This article comes from the expert panel, ‘Developing internal stakeholders for strategic alignment’, at our 2023 Las Vegas Customer Marketing Summit, check out the full discussion here.
Who holds the keys to unlocking your customer marketing potential? Surprisingly, they’re likely sitting just down the hall …
Customer marketers know that having strong relationships with internal stakeholders is crucial for driving strategic alignment and overall program success.
In a roundtable panel, four experienced customer marketing leaders came together to share their tips, tricks, and lessons learned when it comes to fostering these productive partnerships across the business.
The panel featured:
- Charlotte Lilley, Head of Global Customer Marketing at Coupa;
- Ashley Kirkpatrick, Senior Customer Marketing Manager at Druva;
- Marisela Parra, Principal of Customer Adoption & Advocacy at Coupa; and
- Dave Hansen, Director of Customer Marketing at LRN.
Their insights provide an essential roadmap for customer marketing professionals looking to enhance internal collaboration and drive strategic alignment.
So, who are your greatest untapped allies and how can you spark productive collaboration? Read on to find inspiration tailored to your growth goals …
Building robust sales relationships
Understanding and meeting sales needs
The sales organization is one of the most critical stakeholders for customer marketers to influence and leverage.
Charlotte Lilley opened the discussion by emphasizing the importance of understanding and meeting the needs of these sales teams.
She introduced the concept of GSD (Give, Scale, Drive), focusing on:
- Giving sales what they need in an easily digestible format
- Scaling efforts to reach a wider audience
- Driving behavior that aligns with marketing goals.
This approach involves creating centralized resources like quote banks and case study slides, making it easier for sales teams to access and utilize customer stories and data.
Tools and strategies for effective engagement
Dave Hansen discussed leveraging various tools and strategies to enhance engagement with sales teams.
He highlighted the use of community platforms and newsletters to share customer stories and insights, thereby fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of customer marketing efforts.
Hansen also shared insights on speaking the language of sales, aligning marketing initiatives with sales goals to facilitate better collaboration.
Contests as engagement tools
Charlotte highlighted the effectiveness of contests and public recognition in engaging sales teams.
These strategies not only motivate sales teams but also align their efforts with marketing objectives, creating a win-win situation for both departments.
Recognize their efforts publicly via social media and privately through peer visibility platforms like Slack channels. This drives motivation and friendly competition.
According to Ashley Kirkpatrick:
"The way we champion our customers who get it done, we can champion ourselves. A lot of times, a way to celebrate yourself and your teams is by celebrating others."
She suggests sharing kudos wrapped as images/posts team members can easily share across their own networks for amplified exposure.
Enhancing customer success partnerships
Creating visibility and reward systems
Given Marisela Parra got her start in customer success management at Coupa, she has unique insights into this stakeholder group's realities and motivations.
She emphasized the importance of making advocacy activities visible to CSMs and rewarding customers based on their advocacy, thereby creating a positive feedback loop that benefits both customers and CSMs.
Around the holidays or for customer inspiration events, Marisela creates specialty swag gifts or experience perks for top advocates. But she adopted a clever tactic before sending anything out.
“I would send the list of all the advocates that were gonna get something and you have no idea the number of responses I got from the CSM - ‘My customer is not on there and they made 20 reference calls this month’."
Opening up the visibility triggered beneficial data sharing from CSMs advocating for other clients they felt deserved inclusion based on activity not yet tracked.
She then expanded who received gifts to reinforce the positive behavior.
Streamlining communication with automation
Charlotte suggested using sales automation tools to streamline communication between customer marketing and customer success teams.
This approach not only eases the burden on CSMs but also ensures that customer marketing messages are disseminated efficiently and effectively.
Engaging with CEOs and boards
Speaking the language of business
Dave stressed the importance of speaking the language of business when engaging with CEOs and board members.
He notes that brokering executive relationships starts simply with doing your homework. Get smart on your CEO's goals and challenges.
Then consistently align your customer marketing efforts with the company's strategic priorities, thereby building strong relationships with top-level management.
Some examples of how he executed this:
- Owning sentiment metrics like NPS and CSAT, meant he was able to identify correlation data for how community drives impact on these scores.
- Opening up their customer community to prospects to accelerate deal cycles. This quantified the value creation for sales velocity and conversions.
These may sound like basic metrics but they provide credible, tangible proof points that get executive attention.
Leveraging small victories for strategic alignment
The key is accumulating small wins consistently over time. If you intermittently sprinkle big, bold promises trying to go viral out of the gates, you usually can't sustain momentum. But nuanced value delivery adds up.
Hansen explains:
"It's being able to align your smaller events up to that bigger strategic picture and speak not just the language of advocacy, but the language of the business to be able to build those relationships."
This approach helps in gaining executive support and buy-in, demonstrating the value of customer marketing in achieving business objectives.
For example, Dave notes his CEO now actively suggests inviting prospects into their community during sales calls as he's recognized the performance benefits.
Conclusion
When teams connect, outcomes amplify. As Charlotte reminds, "over time you start to realize what’s actually important." Evaluate the crucial connections in your ecosystem, who deserves some TLC?
The insights shared by the panelists provide a valuable framework for customer marketing professionals, so apply the wisdom here to your dynamics.
By understanding and addressing the needs of sales teams, fostering strong partnerships with customer success, and effectively engaging with top-level management, you can significantly impact your organization.
So revisit the insights here then craft thoughtful engagements rooted in reality. Guide with patience, not pressure.
Progress unfolds through many small sparks so keep striking matches! Building alliances comes one chat at a time.
Onward!
