Growth in the 2020's
Create natural advocates.
Engage employees.
Think like a startup.
Reap the rewards...
Customers are CRUSHING growth objectives.
So can yours.
GO TO MARKET
Carl Pei launched smartphone maker OnePlus into a brutal industry, and succeeded with a creative twist: he built a customer community first—with like-minded smartphone enthusiasts—before launching a product. The launch of the OnePlus One was a hit because Pei's community co-created it, promoted it, and supported it better than internal employees by themselves. RESULT: $300M in 1st yr sales with $300 media spend
RENTENTION
SAS Canada's concerned president considered a high $ marketing campaign to reverse a steep decline in retention rates (from mid-90s to low-80s). Customer Advocacy manager Wally Thiessen suggested that he deploy his “Customer Champions” instead—who organized 20 live events in 13 cities that drew 2,000 people, among others remarkable initiatives. Result: Retention rates fully restored. No marketing spend needed.
MARKET SHARE
When it first launched, Zoom was late to the industry, facing much better known and better funded competitors. Unable to raise funding, CEO Eric Yuan built market share on a foundation of natural customer advocates—nurtured by his fidelity to a culture of "delivering happiness”—as opposed to focusing on financial metrics. Result: By 2020 Zoom led the industry in market share.
DISRUPT
Despite his various troubles, Elon Musk has focused Tesla admirably on disrupting the EV industry for two decades. No more nerdy electric cars: Musk made Teslas cool. Dealership rip-offs were out—Tesla owns “stores” that amplify the cars' "wow" experience. Musk depended on natural advocates for growth, spent little on marketing. RESULT: Tesla’s value cratered in 2022, but is still 3x of its top 3 competitors combined (1/1/2003).
DISRUPT, 2
T-Mobil was a perennial laggard when CEO John Legere joined it. Its market cap was a paltry $3B vs. +/-$150B for AT&T and Verizon. Legere vowed to compete with natural customer evangelism by reversing the leaders’ appalling customer practices. He eliminated binding contracts, international roaming charges, hidden fees, and more. RESULT: In just a decade, T-Mobile's market cap was neck & neck with AT&T and Verizon.
HARDEST SALE EVER?
Efforts to get teenagers to stop smoking failed for decades, until FLORIDA invited teens into a community of peers: Hundreds gathered to brainstorm a new anti-smoking campaign ("truth"), formed an organization to implement it (SWAT, or Students Working Against Tobacco), and led the first successful anti-teen smoking campaign in history. RESULT: Teen smoking in FL reduced 17% in 1st year, 50% in 10 yrs.
ACQUISITION
Marc Benioff designed early Salesforce events to encourage candid conversations between customers and prospects, no sales pitch needed. Benioff let his customers—and his products—do the selling. That “no-selling” approach spawned incredible "no-selling" close rates. RESULT: 80% of such prospects became customers.
COSTS
Many customer communities save costs by diverting support requests to their customer community. But few if any CRUSH such costs like Microsoft did under community manager Sean O'Driscoll—who was motivated by leadership’s dire emphasis on cost cuts against open source competition. Result: O’Driscoll’s community eventually diverted $100Ms of dollars of support costs.
BECOME ICONIC
When he started Vanguard, Jack Bogle upended Wall Street’s entrenched abuse of investors. He installed a radical regime: provide the best possible investments for its investors/ customers! Establish no firm growth goals. No commissioned sales. Cut costs relentlessly–and pass them to customers. RESULT: Today, Vanguard is the second largest mutual fund in the world.
What keeps your customers from crushing growth objectives?
Your Organization is Fighting Human Nature.
- KPIs align poorly with customer needs.
- Marketing, Sales, Support etc. create conflicts of interest with customers.
- Employees struggle to establish empathy and trust with customers.
- Unsurprisingly, Customer Experience initiatives often fail.
Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight
"Customers first choice when facing hard decisions is to connect with other customers like them."
Bill Lee can help.
What Founders Say
Highly recommended. Bill’s Roundtable generated Incredible perspectives from some of the smartest senior leaders and investors in business. His passion for the future of the customer is provocative and inspiring. Nick Mehta, CEO, Gainsight
With Bill’s guidance at the Roundtable, we thought deeply and spoke frankly about the barriers to customer centricity, and developed radical, research-based strategies to overcome them. Carol Meyers, Independent Board Director, Growth Advisor, former CMO, Rapid7, LogMein, Unica
Bill is a true visionary in the emerging world of Customer-led Growth. There are few people I know as passionate and dedicated to the cause of building your best customers into your essential flywheel for driving profitable growth. Jake Sorofman, CMO, Visier, Pendo; former Chief of Research, Gartner
Bill created the categories of Customer Advocacy and Customer Engagement and the metric, Return on Relationship™—the foundations of Customer Marketing and Customer-led Growth.
