Continuing the last post, Become Famous, the best way to do this is to become a thought leader in your organization and among your professional peers. Take part in the conversation that you want to influence, and then start influencing it.

Those who have access to customer success stories, customer attitudes and customer experiences, have an exceptionally rich vault of information for your firm. Organize this–help your colleagues make sense of its significance–through your writing for firm newsletters or the house magazine, in internal teleconferences and webinars, in presentations to important stakeholders groups, in professonal or industry publications.

To achieve thought leadership, don’t talk about “here’s what our reference program is doing.” Talk about how customers advocates are helping to sell, market,develop new products, provide important input into strategy–talk about how they’re increasingly critical to firm growth.

Talk also about how advocates at other firms are doing this in ways your firm hasn’t thought of yet. Those who attend the Summit on Customer Engagement , or regonal meetings of customer engagement professionals, gain access to ideas that can not only help to improve their programs–they gain access to ideas that can help them build thought leadership within their organizations.