Traditional Marketing and Sales are becoming obsolete.

Your CUSTOMERS

should be leading profitable growth.

Exceptional companies engage  customers to...

CRUSH difficult growth objectives.

OnePlus

GO TO MARKET

OnePlus's Customer Community co-created its first phone and evangelized it to the market.
Result: $300M sales in first year;  $330  marketing spend.

SAS-Canada

RETENTION

SAS Canada's "Customer Champions" restored retention rates by organizing 20 live events in 13 cities that drew 2,000 customers.
Result: Retention rates restored from 83% to mid-94-96%. No marketing spend needed.

Zoom logo

MARKET SHARE

Zoom relied entirely on natural customer advocacy in its first two years (no marketing spend.)  Despite being late to the industry, Zoom's market share today leads all competitors combined.

Salesforce.com_logo

ACQUISITION

Early Salesforce ($440M rev.) "closed" 80% of prospects at its live events, simply by making it easy for prospects to talk to customers—no sales pitch required.

microsoft-logo

COSTS

Microsoft’s customer community, led by its "MVPs," cut support costs by $100s M—and improved support satisfaction scores.

Lego

INNOVATION

LEGO's 1000+ developer-customers created a robot that could solve a Rubik cube and other monster hits that  internal developers couldn't match—a harbinger of Lego's return to profitability and triumph over Sony's internally designed robotics.

Salesforce.com_logo

ACQUISITION

Early Salesforce ($440M rev.) "closed" 80% of prospects at its live events, simply by making it easy for prospects to talk to customers—no sales pitch required.

microsoft-logo

COSTS

Many customer communities help to save support costs. But few if any CRUSH such costs like MICROSOFT'S community did under the legendary Sean O'Driscoll. RESULT: $100s of millions of dollars of support costs diverted to the community. Plus, customer satisfaction with the free support improved!

Lego

INNOVATION

LEGO's 1000+ developer-customers created a robot that could solve a Rubik cube and other monster hits that  internal developers couldn't match—a harbinger of Lego's return to profitability and triumph over Sony's internally designed robotics.

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.

Customers-at-risk would rather connect with other customers like them.

Bill Lee can help.

"Bill is a pioneer of  the 21st Century Customer Relationship." Chris Adlard, co-founder and co-author, The Customer Catalyst

Why Bill can help:

Created the categories of Customer Advocacy and Engagement and the metric, Return on Relationship™—the foundations of Customer Marketing.

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.

Widely published, including Harvard Business Review with 20+ articles and the seminal book on customer-led growth, The Hidden Wealth of Customers.

HBR articles include: Marketing is Dead, The Hidden Wealth Beyond Net Promoter, Things Customers Can Do Better Than You, The Right Way to Hire Your Customers and several more.

Founded longest running (16 years), most respected customer engagement conference in the world, the Summit on Customer Engagement, held yearly in Silicon Valley.

Since 2020, Bill co-founded the Roundtable for a Customer Revolution with eight titans of the customer relationship–like Nick Mehta, Carol Meyers, Jake Sorofman–to create a movement of organizations that crush growth efficiently by working with human nature rather than fight it. 

A decade long initiative--age of Customer-led Growth.

plug for joining This Roundtable (finding out more...or becoming part of -- amazing initiative)

CLIENTS

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Testimonials

Nick Mehta
CEO, Gainsight

"Highly recommended..."
Nick Mehta
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.
Martin Haering
CMO, Finastra
Martin Haering
Under Bill's leadership, now is the time for customer advocacy and engagement managers to up-level your thinking about all the ways that customers can grow the business. And be bold—people like me want you to tell us these things.
Don Peppers
Author
Bill Peppers
Bill leads one of the most interesting communities of customer-led professionals I’ve seen. His book, The Hidden Wealth of Customers (HBR), has innovative frameworks—such as “AIC” customers—critical for today’s C-suites.
Jake Sorofman
CMO, Visier
Jake Sorofman
Bill is a true visionary in the emerging world of Customer Marketing. There are few people I know who are as passionate and dedicated to the culture and practice of building your customer advocates into your most important flywheel for driving profitable growth.
Carol Meyers
Independent Board Director,
Growth Advisor
Carol Meyers
With Bill’s guidance, we thought deeply and spoke frankly about the barriers to customer centricity, and developed radical, research-based strategies to overcome them.
Chris Adlard
Author
Chris Adlard
Bill is a pioneer of the 21st century customer relationship.
Vickie Cooney
VP, Market Development,
AmerisourceBergen  
Vickie Cooney
The value was unbelievable. If we’d had this knowledge when we first started, we’d be in a better place today when it comes to customer excellence.
Jackie Breiter
VP, Customer Success
CA Technologies
Jackie Breiter
When it comes to developing high-impact customer relationships, I found out very quickly that all roads on that issue lead to Bill Lee.
Sarah Davis
Director of Customer Marketing,
Invoca
Sarah Davis
Bill is leading a revolution in the way that customers take us to market and build our business.
Genevieve Guerette
Director of Customer Marketing,
App Annie
Genevieve Guerette
Bill gets us out of the day-to-day demands from stakeholders and into our customers’ potential to grow the business.

The Vision

These are the superpowers your customers can bring to the table.

 

Three levers connect customers-at-risk

with customer-advocates, -innovators and -community drivers,

creating a flywheel that crushes business growth.

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…

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Plan

Start connecting customers right away to impact and crush 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 connect the 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 it.

That’s the foundation for realizing 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 great 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…

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