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Building an actual "advisor" program
Mark Huber
April 16, 2024
✍️ Most B2B advisor programs are broken
Like most trends in marketing, B2B was late to the game on influencers.
Enter: the "Strategic Advisor".
You’ve probably seen the title appear in the Experience section of the top LinkedIn voices you follow.
My own LinkedIn profile even shows I’ve been an “advisor” for three different companies over the last 2+ years. My mom is proud.
And I’ve developed a unique perspective on what differentiates the good programs from the weak ones. Here’s what I’m going to lay out today:
✔️ The #1 reason most advisor programs fall short
✔️ 3 things I did to make our program stand out
✔️ How my advisor program is working right now
🚫 Advisors shouldn’t be walking a one-way street
If your company is the only one benefitting from an advisor relationship, that’s a problem.
It’s also a misuse of the word advisor. Not to mention the word relationship.
Even if influencers agree to promote your company in exchange for the perceived clout, that doesn’t make it right. It’s ineffective and feels a little slimy.
How can you expect someone to post about your product in a genuine way when you’re not thoroughly invested in helping them do so?
There are three things I prioritized when building an advisor program at UserEvidence.
1. Identify the areas where you need advising
When I zeroed in on our current advisors — Jen Allen-Knuth, Jason Oakley, and Kaylee Edmondson — I, of course, thought about the audiences they’d bring to the table.
They needed to align with the personas we’ve been trying to get in front of.
Beyond that though, I wasn’t just looking for whoever had the largest follower count.
I was looking for solid humans who could actually advise me in areas that we really needed help with internally.
The result? Three advisors representing three distinct areas of expertise in sales, product marketing, and demand generation.
At the end of the day, they know their stuff, believe in the problem we’re solving for, AND have engaged followings.
2. Clearly define the benefits for advisors
Compensation. Compensation. Compensation.
We pay our advisors with equity. We also offer two types of referral fees.
Like some programs I’ve seen, if a referral becomes a customer, our advisors receive a percentage of the first-year ACV.
But the reality is, there’s so much that has to go right for a referral to become a customer that’s outside of an advisors’ control.
I wanted to make sure there was an upfront carrot that improved the chances of people actually getting paid.
That’s why we also offer a fee for referrals that turn into qualified meetings.
Outside of money, I also made a point to tout the networking benefit. All of our advisors have access to each other, and I encourage them to interact without me.
As solopreneurs, they’ve all expressed missing being part of a team. I try to help them fill that void by, you know, building actual relationships.
An advisor’s advice is only as good as the information they have. So I err on the side of total visibility. So what does this look like?
A group Slack channel - it's honestly my favorite and most fun channel
Monthly updates that recap what's going on at the company and marketing level - the good, the bad, and the ugly
Dedicated 1:1 working sessions every month
Doing this equips them to speak better on our behalf. It also makes them feel like they’re part of something while opening the door for actual advising.
Because if these pros have experience with some of the stuff I’m going through, I want to learn from their successes and mistakes sooner rather than later.
📈 How it started vs. how it’s going
So far, I’m happy with how our advising program is playing out. The major ROI right now is in the quality of the stories they’re helping us tell.
They all showed up and out for the second episode of our show The Proof Point.
We’re also running a three-part mini-series focused on how critical customer evidence is through the lens of each advisor’s respective role (sales, product marketing, and demand generation)
It’s the kind of content that truly speaks to the lived experiences of our B2B buyers.
Also the kind of content our CEO legit gets excited about sharing.
Win-win.
🤓 Stuff I’m learning (and digging) right now
Selling With: The art of selling with champions to shape internal buying conversations and close enterprise deals by Nate Nasralla—This is the new playbook that anyone in B2B sales should follow.
Common Room’s new website — I call out good product marketing when I see it. Their new narrative introducing a new category (Customer Intelligence Platform) is really well done IMO.
EventShark — We filmed a series of mini-interviews during Spring last week (shoutout to Wynter). Couldn’t have done it without these guys.
💰Opinions are cheap and proof is gold
Adam Schoenfield, Trinity Ngyuen, and Jarod Greene joined me on the newest episode of The Proof Point.
It’s all about defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) — what to look at, which teams should be involved in the process, and how often you should revisit it.
My biggest takeaways:
It’s more important to prioritize ICP fit over intent, avoid shiny object syndrome.
The entire GTM team needs to agree on your ICP. Marketing shouldn’t do this in a silo ‘cause when they do, it doesn’t work nearly as well.
Your ICP will evolve over time and that’s GREAT. It means you’re getting smarter about who your best-fit customers are. Reviewing everything should be a quarterly project.
UserEvidence, who?
UserEvidence is a customer evidence platform that helps B2B marketing teams generate verified proof points that credibly prove the value of your product.
Using custom surveys at key moments throughout the customer journey, you can capture case studies and testimonials, as well as competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data.
Turn happy customers into your best sellers with UserEvidence.