Traditional Marketing and Sales are becoming obsolete.
Your CUSTOMERS
should be leading profitable growth.
Customers are increasingly
CRUSHING difficult growth objectives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
COSTS
Microsoft’s customer community, led by its "MVPs," cut support costs by $100s M—and improved support satisfaction scores.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Customers who impact growth can receive huge value in return:
^Build My Career
^Increase My Reputation & Status
^Learn and Grow
^Higher-Value Peer Affiliation
^Expand My Network
IBM client Wes Hunt:
super advocate +
rapid career growth
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
Testimonials
Testimonials
"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."
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."
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."
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."
Bill Peppers
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…
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.
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…