Pillar 6: Advocacy — having advocates is not doing advocacy
Most companies have advocates and zero advocacy — because they don't capitalize on them. Advocacy is a deliberate program, with assets and a maturity flow, not a positive sentiment on NPS.
Wayne McCulloch (The Seven Pillars of Customer Success, 2021) opens the advocacy chapter with a conversation that can be heard at any B2B company:
— "We have a ton of advocates." — "Do you capture that feedback and share it with the market?" — "Oh, no. We don't do that." — "Then you don't have customer advocacy."
That three-line exchange is the heart of Pillar 6 — Advocacy. Having advocates is not doing advocacy. Advocacy is the program that capitalizes on advocates — without a program, advocates sit idle, producing random word-of-mouth no one measures, and the company loses the biggest competitive advantage it has.
The definition that matters
Advocacy is a competitive advantage that assists in the acquisition of new logos and solidifies the existing base through a deliberate set of programs and assets. — McCulloch 2021, ch. 8
The value verb is Value Championed — value evangelized externally by the customer, not just delivered internally.
McCulloch names five benefits of advocacy (ch. 8):
- Competitive advantage — the customer's voice is more credible than the vendor's.
- Accelerated deal cycles — references shorten cycles.
- Retention — advocates don't leave.
- Expansion — advocates expand.
- Insight — advocates tell you what to break next.
Distinct from the other pillars: advocacy transcends the journey
Unlike pillars 2–5 (which happen sequentially during the journey), advocacy can happen at any point. A new customer, still in onboarding, can become an advocate in the first week — if the experience is exceptional. A 5-year customer can never have become an advocate — if no one asked.
This transversality has an operational implication: CSMs should identify advocacy candidates continuously, not just at the QBR.
The 5 required assets
McCulloch (ch. 8) is specific about what composes an advocacy program:
1. Value and maturity assessments
Quantitative proof of delivered value. Not testimonial — data. ROI measured. Time saved. Revenue generated.
And the complement: maturity assessments that compare the customer's journey vs. peers (models like ESG: build/operationalize/transform; TSIA: forming/storming/norming/performing; Gainsight: reactive/informed/proactive/predictive). The customer wants to see where they are — and where they could go.
2. User-generated content
Testimonials, reviews on rating sites, published case studies, customer posts on social.
The book's cautionary tale: a $1B-revenue company with 47 case studies for 40 products — total fragmentation. Each product with 1 or 2 vague cases. The sales team had nothing to show for each specific use case.
Rule of thumb: for each major product/vertical, 5–10 cases. Not 47 scattered randomly.
3. Customer referrals
Build a reference library segmented by industry, geography, use case, company size. Don't keep squeezing the same 3 customers every quarter — they get tired, and your library skews to what those 3 do.
"Hidden" referrals — when a customer organically speaks well of you — are the most valuable and the easiest to miss. They surface when the salesperson is in the field and no one captures them.
4. Referring — different from referral
McCulloch's fine distinction:
- Referral — when you ask a customer to talk to a prospect.
- Referring — when an advocate moves to a new company and brings you with them.
Referring is the "gold" of advocacy. No outreach required. The ex-customer arrives at the new company already proposing to hire you. For that to happen, you have to take care of the individual — not just the logo. CSMs who maintain the relationship even after the logo leaves see the customer reappear at the new company in 6–18 months.
5. Focused events
Joint speaking engagements at conferences, panels, podcasts, the customer's own events. Lift the advocate's career along with your brand. That's the point: advocates don't go to events without a reason. They go because you're helping them position themselves.
The three Cs
In addition to the 5 assets, McCulloch (ch. 8) names three programs:
CABs — Customer Advisory Boards
Segmented. Not a single CAB for everyone. CABs by product, vertical, geography, or spend bracket. And a counter-intuitive rule: mix super-advocates with customers who are struggling. The struggling ones learn faster from the thriving ones than from any training.
Champion Programs
Find the people who love the product and equip them: training, certifications, swag, event seating priority, roadmap visibility. Recertify every 6–12 months — inactive champions lose status, prevents title inflation.
Online communities
Real communities, not ticket-deflection forums. Drive self-service, surface advocates no one knew about, surface feature ideas.
The book's case: Blue Prism (Xina Seaton's case study) — 26K monthly active users, every post answered within SLA, £300K in support deflection, 20 features sourced directly from the community shipped in the product.
Critical difference: a real community has a CSM present, active moderation, curated content. It's not just an open forum where customers vent.
