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SLAPFIVE FEATURED AT BOSTON NEW TECHNOLOGY STARTUP SHOWCASE IN MAY '17

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SLAPFIVE FEATURED AT BOSTON NEW TECHNOLOGY STARTUP SHOWCASE IN MAY '17

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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SlapFive featured at Boston New Technology Startup Showcase in May '17 - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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It is tough to communicate a big vision in 5 minutes, but here goes:

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SLAPFIVE IS SELECTED AS FINALIST FOR MASSTLC'S "INNOVATIVE TECH OF THE YEAR - SALES & MARKETING" AWARD

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SLAPFIVE IS SELECTED AS FINALIST FOR MASSTLC'S "INNOVATIVE TECH OF THE YEAR - SALES & MARKETING" AWARD

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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SlapFive is selected as Finalist for MassTLC's "Innovative Tech of the Year - Sales & Marketing" Award

Wowza!! That's my way of saying "Wow" and "Yowza" in one word. On the eve of my birthday, I got a great birthday surprise. SlapFive has been selected by a panel of judges at the MassTLC as a Finalist for their Leadership Awards. We're in the category of "Innovative Tech of the Year - Sales & Marketing".

Of all the company submissions, 30 were selected to make 5 minute pitches about their business and product, and of those, 5 were chosen as Finalists. The winners will be announced at the MassTLC Awards Gala, which will be held on Thursday, September 14 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.

Congratulations to the other finalists in our category: Clypd, Crayon, Yottaa, and ZoomInfo.

Read the Finalists announcement here. And wish us luck.

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SlapFive is selected as Finalist for MassTLC's "Innovative Tech of the Year - Sales & Marketing" Award - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Wowza!! That's my way of saying "Wow" and "Yowza" in one word. On the eve of my birthday, I got a great birthday surprise. SlapFive has been selected by a panel of judges at the MassTLC as a Finalist for their Leadership Awards. We're in the category of "Innovative Tech of the Year - Sales & Marketing".

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SLAPFIVE SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN HUBWEEK'S 2017 DEMO DAY STARTUP SHOWCASE

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SLAPFIVE SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN HUBWEEK'S 2017 DEMO DAY STARTUP SHOWCASE

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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SlapFive selected to participate in HUBweek's 2017 Demo Day startup showcase

I'm thrilled to share another honor that's being heaped on us here at SlapFive. On Saturday, October 14th, 2017 , we'll join 99 other high-impact Boston startups that will fill Boston City Hall to feature our concepts, products and ideas in front of HUBweek's audience.

At HUBweek's Demo Day, presented by Bank of America, startups across 13 industry categories will showcase their companies and 32 will pitch head-to-head to demonstrate their impact or potential impact on our lives.

Startups will be joined in showcasing by leading technology companies, academic institutions, and innovation labs, and the day will be full with a range of programming and breakout sessions from local leaders in Boston on how to grow your career, scale your company, and further your ideas.

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SlapFive selected to participate in HUBweek's 2017 Demo Day startup showcase - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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I'm thrilled to share another honor that's being heaped on us here at SlapFive. On Saturday, October 14th, 2017, we'll join 99 other high-impact Boston startups that will fill Boston City Hall to feature our concepts, products and ideas [...]

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ADVOCAMP 2017 SHOULD BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR ADVOCATE MARKETERS

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ADVOCAMP 2017 SHOULD BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR ADVOCATE MARKETERS

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Advocamp 2017 Should Be A Wake-Up Call for Advocate Marketers

I've been doing customer advocacy since, well, let's just say long before advocate marketing was a "thing". I just called it marketing, the most effective form of marketing. How do I know that? Because in those 25+ years, everything I did with customer voice was directly tied to...and measured by...its contribution to growth of the company.

We put on user conferences to drive greater customer success so those customers would make referrals and so we could advance the prospects in attendance. I wrote case studies that were judged strictly on how well they accelerated deals by knocking down the fears and doubts of buyers. The customer reference calls I arranged caused the buyer to check the last remaining box to say "Yes" to the deal.

Now advocate marketing is a "thing". Influitive has done a fantastic job making it an exciting career path, and giving those folks technology and practices to scale their advocate outreach. When I was an early user of the platform at Forrester 5 years ago, I focused on three use cases that I knew would have the most impact on driving revenue growth: getting customers to use more of the products they bought so we'd improve renewals, gathering feedback on our products to improve differentiation, and getting customer stories about the initiatives they were doing better with our help so we could knock down the biggest barriers to sales.

So it seemed perfectly reasonable that I went to Advocamp last week eager to hear about how today's advocate marketers are moving the revenue needle. One of the biggest surprises for me was just how early we still are in connecting advocate marketing to real business impact.

