#announcements
Important info for Customer Marketers & Community members
Thread
Happy Friday! We lost *60%* (yes, you read that right) of our references in the past year. Most of those were due to our contact leaving the company or impacted by a RIF. What are the tactics/programs you have implemented to become multi-threaded within accounts?
damn that's crazy. this may sound a bit simplistic - but casting a wide net and having many "references" (even if they are not fully activated and doing reference calls - but participating in someway or on the bench/willing) in an account. We expect 30% churn per year in the marketing function, so we build that churn/decay into our reference coverage model
I agree with Evan, that's crazy - and I am so sorry to hear it! That said, are you doing your reference ask alongside an advocacy program invitation? Either way, I ask for a call with the primary POC(s) and then ask them to invite others that may be able to speak to the relationship with you or the products. If an advocacy program is at play with benefits to the customer (how I believe it should be done), then you have a bigger carrot to entice them to join the conversation 🙂
I think the problem is bigger than advocacy. If we lose our champion/advocate, then sometimes our progress within in account stalls (adoption, etc.) so I was thinking about how customer marketing & advocacy can help get multi-threaded within a account. I also don't think it's a best practice to have hundreds of people in your advocacy program. We were casting a wider net and because we can't maintain 1:1 relationships with all of the customers who are participating in some way shape or form in advocacy we were just able to update our database in the first time over a year (thanks to a co-op) and that's where we learned about the high advocate churn. @Alison Bukowski we're not doing many advocacy program calls at the moment but when we relaunch our program that will definitely be on the list!!
Following this as we're running into a similar problem (I imagine we all are in the current market).
One thing we're trying (will report back how it goes) is reestablishing roles & responsibilities and contacts on both sides. Who are they working with on our team and for what? Who on their side is involved and for what?
Depending on the customer, they may have a program manager, executive leader, LMS admin, learning ops person, etc. If we can get an org chart/list of these folks, that opens more doors.
In my dream world, all of those are marketable contacts and we offer a variety of opportunities for engagement (content, roundtables, user groups, community) that are relevant to those different roles.
Also following! Its a big challenge I see across clients particularly when the main contact leaves and then the AE and CSM cannot get traction with the new person in that role or new POC.