Getting Buy-In from Leadership for Referral Programs

The one slide that made our exec team see advocacy as a growth engine Want to get leadership to buy into customer advocacy? Show them the influence of just ONE advocate. I use a simple slide to demonstrate this impact to executives — seeing it mapped out changes everything. Here's what ONE advocate can do: ✨ Leave a 5-star G2 review → Influences thousands of buyers ✨ Join a use case interview → Becomes powerful sales enablement content ✨ Participate in betas → Helps shape product development ✨ Speak in a webinar → Generates $X in pipeline from one session ✨ Complete analyst questionnaires → Influences market positioning (like Forrester Waves) ✨ Champion your tool when they switch companies → Unlocks expansion opportunities From awareness to expansion, a single advocate touches nearly every stage of the buyer and customer journey.  Real results from the slide. One advocate: - Influenced GPI Customers' Choice distinction - Drove significant pipeline from a single webinar - Triggered a sizable expansion opportunity when they moved companies Now ask your leadership team: What if we scaled this to 10, 50, or 100 advocates? The result? A compounding effect on growth AND these activities cost almost nothing. But building this engine requires three key steps: ✅ Proactive advocate identification (NPS, Sales & CS relationships, community) ✅ Nurture & engage them with meaningful opportunities (speaking, reviews, betas) ✅ Celebrate and recognize them (shoutouts, success stories, exclusive programs) 🔗 Link to the slide template in the comments (with some info redacted, of course). What about you? How are you proving the impact of advocacy to leadership? Or what has been your biggest challenge in getting buy-in? Drop your thoughts below.

A common partnership snafu is that companies want partnership success, but don’t provide the resources to get there. I heard of a case where a whole marketing team quit, the partnerships team was given no marketing support, and they didn't yet have an integration with product -- and yet, the CEO expected the partnership strategy to deliver instant revenue. Wild. But not uncommon. Partnerships can't thrive in a vacuum. They need cross-functional support—marketing, product integration, sales enablement—all aligned to succeed. Before you set revenue targets for your partnerships, ask yourself: Do we have the resources to support them? If the answer is no, you have to help your leadership teams to reconsider their expectations. To help create the cross-functional support needed for partnerships to thrive, here are four strategies: 1. Involve Cross-Functional Leaders from the Very Beginning Bring key leaders from marketing, sales, and product into the partnership planning phase. Early involvement gives them a sense of ownership and ensures they understand how partnerships align with their own goals. Strategy: Schedule a kick-off meeting with stakeholders from each relevant department. Create a shared roadmap that outlines how partnerships will impact each team and their specific contributions. 2. Tie Partnership Success to Department KPIs To gain buy-in, tie partnership goals directly to the KPIs of each department. Aligning partnership outcomes with what each team is measured on ensures they have skin in the game. Strategy: During planning sessions, ask each department head how partnerships can contribute to their targets. Build specific KPIs for each function into the overall partnership strategy. 3. Create a Resource Exchange Agreement Formalize the support needed from each department with a resource exchange agreement. This sets clear expectations on what each function will contribute—whether it's a dedicated product team member for integrations or marketing resources for co-branded campaigns. It turns vague promises into commitments. Strategy: Draft a simple document that outlines the roles, responsibilities, and deliverables each team will provide, then get sign-off from department heads and the executive team. 4. Demonstrate Early Wins for Buy-In Quick wins go a long way toward securing ongoing resources. Identify a small pilot project with an internal team that shows immediate impact. Whether it's a small co-marketing campaign or a limited integration, these early successes build momentum and demonstrate the value of supporting partnerships. Strategy: Select one or two partners to run a pilot with, focused on delivering measurable outcomes like leads generated or product adoption. Use this success story to demonstrate value to other departments and secure further commitment. Partnership success requires cross-functional alignment. Because partnerships don’t happen in a silo.

Several companies have asked me how do you get an organization to buy into community-led growth. Here’s how I do it👇🏼 1) It starts at the top - Before anything else, the executive team must buy in - For that to happen, they need to see how they’ll get ROI from the investment - They also want to know how it’ll impact their personal brand. Most executives have multiple fractional/advisor positions. 2) Once the top buys in, create a community intake form for your employees to fill out. - Purpose of this form is to figure out who in your organization has been proactively networking and who isn’t 5 simple questions to ask in the form: 🧠 Do you post weekly on LinkedIn? 🚀 Do you engage with others on LinkedIn daily? 🥂What events did you go to last year? 👫 What communities are you currently a part of? 🍹What events do you plan on going to this year and why? 3) Once you understand how involved the members of your team are in networking/community, you can then begin creating an employee advocacy program. - This program explains to the readers why as a team we need to be posting on LinkedIn, joining slack communities, and going to events. - It also needs to explain why it’s good for their personal brand and how it’ll help them move up in their careers much faster. - You can’t stop there… in the program you must teach them best practices for engaging with others on LinkedIn, in slack communties, and at events. - You should also provide them community resources so they don’t have to do research on their own to find communities they are interested in 4) Once you complete the advocacy program, meet with the VPs & Directors of each vertical within your company to explain the value of the initiative. - Once you get buy in from the VPs/Directors, ask them to roll out the intiative to their teams. Why? They are the leaders in their verticals and therefore have to most comradely with their team. Having the message come from them and not you is really important. Their team will take the initiative much more seriously. 5) Rewards & Incentives - When everything has been laid out and employees at the company start posting, you need to recognize their efforts. - Host a quarterly meeting with the entire team letting them know you’ve seen their efforts by calling out specific individuals whose posts have gone viral and or have joined different communities resulting in revenue opportunities 6) Send a monthly intake form to each team member asking them for updates on the questions they were asked previously - Create a chart showing the progress of the company as a whole - Compare that progress with revenue from the year - I promise there will be a positive correlation, which will prove to the excutive team the intiative was well worth it. 7) Once theirs proof, your executives will want to double down on community #community #communitydevelopment #saas #gtm #branding #awareness