The Advocate Maturity Map
McCulloch's signature contribution to thinking about advocacy. Four phases:
Identify → Nurture → Engage → Promote
1. Identify
Find the advocate. Sometimes they reveal themselves (10 on NPS, LinkedIn comment, even spontaneous brand ambassador). Sometimes the CSM targets: "this customer is at a point where they could benefit from visibility."
2. Nurture
Don't ask for anything yet. Share value assessments, maturity data, peer comparisons. Prep the ground. Start with low-effort asks — short testimonial, G2 review, LinkedIn recommendation.
3. Engage
Published case studies, references on active pipeline, participation in champion program. Here the advocate is investing real time.
4. Promote
They evangelize on their own — at events, in communities, on social, in conversations with industry peers. You no longer need to ask. They talk about you because you've become part of their professional identity.
The split of responsibility: CSMs identify and nurture; customer marketing engages and promotes. Advocacy should be owned by CS, not marketing — CS knows the customer, marketing distributes.
The four advocate types (Forrester)
McCulloch adopts Laura Ramos's (Forrester) taxonomy — four types, each best for a different thing:
| Type | Characteristics | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Educators | Share knowledge naturally | Champion programs |
| Validators | Credible, balanced, on the record | CABs |
| Status seekers | Ambitious, networked, rise fast | Events |
| Collaborators | Long-term thinkers, senior | CABs |
Knowing which advocate is which type avoids the wrong asks. Asking for a public testimonial from a senior "Collaborator" can fail — they prefer private discussion. Asking a "Status seeker" to join a CAB works — they want the stage.
NPS — friend or foe?
McCulloch's verdict (ch. 8):
Use NPS to identify advocates. Don't use it to measure company health.
The reason: intent ≠ behavior. People say they'll recommend; not all do. For real customer experience, use Customer Effort Score (CES).
But for identifying advocate candidates, NPS works — anyone who gives a 9–10 and justifies it with long text is a candidate. Anyone who gives a 9–10 with no text is a shy candidate — worth a follow-up.
The dominant risk: sentiment risk
In advocacy, the main risk is sentiment risk — a variant of relationship risk. High sentiment correlates with high probability of advocacy; negative sentiment correlates with imminent churn and reputation damage.
Signals to monitor continuously:
- NPS and CES trend (not absolute value)
- CSAT on support interactions
- Community posts
- Post-event survey comments
- Tone in emails between CSM and customer
The cultural precondition
There's a deeper layer McCulloch touches lightly but is worth making explicit: advocacy only works in companies with a consistent culture of excellence.
An advocacy program applied at a company with inconsistent experience produces obligatory cases, forced references, lukewarm testimonials. The problem isn't the program — it's the upstream culture. Before investing heavily in advocacy tooling, ask: do my customers have memorable enough moments to become advocates?
If the answer is "maybe, in some," the problem is cultural first — advocacy program second.
How the toolbox helps
- Moments of truth — every "this is the best vendor I've worked with" is an entry point for advocacy. Ask.
- Playbooks — identify-an-advocate, nurture, build a case, capture a reference.
- Health score — weight product usage, business outcomes, sentiment, feedback, support — high score = high advocacy probability.
- Customer success plan — embed the advocate maturity map directly in the plan.
- Segmentation — segment advocates by type; segment CABs by industry/spend.
- QBRs and EBRs — natural moments to convert "things are going great" into a reference or case.
- Voice of the customer — amplifying positive customer voice externally is as important as relaying critical voice internally.
What healthy advocacy looks like
Five signals:
- A formal program owned by CS, with customer marketing as partner.
- A reference library deep enough to slice by industry, geo, size, use case.
- Multiple cases per product line — not 47 spread across 40.
- Champions in rotation with training, certifications, and a communication cadence.
- A real community (not a forum) measurably deflecting tickets and surfacing ideas.
The diagnostic question
Can I name, right now, 10 active advocates in my base, each with an in-flight ask (testimonial, case, reference, speaking engagement)?
If you can't, advocacy is sentiment, not program. And you're leaving money on the table — because each of those 10 advocates would shorten sales cycles, generate upsell, and open doors to similar customers.
Based on McCulloch, Wayne. The Seven Pillars of Customer Success: A Proven Framework to Drive Impactful Client Outcomes for Your Company (2021), ch. 8. Adapted by the Partenero team. This post is part of a series on the 7 Pillars — see also the overview post.