Keeping multiple stakeholders focused throughout a creative project is challenging at the best of times. When those stakeholders come from different departments and organisations, it’s even tougher: there are even more conflicting priorities, deadlines and preferences to balance.
As someone who’s worked in operations and customer-facing roles throughout my career, I’m no stranger to the complexities of stakeholder management – and that experience is put to good use in my role at Wise & Zeal. As manager of a global software vendor’s regional customer advocacy programme, which is outsourced to Wise & Zeal, it’s my job to liaise with senior leadership stakeholders from global organisations.
Our aim is to generate a healthy pipeline of customer success stories of which the vendor is proud of. However, participating in case studies is usually far from top priority for the vendor’s customers. To achieve this aim, we’ve developed strategies to allow our team to excel at engaging multiple stakeholders and managing them through processes they would often prefer to avoid.
Here are my top five tips to help you manage stakeholders to achieve collective success in customer advocacy.
1 – Define what good looks like
First, you’ll need to determine what you want to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it, and who should be involved. Customer advocacy programmes require collaboration from stakeholders across the vendor’s business and the customer’s business, at all levels of seniority – and each individual will bring their own unique procedures and perspectives into the project. Consider how you can get the most out of each stakeholder’s involvement to deliver the best possible results. How will they each contribute to the success of the programme?
For me, generating an effective customer success story relies on strong relationships with stakeholders. You need to take the time to understand how stakeholders work, what their priorities are, what good looks like to each of them, and, importantly, why they want to be involved. This level of relationship building and understanding will also make it easier to anticipate any hurdles you’ll need to negotiate further down the line.
2 – Identify your process
There’s often a bigger business cycle driving a customer advocacy programme, so it’s important to agree project deliverables with stakeholders at the outset. Outline a process that reflects your goals and identifies stakeholder touchpoints. Who will be involved at each stage and how will you ensure they stay engaged throughout the project?
As part of your process, determine whether you need to be conscious of conflicting deadlines or time zones. Are you working with stakeholders from different markets with their own procedures and priorities? Plan where you might need to be flexible and adapt your process accordingly. It’s this sort of forward thinking that will help you maintain momentum, ensuring speed bumps don’t turn into roadblocks.
3 – Establish expectations
Stakeholders need to know what to expect and what is expected of them. This is especially important for customers, even more so the more senior they are.
For customers:
Clearly communicate the process and how much of their time will be required. Also, discuss with them who else from their organisation will need to be involved through the development and approval cycles. Consider adjusting processes if it will streamline reaching the right outcome.
For team and vendor stakeholders:
Communicate their roles and responsibilities and explain how they will fit into the process. Focus stakeholders on the areas where their skills add the most value to maximise engagement and efficiency. For example, marketing stakeholders should review messaging and tone of voice – not product specifications, which should be handled by product managers; or grammar, which should be handled by copy editors. Crucially, you need to establish who the key decision makers will be and assign responsibility for final sign off to one stakeholder. This eliminates the continuous cycle of reviews and edits at the end of a project.
4 – Be firm but realistic with deadlines
Unfortunately, reviewing content is rarely a top priority for stakeholders. It’s usually even less of a priority for those in non-marketing roles, and even less than that when the stakeholder is a customer. Try to strike a balance between keeping the process moving and being respectful of stakeholders’ time. Locate existing documents or resources to help them deliver what you need sooner and keep them updated with next steps so they are always informed. If you have a good relationship with a stakeholder, you won’t just have a better understanding of their priorities and deadlines – you’ll also be in a better position to borrow their time at short notice if you need it.
5 – Reflect and review
As businesses evolve, priorities shift, goalposts move and stakeholders tend to change. To ensure your customer advocacy programme remains effective, regularly review your processes and outcomes. Are the results reflecting the vendor’s current business goals? Are the stories being used effectively by sales? Can you refine the process to make it more efficient or more cost effective? Be proactive and suggest changes when things aren’t working – stakeholders will thank you for it.
Key stakeholder management takeaways
- Set customer expectations: Stakeholders from a customer’s business may not be familiar with customer advocacy programmes. They may not have worked on content projects at all. This means they’re often the hardest stakeholders to engage. It’s therefore vital that, at the start of the process, you communicate to them what you need from them and what you will deliver. Assign responsibility and keep the stakeholders accountable.
- Remain agile: Stakeholders have their own priorities, and customer advocacy will not sit at the top of their list. Be flexible and adapt to their needs where possible, but communicate when deadlines are approaching or have been missed. Keep other stakeholders informed of any obstacles or delays to ensure everyone is aligned.
- Set up an ongoing programme: An ongoing advocacy programme will produce far more effective results than customer stories frantically generated for one-off campaigns or upcoming trade shows. An ongoing programme keeps stakeholders engaged; improves story quality; and avoids the unnecessary stress of looming, rigid deadlines.
If you’d like to know more about how we deliver our customer advocacy service please get in touch.
