Customer Engagement & Kevin Lau's Advice on Getting Hired

Today’s Call: Customer & Community Engagement

Join me at 2 PM EST today to discuss Customer & Community Engagement - RSVP here (we’ll use the generic registration for this call).

Recording: The New Champion & Gainsight Partnership

Your favorite sponsor, Champion, and the biggest name in Customer Success are partnering to offer an end-to-end Customer Community & Advocacy solution (hello, new Influitive alternative).

Both companies shared a short demo of their capabilities and we learned about how their partnership with bring the platforms together and evolve over time to include Gainsight CS in the future.

Schedule a follow-up call with Champion here to further discuss how this could help your customer and advocacy programs.

Content You Don’t Want To Miss

Is It Time to Rethink My Customer Marketing Strategy?

Listen to Captivate Collective & Jane Menyo on this interesting topic.

Jane Menyo shares her thoughts about:

• Her unique positioning of Showcasing Raving Fans You Created to her internal partners (16:20)

• How planning from a much earlier stage in the journey can help you set expectations for advocacy support at launch (around 18 minutes)

• Looking at customer lifecycle to see when and where to bring customers into your advocacy program (around 22 minutes)

• Why customer marketing needs to change (around 27 minutes)

You can also catch Jane discussing Advanced Advocacy Practices on a recent CMAweekly call.

Levering Content in CMA with Daniel Palay and Allison Bukowski

Daniel shared some of his tactics for working with content teams, delivering the most impactful stories, and:

• Focusing on delivering value that meets your audience's needs, not striving for perfection.

• Prioritizing content creation based on what is most likely to move the needle.

• Confidently sharing the value of your stories with leadership.

Check it out here.

You can also find Daniel discussing how he works with the Content team on a recent CMAweekly call.

Finding a New Job with Kevin Lau

I recently met with Kevin Lau, who has built Customer Marketing & Advocacy teams at Marketo, Adobe, F5, and just started working at Freshworks, to get his advice on being hired in Customer Marketing.

Here are his top tips:

1. Leverage Personal Connections:

   – Kevin: “I think one if they’ve come in through a personal connection point from someone that either, either the hiring manager knows, I think that actually does help to weed through a lot of the noise because most of the time… And so I think it’s helpful to make the direct connection to the hiring manager if individuals can.”

2. Maintain a LinkedIn Presence That Represents Your Cultural Fit:

   – Kevin: “We all use LinkedIn, right? Like, everyone uses it as a resource to see what folks are doing. If individuals are not really, they’re not as visible, it becomes harder to understand, like, you know, their point of view other than what’s written on paper. So I think it does actually help if you have, you know, you have you post content or things that are related to your industry or your role. Like, it’s helped me to get jobs in the past. And so I think it does. It takes some time, but it doesn’t have to be anything lengthy. But I think they can as long as people have a sense of who you are and what you represent. The other thing is very much like, what are your values? And I think it’s goes hand in hand with, you know, bringing the right culture if someone’s gonna hire you.”

3. Have A Concise Resume/LinkedIn Profile:

   – Kevin: “I think even if you have more experience, hiring managers want to see a concise one pager versus, like 2345 pages if you’ve been working longer. So the more concise but to the point you can be, the better, because I think they’ll also look at that as, does this person know how to articulate what they do? And can they do it in a concise way that pulls together? Like, what are the one, two, three things I need to know about this individual going into a conversation?”

4. Practice Conciseness in Your Interview:

   – Kevin: “I think, interviewing, it’s also the same thing. It’s less is more. I’ve been on interviews with folks that I think sometimes they can’t get to the point quickly, and so it tends to be like they ramble. So I would, and if, I know interviews sometimes are hard, but I think if you could practice even with yourself or record yourself and give yourself a prompt and say how to answer this question and be able to do so concisely, because a lot of depending if you’re hiring with a VP or an executive, they will typically want you to get to the point anyways.”

5. Know Your Skills, Cultural Fit, Values & Vision

   – Kevin: “I have a lesson question. We do it based on a spectrum of, like, four. Basically, it’s like four areas. So, like, one is a demonstration of skills. One is, like, cultural fit. Another one is, like, we call them, like, BFI values, which is kind of similar to cultural fit, but a little bit different. And then there’s another one that’s, you know, talks about a little bit more, like, you know, vision strategy; what do they bring? You know, what could they do to transform the organization?”

6. Craft an Elevator Pitch:

   – Kevin: “Have a very clear elevator pitch of what you would bring to the organization, but also match that to the job description.”

7. Tailor Why You Want to Work for the Company:

  – Kevin: “when people do interview, it doesn’t come out clear, like, why that individual actually wants to work for the company. Sometimes I get very generic answers and I could tell, like, they didn’t really put much thought into it. And I get the fact that they’re looking for a job, but I think if they can at least kind of tailor why they want to work there instead of just getting a paycheck, I do think that makes it stand out a little bit better.”

8. Clearly Articulate Your Vision and Strategy:

   – Kevin: “If you’re looking at like anything above, I would say like director and above, they really want to know what is your, what is your vision, what is your strategy of what you would bring to the organization and what does great look like.”

9. Show You Can Cross-Collaboratively

  – Kevin: “At least the people that I select for a panel, they tend to be from departments that we typically work with very closely. So product, customer success, support, maybe even sales. So really just to get the prospective business person, could they work closely with these counterparts? Could they build like a shared set of goals and responsibilities that would serve all these departments?”

10. Don’t BS Your Way Through A Question:

   – Kevin: So, for example, like, recently when I had to do some interviews with folks are applying for, like, a retention rule, I could tell I’m on a call off the bat when someone is, like, bsing to me and they don’t really. They’re basically trying to, like, come up with a strategy on the fly, but it’s not really sound versus someone that, like, knows what they’re talking about. And so that’s the immediate, like, red flag, you know, it’s probably not a good fit. 

11. Prove Your Ability to Problem Solve

  – Kevin: Show up well and be able to articulate how you would solve a problem because I think that’s also part of it. Like, every job that we apply to, we’re not going to necessarily know everything off the bat, and there’s going to be a learning curve, but it’s really about the approach for how you solve a problem. 

12. Explain Your Thought Processes with Building Consensus & Alignment

  – Kevin: And so if the person kind of explains their thought process and how they would build consensus and build alignment, like, that’s even more valuable than sometimes even having the actual expertise in the job because it shows me, like, the person’s hungry, they can figure it out. And I have no doubt, like, if they’re that sharp, they can build the relationships and win people over, too. 

13. Build Relationships with Panelists – Know Your Interviewers:

   – Kevin: “In most of the people you’re going to be interviewing with work in, like, at least the people that I select for a panel, they tend to be from departments that we typically work with very closely… It tends to be very much like relationship-based as well as like some, you know, obviously having some expertise on the job.”

14. Win Over Your Panelists

   – Kevin: “And so I think, like, that’s one thing that I think when they’re talking to multiple people, if everyone feels good, that person can help and add value to the organization, then it becomes an easier conversation. We don’t have to, like, convince anyone if there’s like disagreement on the panel that this person be selected versus another person.”

Threads from CMAweekly Slack

• 5 members shared their quick wins approaches for new programs

• 9 members shared on their Reference program impact approaches

• Ashley Ward shared a new email script for requesting advocacy

• A quick discussion on whether you should claim review profiles

That’s about it for today. I’ll see you all at 2PM or next week. 🙂