Christine Newman

Umbrellas definitely are great — I did them two years ago in Seattle and they came in handy for folks! We did collapsible ones though to make sure people could pack in carry on.

I love a good water bottle because I inevitably always forget to bring mine.

What does advocacy mean to you as it relates to your sales teams? References? Customer stories? A combo?

I’ll add that for getting CS to nominate advocates, we initially tried the carrot, but didn’t see real success until we turned to the “stick” and worked with CS leadership to write it into goals

What are you wanting Sales to do? Nominate advocates, request references, etc?

We do not have any logo rights or other similar clauses in our contracts — Legal doesn’t want them, I think because many orgs redline it out. I also actually advocate against using case studies and agreement to be a reference for net-new prospect contracts. While obviously we hope for the best, we have no idea if they will be a good story or reference and it’s hard to enforce. I am ok with using it as a price negotiation tactic at renewal as Lauren mentioned, assuming the customer is otherwise happy and seeing great results. For new sales, I am ok with giving discounts in exchange for logo usage sign off or (with our input/approval) a quote about why they chose us and/or inclusion in a press release.

The issue is that online reviews are being pulled into LLMs, making it impossible to ignore them. I think AI has breathed new life into them.

Not sure if these count as unique but a few things we do: Meet & greet/photo opp with keynote speakers Meet & greet with company leadership Special swag for existing advocates and customers who sign up

Could you use this as an opportunity to get advocate feedback?