#announcements
Important info for Customer Marketers & Community members
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Hey hey! Quick question for the group. How many of you public company advocacy folks are responsible for securing approval from new win customers for inclusion in the earnings announcement? Any tips or tricks to share? Lots of deals close right at the end of the quarter, and my team only has a few weeks to gather the new win data, reach out to reps for story background, draft a blurb, and have the rep put the blurb in front of the new win customer for approval.
@Gayatri Shukla, are you able to share what y’all do at Sprout Social?
Every earnings report, I’m always blown away by the mentions y’all include for new customers & expansion opportunities too 🙌
Our PR team drafts the blurbs based on new wins and then we are involved for approvals. It saves time on the Customer Advocacy end for sure.
An alternative approach, I've supported this effort driven entirely from the CMA team. We've used the opportunity record to populate the win wire and draft the "story," which is then passed to the rep for their approval and then goes on to the customer. I've found it faster to try and take a stab at it first because at least then the rep has something tangible to edit/suggest changes on, instead of starting from scratch. And—this is a guaranteed approach to ensure that the storytelling matches your marketing messaging, versus a sales person just outlining why we won (which is usually really lacking the voice of the customer).
Our blurbs are written based on the Win Wire, which is based on the Opportunity in Salesforce. The only difference is that PR writes them.
In my previous role this was a recurring challenge, we ended up building it right into the MSA and having language/blurb approval happen directly during the deal cycle typical in the second to last or last stage. It required a strong partnership with the sales managers and AEs both at those times of request and throughout the quarter to identify the people we would be looking to engage with during pipeline calls. Getting ahead of it at the start of each quarter and having a call with your CFO, Head or AR if available, and CRO or sales managers can help you to set out the story you want to the tell and the logos you will need to focus on securing approval and language from during the quarter.
@Joel Primack @Laurie Timms - We're still private, so I'm pretty new to this - would love to see examples of the earnings report you called out and the role and placement of customer stories.
Here’s a link to Sprout Social’s investors area that’s public and it includes their earnings reports, @Harikrishna P: