Best Practices for Internal Spiff Programs in Customer References

Kaveri Mekerira · 2025-08-01 22:23:32.593836+00

Hi everyone. I wanted to ask if anyone has insights or experience with internal spiff programs specifically related to customer reference nominations. I would like to know how your teams are rewarding account owners and customer success managers for nominating customers for reference programs. Any feedback on what’s been working well or best practices you’d recommend would be greatly appreciated. Thank You :)

Best Practices for Internal Spiff Programs in Customer References | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

13 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Joel (Salesforce)
·
Aunalisa Arellano
Emily G.
·
At my last company, we used a spiff for overall advocate nominations.
For each advocate they recommended, they received one entry into a quarterly spiff for $3K.
For each advocate nominated who participated in an act of advocacy that quarter (including reference calls), they were entered into a raffle for a $5K spiff
At my current gig we have been testing smaller spiffs for simply submitting a nomination (they receive a $50 gift card for recommending someone), but we have not seen as much traction or success. We need to revise our approach for the year ahead.
💡4
Christine Newman
·
Spiffs did not work for us. I worked with our VP of Customer Success last year to put it in CSM goals, and that was a huge success because they were really held accountable. We are repeating that again this year.
👏2
2
Joel (Salesforce)
·
How did you get buy-in from the VP of CS to add it to the goals of CSMs, Christine Newman?
Nicole Saunders
·
We tried to do spiffs this year, and found it incredibly cumbersome to manage, without really driving the right results. I learned a lot from the mechanics of the program (it was one I inherited when I stepped into this role) and would be happy to get into the details, but the TL;DR is that we got a lot of low value activity, and paid out a lot in spiffs for very few actual new advocates as a result. A particular challenge was that, in many cases, they would get a customer to commit to an act of advocacy, but then it might not come to fruition for several months, so we had to do a lot to try to track things across months, and ended up with a huge sum to pay out late in the year when budgets were tight.
Christine Newman
·
Joel (Salesforce) I asked her to! Now, I will say perhaps I had it a bit easier because she previously had roles at our company in Marketing and as the GM of a vertical business unit, and I have a good relationship with her. We had also had cuts to a team in CS that had previously been a huge source of reference nominations, so there was also some history in CS playing a role in that, but CSMs themselves had not previously been involved. I’ve also been very purposeful in publicly giving her and CS credit when talking about new advocates, and underscoring that CS has goals around this and is delivering,
Christine Newman
·
I’ll add that I also came forward with a specific number. We ended up negotiating on that but it was helpful to have a starting point that was broken down to an average per CSM. Now, she ended up assigning goals based on team/book of work, but I started the pitch with “well 400 would mean an average of 1 per month per CSM” (can’t remember the exact number but along those lines) so she was thinking in those small, achievable terms rather than just a big number.
1
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love your thinking on it, Christine Newman! Thanks for sharing 😊
👍1
Christine Newman
·
Joel (Salesforce) sure thing!
😊1
Kaveri Mekerira
·
Thank you for sharing Emily G., Christine Newman and Nicole Saunders ☺️
👍1
Jeanne Nitschke (Talbot)
·
I have had great success with SPIFFs when designed well. We ran a SPIFFs only with a specific segment (enterprise CSMs, not AEs). We avoided potential conflicts and competition with AEs who might want to nominate the same contacts. (AEs weren't really motivated by small SPIFFs anyway, whereas CSMs were highly motivated because they are not on commission.) The SPIFF was for ACCEPTED/APPROVED nominations, not just nominations. We had alignment from our Chief Customer Officer down to the other post-sales leaders and conducted a series of enablement sessions and other communications, especially celebrating wins and highlighting the CSMs who were most engaged. We ran the SPIFF for one month as we launched the nominations module of ReferenceEdge. Result: 430 new reference contacts in 30 days. We did not SPIFF for ongoing reference activity. This was an initial push to build the bench of references and to get our CSMs into ReferenceEdge and using it.
❤️1
Aunalisa Arellano
·
Thanks, Joel (Salesforce) and so sorry Kaveri Mekerira just seeing this!
❤️1
Aunalisa Arellano
·
Happy to discuss more if you still have questions! Shoot me a dm