I would expect that the practitioners who were chosen to speak would be running the most advanced programs. That the winners of the Best Advocate Marketing Awards (BAMMIEs) would have the best results. Maybe both of those statements are true, but my fear is that if advocate marketers don't adjust their mental models and shift more focus to impacting revenue growth, that at best the opportunity to make customer and advocate marketing the most important function in the company like it deserves will be wasted, and at worst we'll see funding for these programs disappear and people lose their jobs.
Measuring Activity Rather Than Impact
Here are a couple observations from the event that cause this concern:

When advocate marketers talked about the results of their work, they clung to metrics tied to program activities rather than business impact. The most cited success claims were based on factors like number of new advocates joined this year, number of engaged advocates, number of challenges completed, number of product reviews posted, number of testimonial quotes received, number of case studies written.

The most frequent metric related to revenue impact I heard were a couple of claims that engaged advocates were X% more likely to renew than non-advocates...well, yeah, but did their advocacy cause them to renew, or did their likelihood to renew cause them to be advocates? The funniest and scariest expression of impact came from a practitioner who mentioned that many of the referrals they get from advocates are for people who are dead.

Advocate marketers need to sharpen their focus on creating experiences and customer voice content that can be measured by factors such as revenue influenced, sales cycles accelerated, expansion opportunities created, and retention rate improvements. Carlos Gonzales from Ceridian described that his references impacted almost $200M in revenue and that advocates telling their stories within their sphere of influence brings in prospects with a vision of a solution that only Ceridian can satisfy.
Sales Is Absent Upfront
In addition to revenue-generating impact, advocate marketers should do more to inject customer voice into the company's strategic decisions. Carbon Black's Kate Cohen did a nice job showcasing how she gathers customer voice from her advocates to inform partner integration priorities, product and brand messaging, and product usability improvements.

Speaking of sales, there was a profound lack of sales channel involvement in the goal-setting and design of advocacy programs. The main mentions of interaction with sales centered around fulfilling the never-ending, and highly specific requests from sales for customer references. Since there was so little mention of sales by the conference speakers, I asked attendees questions like: "How do you make sure customer voice speaks to the needs of your buyers? How do you have your advocates help sales with the biggest objections they encounter?" The responses were various forms of "We're not there yet."

One attendee told me that the sales reps have worn away the carpet leading up to his workspace because they come by so often looking for customer proof. Don't wait for sales to come to you, find out from your reps what the biggest questions, fears, and doubts are that keep your prospects from buying and customers from renewing. Then make sure your customer voice content addresses these explicitly. Think beyond the classic case study and create assets in which customers share insights that knock down the big objections, create urgency, or show why they migrated from a competitor.
References Are Burned Out
"But my sales reps won't tell us that information or give us access to their customers," is a line I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard it. No worries. Someone in your marketing department has likely done buyer persona research, so get your hands on those personas because done correctly, they are ripe full of insights on your buyer needs and barriers. Create those assets, put them into the hands of your sales reps, and they'll beg you for more, and will be willing to give you access to their accounts. And you'll have plenty of time to create them if you stop doing those useless "problem, solution, result" case studies that no one reads.

Speaking of requests from sales for customer references, one of the biggest pains that came up over and over again at Advocamp was customer reference burnout. "Since we have such a shortage of customer references, we overuse the handful who have agreed, sometimes asking them to do 4 or 5 calls a month." To attack this pain, advocate marketers scramble to get more customers to agree to be references, which is a treadmill you can't stay on for long.

Instead, you need to reduce the need for live references at the end of the sales cycle. The best way to do this is to find out the most frequent questions that prospects ask on reference calls. Then capture customer stories that address those questions, and introduce them earlier in the buying cycle, so you earn trust and build brand preference early. Companies like Microsoft and Cisco create virtual recorded references, and restrict their use to qualified prospects, which allows the customer contributing the stories to be more open about their initiatives.
Authenticity Is In Words Only
Think it is hard to find out what those recorded reference questions ought to be? I'll get you started. Based on over 400 buyer persona research interviews I've done with executives, the #1 question buyers want to find out from customers is "What pitfalls have you hit along the way and how did you get through them?" The #2 is "What would you do differently if you were to start over." See the pattern? They're not looking for the "happy day scenarios" you put in your case studies, they want to know what went wrong. Address that and your authenticity earns trust.

Speaking of authenticity, this was a key theme of Geoffrey Moore's keynote. What buyers want: A story told in the first person, by someone who is clearly being authentic. And how do people know if your customer voice is authentic? Tone matters. They tell by tone of voice. They listen to how sentences fit together. People have crap detectors, and after 6 or 7 sentences, they have a sense.

This is another reason to do away with the classic case studies, written in the third person, in long form text, published in 4 page PDFs, full of your company's value prop, not the customers' voice. Instead, gather short audio and video snippets of customers, sharing their stories, full of emotion, in their own voice, addressing the biggest questions, fears and doubts of buyers.

Geoffrey Moore also talked about capturing customer voice in ways that let customers build their social capital. That is their motivation to share their voice. Yet most advocate marketers pay their advocates up to $200 or more to write a review on G2Crowd. I heard payments as high as $750 for advocates to take reference calls. This isn't authentic. As I said in a prior post, this is Paid Advocacy, not Earned Advocacy.

