Driving Results through Champions

I caught up with another Customer Success leader this week and we got talking about Champions.

And by Champions I mean the power user kind, not the MEDDICC kind.

A Champion in this sense is a user of your product that you train up to be a super-user, who then helps you increase the knowledge and engagement of the rest of the users. 

Building Champions within your customer base is incredibly valuable because it helps you scale your education and messaging across multiple users quickly, as well as share successes to drive engagement. 

A good Champion program usually goes something like this:

1. Identify your Champions - this can be volunteered on the customer side by the users themselves or by leadership, or it can be selected from who engages most with your product

Tips for being smart with choosing your champions

Attitude and influence beats skill - you want these users raving about your product internally, they don't have to immediately be the best users to do that. You want to find people who LIKE your product, who GET the why and the value and who carry enough clout internally to bring people on the journey. I'm a big fan of bringing the customer in to choose who becomes champions for that reason.

Finding people who are personally connected to the outcome is best - where you can, work with the customer to tie being a champion to an outcome these people care about. This could be a promotion they're working towards or an OKR that they have that goes towards their results. This immediately gives people a lot more buy-in to working with you and executing the things that you're going to ask of this group.

The best example of this that I saw was when a Sales Leader that used to be a customer of mine in a previous role took a person who wanted a promotion but was the biggest detractor of our platform and told that person that to get promoted they needed to become a champion and get everyone using it!

2. Upskill your Champions - put them through a more intensive training program so that they know more than your average user. This way they can help answer questions internally or even train new starters for you.

These don’t have to be in person (although that would be nice) and could be anything from bespoke courses just for Champions to extra online learning modules you want them to take. Basically this can be as light or as heavy as you want it to be, to suit your business.

3. Develop the program - This is the piece that I think happens without enough thought. There are so many things you can do here, with really 2 main outcomes:

1. Keep the champions engaged long-term

2. Get the champions helping your cause

Let's break down each of these:

Keeping the champions engaged

Keeping anyone engaged with your product long-term (and certainly past the initial high of the implementation period) should be something every CSM is thinking about. But this is even more true with your Champions. If you’re going to build these people up and rely on them to drive engagement, they themselves need to be engaged. 

So to build a program that will keep your Champion engaged, ask yourself these questions:

• What's going to entice your users to become a Champion?

• How will you keep them interested in this program over time?

• How will you keep them upskilled?

• How will you thank them for the work they're doing on your behalf?

Here's some of the ideas we've run over the years in various iterations of Champions programs:

• Run a quarterly meet up (virtual or in-person) just for Champions where you run through latest product releases and more advanced tips and tricks. Throw in some food and drink of course too.

• Give Champions first-release of new features and first access to sign up to events

• Get some champion-specific SWAG that everyone will want

• Run them bespoke insights on your platform

• Send thank you notes to their leaders for the work they've been doing

Getting the champions to help your cause

For a CSM, the best part of having Champions is that they can help you on the ground to drive the adoption and value of your platform or service. 

But you can’t just assume they’ll do this in return for the extra training and any goodies. You've got to ask them!  

Here are some things you can ask for and build into your Champions program: 

• Help train new starters on the key use cases of your platform

• Be the first line for questions internally, before they come to support/to you as a Customer Success Manager

• Highlight key wins/successes at internal meetings or through internal slack channels

Really the world is your oyster here in terms of asks, it could be whatever helps you with your end goal. Just be mindful of how much time you’re asking of them!

Done well, Champion programs are a Customer Success Manager's best friend and are a key tool that can be leveraged to drive adoption and value, and certainly help with scale.