Emily Smith

I use mine for all our recruitment and research for reference fulfillment. It's been impactful to have them vet customer reference options that best meet the request and then I'm working with a short list rather than starting from scratch. And then I'm having them work on identifying key gap areas, chatting with CSMs etc.

Our Community Manager was really intentional about it being a value space and not another place for us to ask customers for things

We did mostly non-ask! We almost never included asks in our sub group. It was predominantly encouraged networking, sharing exclusive perks/opportunities, fun stuff (contests, guest bloggers, AMA's), etc!

We've definitely experienced similar. We had success creating a form for sales people to submit when they had their own reference for a deal. We told them we didn't want to get in the way of their relationships, we just wanted to know what convos were happening so we could track it and make sure we don't burn advocates out. Since it was a pretty low lift ask, most of them were OK filling it out. Unfortunately, we also got people on board when they started to see the negative effects of their approach. They would burn customers out and wonder why they weren't answering anymore and then come to us to ask for help. It opened the door to a good convo so they understood why we were there to support their deals. Lastly, we have win slides with AE's talking about deals we set up references for and the impact it had on their deal. Seeing top sellers using our team helped encourage them to do so, too. We also have some key advocates within the sales teams who tell the new hires on their teams about us, how to work with us, etc. I get a lot of new AE's saying "Nory told me to reach out to you" and so it's been great to have key people pushing our message without us having to. Building those strong relationships has been key!

We took advantage of groups with our old community. I had one within the platform that was invite-only for my advocate customers. I know they also spun them up for other high-value customer segments, as well. So, definitely agree having it be part of the existing one.

We have this on our website

No, we've been doing it for like 6-7 years now. It was a truck before a tesla. People are very competitive here, so they're into it!

We run a competition where whoever refers the most in a year gets a tesla!

We also have started toying with the idea of incentivizing our current members if they refer someone to our program who's a fit for our ENT customers when they're networking

I think it also depends on the types of incentives you're offering! Some will resonate for ENT/MM the same way they do for SMB, but a lot will not. I know our ENT customers find more value in our 1:1 product conversations, Product Feedback sessions, and executive engagement opportunities than our webinars/community/rewards program etc. We've had success doing cold calling sprints to the customers outlining the benefits of the programs. We've also seen success inviting them to a couple of our sessions prior to them joining to give them insight into the program. Meeting them onsite at our field events and user conference has also proved successful. CSM contests haven't worked as well for us on the ENT side. Lastly, we're really fortunate to have execs who understand the value of the program and they speak about it with ENT customers and encourage them to join which supports our recruitment efforts.