new horizon 1 in 18 months. And so that’s from my perspective with building customer advisory boards are user groups. To your point.
You can mobilize different customers to help influence your product direction. Then maybe you would be doing just from pure external advocacy. And actually that’s a really great way for some of those customers who maybe can’t go on the record because they’ve got a policy in place, or maybe they’re not comfortable in going and doing those speaking opportunities, but they’re super passionate about your organization, and to get them involved in product actually is a even more impactful way to reinforce relationship.
26:53
Gary
Yet another bullpen role, right?
So, Colleen, how do you measure success of the advocacy program?
Colleen
Okay, so I think measuring success of a true customer advocacy program should be the number of folks that you have in your program that are willing to speak positively on your behalf and happy to do so and in ways that you established for them.
But if you make it mutually beneficial, you find out what it is that drives them. And you, you know, the gauge in my opinion, is that customer retention, right? Customers, if they align themselves with your brand, then they work harder to stay with you. Right? And they know you’re working harder to keep them with you. And I think when you’ve got that, that relationship with them where you’re saying, hey, what can we do to make sure that when you’re, you know, when you’re at a cocktail party, you’re happy to tell people how great it is to do business with us?
You know, have we delivered the value you thought you purchased when you signed the contract? Because I, I almost always start with that. And if not, why not? And that’s sort of where I start the relationship. So I think how long your customers stay with you, how happy they are, how many customers you have to speak on your behalf.
Those are the ways that I measure success of the program. I know that a lot of folks want dashboards and metrics and revenue numbers and pipeline numbers and all of that, but then you are sort of taking that relationship piece and that awareness piece, you know, organically what you’re doing is keeping the customer there. It’s just not tied to any, you know, any dashboard, which is a challenge. But the right companies understand that, that it’s a necessary challenge.
28:54
David
I’d actually like to key off the word organic. Because I agree with you, Colleen. Success can be measured in many different ways. And I think if you can get to a point where you start to see the organic building of community within your customer base, and sometimes you’re involved as a marketer, sometimes you’re not, you’re finding that people will connect on their own.
That’s when I think that success can really be bred, because suddenly they’ve taken an idea of what they want out of the relationship and found other people who also want something similar out of the relationship, and then they start to build on top of that themselves. And so for us, we’ve got the virtual community, but we also have, to Colleen’s point, we have our annual Impact Conference as well, and some of the best connections and some of the most successful conversations have actually been at impact, where people are now like, hey, how do I get more involved?
And we’ve definitely used that to bring prospects in – late stage prospects – and accelerate those deals. So I agree with Colleen. Some of the stuff is hard to measure because it’s relationship based, but the byproduct of that can often be something that’s more measurable through the sales organization or the product teams as well.
30:05
Gary
This time has flown by. So it’s always wonderful chatting with the two of you. And this really has been a valuable discussion. So thank you. But at this point in each episode, I put my guests on the hot seat and I ask for three best practices. Doesn’t have to be three each.
Just give us three best practices. And what are the key takeaways that our viewers should leave today’s discussion with?
30:30
Colleen
So, as a priority, build trust with customers. Get to know them as people because humans buy from humans. Build a mutually beneficial program for customers to engage. And this is the most important part: on their terms.
And then thirdly, I think teaming up with your internal colleagues and working together so that the customer feels like we’re all on the same page and we’re all in it together.
David
So I agree with everything that Colleen said, which is not a cop out. I’ve got some as well. But Colleen, those were great. I would also say, and we’ve talked about this at the top right, is you’re looking to get into this space or you are in this space, you have to make sure that you are aligned with what your company is trying to achieve in terms of growth.
It’s going to be different for all different companies based on that stage of maturity, of what products are selling. But if you get as alinged as you can with those goals, I think that’s absolutely key. I would also like to key off what Colleen said about collaboration, invariably, customer marketing teams are small, you know, there’s tons of people or resources.
But the more that you can play that role as a point guard and assist the team and find ways to collaborate and add value, I think that’s hugely important to be able to do that. And then but I’m going to kind of go against that a little bit because we’ve been talking about how we’ve got to be able to tell our customer stories.
The other thing we have to be able to do as well is to be able to tell our story. And I think sometimes as practitioners, we’re a little guilty of making sure that everybody else is in the limelight and maybe not telling the story, our story in a way that is as connected to the business as it should be and and as we deserve to be in the spotlight sometimes as well. Right. So I think those are my three.
32:17
Gary
Colleen Reidy, David Coates, thanks both of you so much for spending this time with me and our viewers and our listeners today for another terrific episode of What Great looks Like. And for those of you that are watching, please remember to like, subscribe, comment, hit the subscribe button down below, on YouTube, and looking forward to the next episode.
So again, Colleen and David, thanks so much. Really enjoyed having you here today.
SPEAKERS
Gary Schwartz
Colleen Reidy
David Coates
Customer Advocacy
Nobody cares what the vendor has to say. They care what their peers have to say. Customer advocacy has never been more important.
With buyer behavior changing dramatically in recent years, customers have so many places to research your product before they contact your sales organization. Peer review sites, conferences, peer communities are all fertile ground for people looking to share recommendations for vendors.
Working with your customers to share their success in solving their challenges with your product, and offering a way for them to shine, is crucial to growing your business.
I’m joined in this episode of the What Great Looks Like podcast by Colleen Reidy, Director, Global Customer Marketing and Advocacy at Veracode, and David Coates, Senior Director, Customer Led-Growth at Forter.
Colleen, David, and I have an energetic discussion on best practices in working with customers to drive your business outcomes: opening doors, closing deals, building awareness, and increasing value and growing business with your existing customers.
In the What Great Looks Like podcast series we talk to leaders who exhibit the best practices that create an efficient and effective GTM (go-to-market) organization that’s collaborative, and who increase sales for their businesses.
Subscribe to the “What Great Looks Like” YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@what-great-looks-like to get notifications when new episodes drop.
And feel free to contact me directly at gary@what-great-looks-like.com if you’d like to learn more about ways to increase sales.