The account management model used by most technology companies puts sales and marketing at odds when it comes to the voice of the customer.
A long-standing challenge in B2B marketing is access to talk directly to customers. The culprit is the account management model used by most technology companies.
In such a structure, an account executive (AE), or customer success manager (CSM), manages a customer account. Their responsibilities include everything related to the account after the sale. Primary tasks include product usage, renewal contracts, and cross-selling and upselling. This is an effective way to manage customer accounts. These AEs and CSMs act as internal advocates for the customer. And this works well for most things, with the one exception, and this is a big exception, is customer references.
Here, I use the term customer references synonymously with marketing team access to customers. “Customer references” can be case studies, participation in marketing events, media mentions, interviews with analysts, to name a few. These are all everyday activities that marketing teams need.
So why is customer voice so hard?
I think it’s because the typical compensation package for AEs and CSMs offers incentives for closing deals. If there are no renewals or upsells, there is no commission. Thus, AEs and CSMs fiercely guard their access to customers. They are not going to give their marketing team access because they want to keep that reference in case they need it to close a deal.
The impact on marketing is devastating. Research shows that nearly two-thirds of B2B marketers do not communicate directly with their customers. You can’t create effective marketing content without talking to your customers.
7 Ideas to Capture More Customer Testimonials
At a strategic level, this is a problem that marketing leaders need to address. It’s easy to say “fix compensation,” but we’ve never seen that happen in practice. It’s too difficult, too sensitive a topic, and too far outside the scope of marketing. Plus, from an organizational behavior perspective, offering incentives to referrers could potentially generate more referrals than sales.
This puts marketing managers in a tricky position: they are fully responsible for referrals, but have little authority to implement them. This is a real challenge for leaders, because change has to be cultural. Referrals should be part of any discussion about alignment between sales and marketing.
It may not seem like a satisfying answer, but every customer-facing department needs to be involved. Marketing alone can’t develop a robust customer referral program. But there are some things marketing can do to move things forward. Here are some ideas, from strategic to tactical: 1. Include customer information in your contracts
References should be listed as line items in your customer contracts. If your procurement or legal teams want to remove such clauses before signing, create a negotiation playbook. For example, offer a percentage discount, early access to new features, free training, etc.
Be creative and make sure your sales team is involved in shaping your strategy. They are good at negotiating terms and have interesting ideas.
Always take note of the references you receive from contract clauses. There may be deals (sales, not references) that your team has to surrender, but that shouldn’t happen every time.
2. A program that provides marketing with consistent access to customers
Leaders need to find a way to connect the marketing team with customers on a regular basis. At the very least, your team should listen quietly to sales, customer success, and customer support calls. Sales training software like Gong makes it easy to share call recordings, call metrics, and analytics.
As your program grows, you can bring in members of your marketing team to work more closely with customer advisory boards and customer conferences. Local groups (often organized through platforms like Meetup) are another option. You can pair a marketing team member with a sales team member and assign the pairing to a specific city. 3. Show sales the value of testimonials in marketing
Your sales team needs to be convinced that it’s in their best interest to provide marketing references. They need to recognize the connection between references and their pipeline. The best opportunity to demonstrate this is at your annual kickoff meeting. Whoever you choose to present the information can have a huge impact.
Some interesting behavioral studies have shown that the best way to convince your sales team is through a presentation to their peers. Ask a talented colleague to explain the value of referrable customers and how to use referrals. This is the psychological principle of social proof. It’s important to understand that this needs to be a sales colleague, not a marketing director or VP of sales.
4. Nominate a client for an award, not a case study
Asking for a case study can be tough. From the customer’s perspective, even if they’re happy with the product, it feels like they’re doing you a favor. He has to get permission, which seems difficult and requires extra effort.
However, you can also turn things around by offering to nominate the customer for an award. You can ask the same basic questions as in a case study, but here, you’re giving something instead of asking for something. This is also a good way to build trust and rapport, making it easier to ask for a case study in the future.
5. Invite customers to share their expertise
About a year ago, a client asked me to do a case study with one of their customers. They introduced themselves and I set about convincing them to do the case study. They were happy with the product, but the legal team refused. Due to company policy, we did not do case studies with any solution provider. We shifted the conversation to sharing expertise. In this case, I interview a client and write a guest post to offer to the client. The client’s name is written jointly with mine. The article has an editorial aspect, rather than a commercial one, which seems to reassure the lawyers.
As with the award nominations above, clients are often more inclined to share their expertise with a colleague than agree to a case study. It’s also a very sweet request. Rather than asking customers to say nice things about you, simply asking them to help educate their colleagues can help boost your standing in the industry.
This also works well if your company has an actual blog. An interview for a blog post is a similarly simple request, and customers gain credibility in the process.
6. Invite to a discussion session
Sometimes a panel discussion is preferable because it requires less preparation. For example, a moderated discussion doesn’t require a presentation. Plus, it’s much easier to pull off a comprehensive panel discussion that focuses on an industry challenge. Again, this is an opportunity for your customers to get to know your marketing team a little better and build a relationship.
7. Leave your booth at a conference
Conferences are a great opportunity to network and find interesting people to work with. It’s worth having marketers and PR people involved in the entire show, live-tweeting and blogging about it. This approach is useful in several ways, two of which are especially relevant for testimonials:
First, there’s the halo effect. If you write your session summaries well and add value, these pieces will attract a lot of attention. As a result, not only will your customers see you differently, but more importantly, they will see your engagement requests differently.
Secondly, there have been so many times when I’ve attended conferences where I’ve sat next to people I wanted to get to know. This included reporters, influencers, and even customers. Sitting next to a client for 45 minutes at an industry conference can do wonders for relationship building.
