Effective Advocacy Goals for Joint OKRs with Customer Success Team

Ciana Abdollahian · 2025-12-02T20:42:18.474Z

For those of you who have joint OKRs or advocacy-related goals with the CS org, what types of goals have worked well? For example, targets like nominating a certain number of customer advocates. The leader of our CS org is willing to commit to advocacy goals and I want to make sure I'm making the most of the opportunity 😊

Effective Advocacy Goals for Joint OKRs with Customer Success Team | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

7 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Sara Huntley
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That is a huge win, Ciana! Congratulations!! In a past life, CS leadership mandated that each CM provide a certain # of nominations to our program as part of their goals. Which was great but did sometimes result in nominations that were less than ideal if pickin's were slim - but it was far better than the alternative!
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Ciana Abdollahian
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Thank you! I literally was so happy now I'm trying to get it down on paper as fast as humanly possibly 🤣 I wonder if I could put criteria around some percentage meeting certain criteria e.g. certain products, company size etc aligned to company goals?
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Paola
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+1 to Sara Huntley recommendation of mandating a # of nominations. We used to have something also on # of case studies per year or # of quotes approved. You can bucket it under "content contributions"
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Sara Huntley
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Ciana Abdollahian I would definitely specify parameters and you should be able to approve of any noms before they talk to the customers about them. the worst was when i'd get a nom that i couldn't use but the customer had already been told about the program. Bad experience all around. Another option could be an incentive vs a mandate...ie some kind of gift or bonus if they nominate X approved customers for the program or something like that?
Sharon Schena
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I ran a bonus program where each approved nomination was tied to a set dollar amount, and eventually it became a formal CS goal. The key challenge was defining the right criteria—so we were bringing in the right customers, not just anyone, to ensure CS didn’t nominate just to earn the payout. Happy to connect on this, Ciana Abdollahian
Ciana Abdollahian
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This is all great input - thank you! I'd definitely be down to catch up soon Sharon Schena 🙂
Christine Newman
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I worked with one of our CS leaders to get # of advocacy nominations into CSM goals, and we’ve been doing it for a couple years now. We agreed on a high level number and then she and her leadership team set team/individual goals that made sense.

Sara Huntley
·
·
That is a huge win, Ciana! Congratulations!! In a past life, CS leadership mandated that each CM provide a certain # of nominations to our program as part of their goals. Which was great but did sometimes result in nominations that were less than ideal if pickin's were slim - but it was far better than the alternative!
❤️2
1
Ciana Abdollahian
·
·
Thank you! I literally was so happy now I'm trying to get it down on paper as fast as humanly possibly 🤣 I wonder if I could put criteria around some percentage meeting certain criteria e.g. certain products, company size etc aligned to company goals?
❤️1
Paola
·
·
+1 to Sara Huntley recommendation of mandating a # of nominations. We used to have something also on # of case studies per year or # of quotes approved. You can bucket it under "content contributions"
❤️1
Sara Huntley
·
·
Ciana Abdollahian I would definitely specify parameters and you should be able to approve of any noms before they talk to the customers about them. the worst was when i'd get a nom that i couldn't use but the customer had already been told about the program. Bad experience all around. Another option could be an incentive vs a mandate...ie some kind of gift or bonus if they nominate X approved customers for the program or something like that?
Sharon Schena
·
·
I ran a bonus program where each approved nomination was tied to a set dollar amount, and eventually it became a formal CS goal. The key challenge was defining the right criteria—so we were bringing in the right customers, not just anyone, to ensure CS didn’t nominate just to earn the payout. Happy to connect on this, Ciana Abdollahian
Ciana Abdollahian
·
·
This is all great input - thank you! I'd definitely be down to catch up soon Sharon Schena 🙂
Christine Newman
·
·
I worked with one of our CS leaders to get # of advocacy nominations into CSM goals, and we’ve been doing it for a couple years now. We agreed on a high level number and then she and her leadership team set team/individual goals that made sense.