Joel (Salesforce)
·
Aunalisa Arellano
Emily G.
·
At my last company, we used a spiff for overall advocate nominations.
For each advocate they recommended, they received one entry into a quarterly spiff for $3K.
For each advocate nominated who participated in an act of advocacy that quarter (including reference calls), they were entered into a raffle for a $5K spiff
At my current gig we have been testing smaller spiffs for simply submitting a nomination (they receive a $50 gift card for recommending someone), but we have not seen as much traction or success. We need to revise our approach for the year ahead.
💡4
Christine Newman
·
Spiffs did not work for us. I worked with our VP of Customer Success last year to put it in CSM goals, and that was a huge success because they were really held accountable. We are repeating that again this year.
👏2
2
Joel (Salesforce)
·
How did you get buy-in from the VP of CS to add it to the goals of CSMs, Christine Newman?
Nicole Saunders
·
We tried to do spiffs this year, and found it incredibly cumbersome to manage, without really driving the right results. I learned a lot from the mechanics of the program (it was one I inherited when I stepped into this role) and would be happy to get into the details, but the TL;DR is that we got a lot of low value activity, and paid out a lot in spiffs for very few actual new advocates as a result. A particular challenge was that, in many cases, they would get a customer to commit to an act of advocacy, but then it might not come to fruition for several months, so we had to do a lot to try to track things across months, and ended up with a huge sum to pay out late in the year when budgets were tight.
Christine Newman
·
Joel (Salesforce) I asked her to! Now, I will say perhaps I had it a bit easier because she previously had roles at our company in Marketing and as the GM of a vertical business unit, and I have a good relationship with her. We had also had cuts to a team in CS that had previously been a huge source of reference nominations, so there was also some history in CS playing a role in that, but CSMs themselves had not previously been involved. I’ve also been very purposeful in publicly giving her and CS credit when talking about new advocates, and underscoring that CS has goals around this and is delivering,
Christine Newman
·
I’ll add that I also came forward with a specific number. We ended up negotiating on that but it was helpful to have a starting point that was broken down to an average per CSM. Now, she ended up assigning goals based on team/book of work, but I started the pitch with “well 400 would mean an average of 1 per month per CSM” (can’t remember the exact number but along those lines) so she was thinking in those small, achievable terms rather than just a big number.
1
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love your thinking on it, Christine Newman! Thanks for sharing 😊
👍1
Christine Newman
·
Joel (Salesforce) sure thing!
😊1
Kaveri Mekerira
·
Thank you for sharing Emily G., Christine Newman and Nicole Saunders ☺️
👍1
Jeanne Nitschke (Talbot)
·
I have had great success with SPIFFs when designed well. We ran a SPIFFs only with a specific segment (enterprise CSMs, not AEs). We avoided potential conflicts and competition with AEs who might want to nominate the same contacts. (AEs weren't really motivated by small SPIFFs anyway, whereas CSMs were highly motivated because they are not on commission.) The SPIFF was for ACCEPTED/APPROVED nominations, not just nominations. We had alignment from our Chief Customer Officer down to the other post-sales leaders and conducted a series of enablement sessions and other communications, especially celebrating wins and highlighting the CSMs who were most engaged. We ran the SPIFF for one month as we launched the nominations module of ReferenceEdge. Result: 430 new reference contacts in 30 days. We did not SPIFF for ongoing reference activity. This was an initial push to build the bench of references and to get our CSMs into ReferenceEdge and using it.
❤️1
Aunalisa Arellano
·
Thanks, Joel (Salesforce) and so sorry Kaveri Mekerira just seeing this!
❤️1
Aunalisa Arellano
·
Happy to discuss more if you still have questions! Shoot me a dm