Built a global community around these concepts, including Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Box, Marketo, HubSpot, Palo Alto Networks, AWS, SAS, Siemens, Subaru of America and dozens of others using our educational, research and advisory services.
HBR articles include: Marketing is Dead, Things Customers Can Do Better Than You, The Right Way to Hire Your Customers and more.
Founded longest running (16 years), most respected customer engagement conference in the world, the Summit on Customer Engagement, held in Silicon Valley.
ROUNDTABLE for a CUSTOMER REVOLUTION
In the 2020s, Bill is spearheading a revolution in business growth. Traditional marketing, sales and support are inefficient and can't scale. In any case, customers don’t want to consume in such ways. Customers do want to connect with their peers—other customers—when facing difficult decisions throughout their journeys. Bill's aim is to: 1) Give firm leadership the strategies and research they need to nail customer-led growth, and: 2) Give customer-implementation teams the tools they need to achieve that.
If that resonates, you’ll want to be a part of this.
What Founders Say
Highly recommended. Bill’s Roundtable generated Incredible perspectives from some of the smartest senior leaders and investors in business. His passion for the future of the customer is provocative and inspiring. Nick Mehta, CEO, Gainsight
With Bill’s guidance at the Roundtable, we thought deeply and spoke frankly about the barriers to customer centricity, and developed radical, research-based strategies to overcome them. Carol Meyers, Independent Board Director, Growth Advisor, former CMO, Rapid7, LogMein, Unica
Bill is a true visionary in the emerging world of Customer-led Growth. There are few people I know as passionate and dedicated to the cause of building your best customers into your essential flywheel for driving profitable growth. Jake Sorofman, CMO, Visier, Pendo; former Chief of Research, Gartner
JOIN THE REVOLUTIONCLIENTS
The Vision
Customers want to connect with other customers and employee experts.
Get great at connecting your ACI customers to meet–even crush–growth objectives.
ADVOCACY
Traditional marketing and Sales are dying. You need customers who provide natural advocacy, word of mouth, evangelism: Customers who create an ongoing movement in your market.
IDEAS & INNOVATION
Your best resource for strategy? Strategic customers. For innovation? Innovative customers. The notion that customers can't provide such input is another common misconception about human potential.
CUSTOMER OUTCOMES
Customers struggling with adoption, expansion or renewal in the post-sale often want to connect with other customers like them to "show them the ropes"—just like buyers do in the pre-sale. You want a customer base that excels at that.
The Plan
You can start connecting customers right away to impact and crush critical growth objectives.
Here’s how we can help. Customizations include Advisory, internal Workshops, external Roundtables, and Research.
The
Start Now!
Sprint
120 days to a
Customer-Led
Enterprise
Implement with
Cathedral
Builders
Dare to be
Legendary
Why wait? The customer base of a viable firm has 30% or more promoters or loyal customers.
Instead of focusing on detractors, why not insert your promoters–who already love you–into critical growth challenges?
The CEO’s best leverage point is to build emotional bonds with customers and employees.
That requires a purpose that’s about improving customers lives in some significant way–and then living that purpose.
That’s the foundation for unlocking immense customer value.
Your customer-impacting employees should see the bigger picture of:
Living the purpose of the business.
Engaging and connecting your best customers to meet and crush strategic objectives.
Rather than subordinate your best customers to traditional marketing and sales motions.
A new offering for companies who want to become legendary—to create a legacy like Nike, Apple, Vanguard…
The Plan
You can start connecting customers right away to impact and crush critical growth objectives.
Here’s how we can help. Customizations include Advisory, internal Workshops, external Roundtables, and Research.
The Start Now! Sprint
Why wait? The customer base of a viable firm has 30% or more promoters or loyal customers.
Instead of focusing on detractors, why not insert your promoters–who already love you–into critical growth challenges?
120 days to a Customer-Led Enterprise
The CEO’s best leverage point is to build emotional bonds with customers and employees.
That requires a purpose that’s about improving customers lives in some significant way–and then living that purpose.
That’s the foundation for unlocking immense customer value.
Implement with Cathedral Builders
Your customer-impacting employees should see the bigger picture of:
Living the purpose of the business.
Engaging and connecting your best customers to meet and crush strategic objectives.
Rather than subordinate your best customers to traditional marketing and sales motions.
Dare to be Legendary
A new offering for companies who want to become legendary—to create a legacy like Nike, Apple, Vanguard…