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I started a new job this week :partying_face:! My first priority is meeting with a LOT of people across product, marketing, sales, customer success, etc. I'd like to have a standard 3-5 questions I ask everyone, and I was curious what you all would ask your cross-functional stakeholders during your first 30 days. Here's what I have so far: • What role should customer advocacy play in the organization? Does it serve that function today? Why not? • What are the biggest pain points on your team related or unrelated to customer advocacy? What questions or problems come up most frequently? • How do you normally interact with customer marketing and advocacy? What worked well and what needs improvement?
@Jeanne Talbot has just run a pretty cool campaign on her LI with quick video interviews with her stakeholders about how customer marketing impacts their role. Might be a good reference point for you!
Oh, that's a great idea!
I like to find out what their expectations are for customer references, when they need customers for upcoming campaigns, webinars, speaking opportunities, speaker abstracts with tight deadlines, etc. And find out when you can participate on their team calls to share a quick update on the customer activity pipeline (as an example, I typically attend PR calls once a month)
I once heard “how could customer evidence/proof help close deals or drive sales, in your opinion?” and liked this a lot!
@Emily Coleman Happy to chat! I used a tool called ShoutOut. (There are others like it. Some have free versions too.)
I did a demo with ShoutOut at SolarWinds, and wanted to do a trial, but we couldn't make it happen. Definitely looking forward to continuing the conversation in this new role. I'll send you a message!
"How would you like to participate in this program's success?" All the other functions need to have skin in the game in order for customer advocacy to be successful. Ideally, they will have KPIs directly related to it (e.g. each CSM needs to have 10% of their accounts be active members of an advocacy program). You will need to talk to the leaders of each function to get that alignment.
Great question. I like that.
One I added last time that got good feedback was starting out with asking them what their main goals with their position / team and if there was anyway advocacy could help. Another one that really helped me was there preferred method of communication for collaborating.