3rd of a 3-part series on Mobilizing Your Promoters

In Parts 1 and 2, we looked at why Net Promoter programs can fall short of expectations, and how to set the stage for revitalizing their considerable potential to grow your business. Now that we know what we want our mobilized promoters to do–get their stories in front of potential buyers when and where they need it–we’ll build on that foundation.

Engage Your Rock Star Promoters

These are your promoters–sometimes called MVPs, Customer Champions, Super Promoters and the like–who have great stories to tell about working with you and are eager to tell them. Like actual rock stars (the musicians), they attract audiences in droves with compelling stories. In general, it only takes a few rock stars to have a big impact—Salesforce.com, for example, a $4 billion dollar corporation, has just 145 rock stars. They attract buyers, and they’ll attract more promoters into your advocacy and customer community programs.

And they can have a big impact on your business. For example:

• Marc Benioff found that 80% of buyers who engaged directly with SFDC customers at City Tour events became customers themselves.
• SAS Canada’s “Customer Champions” restored the firm’s declining customer retention rate from a low of 85% to 98%.
• In Microsoft’s efforts to penetrate markets in developing regions, the firm’s “MVPs” have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in service and support costs, $100s M in service costs, while providing 20% of the marketing communications the firm deploys, and 28% of actionable feedback on new software releases, helping dramatic improve quality.

Rock Stars are NOT Hard to Find

Think about it. Your successful customers want to tell their stories. Twitter, social media and the blogosphere are full of such stories. Rock stars want to do so too, only more so. Which makes them easy to find.

Here’s a profile similar to the one used by software firms who successfully cultivate rock stars, based on their Buyer’s Decision Journeys covered in Part 2:

Profile For A Rock Star

• Is perceived as peers to your buyers
• Likes to affiliate, expand their networks
• Attractive (strategic) network
• Enjoys helping others
• Active in your—and other relevant—communities, live and online
• Willing to tell your story: gain social value from doing so
• Has authority, influence
• Is respected
• Professional demeanor
• Communicates (speak, write, post, tweet regularly); gets his/her name out there
• Available and easy to access

Don’t Compensate, Motivate

Misconception: You have to compensate customers to advocate for you. No you don’t. Providing monetary incentives, rewards, discounts and the like represent a failure of the imagination–and a serious breach of the relationship your should be building with your rock stars, as well as a breach of trust with your buyers and market.

Here are six ways to create excited rock star promoters, without degrading their advocacy. Great companies provide most, if not all of these opportunities, for their true rock stars. These represent powerful customer engagement.

Provide rock stars opportunities to…

• Tell their stories. Folks, they love this. Especially telling them to an audience of their peers—other customers, buyers, industry colleagues, and the like–i.e., they like telling their stories to the people you’re trying to sell to.
• Receive awards or other recognition. Either from you or by you nominating them for awards from industry media or organizations.
• Have a say. In the products, services and/or strategies you develop for them, through things like access to your product developers or access to senior management.
• Learn and grow. Through things like providing “insider information,” exclusive enrichment events, relationships with your product experts or other industry experts, and the like.
• Expand their peer affiliation networks. Through access to your customer community, or industry associations, and the like.
• Find a larger purpose and meaning from working with you. They love to talk about this too.

In a phrase, rock stars are extremely powerful, easy to find, it doesn’t make that many of them to have a big impact (and attract more advocates), and they love to tell their stories and do other things that can significantly improve your business–without compensating them a dime.

What are you waiting for?