The best way to shift from Paid to Earned Advocacy is to stop asking your advocate to give you testimonials, endorsements and recommendations . Instead allow them the privilege of sharing their knowledge, experience and advice . Why? People want to sound smart. They want to feel successful. And they want to be heard. Making this shift in my Customer Voice program at Forrester was a game-changer and customers were grateful for the opportunity to share their stories.

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Advocamp 2017 Should Be A Wake-Up Call for Advocate Marketers - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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I've been doing customer advocacy since, well, let's just say long before advocate marketing was a "thing". I just called it marketing, the most effective form of marketing. How do I know that? Because in those 25+ years, everything I did with customer voice was directly tied to...and measured by...its contribution to growth of the company.

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JEFF PRESENTS VISION FOR SLAPFIVE ON BLOCKCHAIN AT TECHSTARS

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JEFF PRESENTS VISION FOR SLAPFIVE ON BLOCKCHAIN AT TECHSTARS

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Jeff participated in the February 2018 TechStars Startup Weekend: Blockchain Edition where he and a team put together and validated a concept for customer stories to build trust as a peer-to-peer network on the blockchain.

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Jeff presents vision for SlapFive on blockchain at TechStars - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Jeff participated in the February 2018 TechStars Startup Weekend: Blockchain Edition where he and a team put together and validated a concept for customer stories to build trust as a peer-to-peer network on the blockchain.

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'HOW TO GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO TALK' WEBINAR RECAP AND Q&A

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'HOW TO GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO TALK' WEBINAR RECAP AND Q&A

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Earlier this month we hosted ' How to get your customers to talk without bribery or torture tactics' as part of our new Technique of the Week Training Webinars.

What is Technique of the Week? It's our free virtual training classes led by Co Founder and CEO Jeff Ernst. In some of our future classes he will also be joined by our RockStar Customers, and Customer led Partners. Whether you are new to SlapFive, or simply want a refresher, this is a great opportunity to get an interactive training on some hot topics in the Customer Voice world. Learn about our upcoming trainings and register today to save your spot. Don't see a topic that matches your use case? Let us know we want to hear from you.

In the webinar we covered the 8 ways to get customers to share their voice. out the recipe for making customers clamor to share their voice. Watch the on demand video replay to learn about how we figured View some of our Use Cases here to see these 8 ways applied by our customers.

Listen below to hear Jeff answer some of the top questions asked during the training webinar.

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'How to get your customers to talk' Webinar Recap and Q&A - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Earlier this month we hosted ' How to get your customers to talk without bribery or torture tactics' as part of our new Technique of the Week Training Webinars. What is Technique of the Week? It's our free virtual training classes led by Co Founder and CEO Jeff Ernst.

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ABM WITH CUSTOMER VOICE FOR NET NEW BUSINESS? GET IN THE KNOW IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY DOING THIS!

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ABM WITH CUSTOMER VOICE FOR NET NEW BUSINESS? GET IN THE KNOW IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY DOING THIS!

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Hello SlapFive RockStars! I am excited for this week's topic; an inside look at last month's webinar as part of our Technique of the Week training series.

Our CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Ernst led the training and really wanted to call the session; 'Stop doing ABM by trying to jackhammer the same old, tired messages into target accounts and people who don't want to hear from you, and instead develop champions who spread the value they've experienced with colleagues who are eager to hear from them.' Informative yes, but I said NO WAY that is way too long. So simple and to the point we settled on the title 'Scaling ABM with Customer voice.'

I want to share some key objectives that were covered. One point that Jeff covered really well was about Net New Business and Customer Voice when you are focused on Account Based Marketing. Take a listen to his response below.

To learn more you will have to check out the replay video on demand Have a topic idea you would love to learn more about? Shoot me at note at dana@slapfive.com.

Upcoming training classes and registration links can be found here.

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ABM with Customer Voice for Net New Business? Get in the know if you are not already doing this! - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Hello SlapFive RockStars! I am excited for this week's topic; an inside look at last month's webinar as part of our Technique of the Week training series.

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SLAPFIVE ANNOUNCES THEIR CUSTOMER VOICE PROGRAM

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SLAPFIVE ANNOUNCES THEIR CUSTOMER VOICE PROGRAM

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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TGIF! We are rolling into a heat wave here in Boston this weekend but there is even hotter news to report from the SlapFive front. Today we officially rolled out and formalized our very own Customer Voice Program, SlapFive RockStar.

We have partnered with our customer base to build a group where they will get the opportunity to share knowledge, experiences, and advice with their peers along with being recognized as thought leaders in the industry. Thought leaders in the industry of customer marketing and advocacy but also within their own industries.

Our SlapFive RockStars will be showcasing the innovative things they are doing with customer voice. They will truly be the definition of a rock star in the Customer Voice community throughout their journey with us in the program.
Ready to take the plunge into a new way of doing customer voice? Check us out and reach out to schedule a strategy session. Learn more about

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SlapFive announces their Customer Voice program - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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TGIF! We are rolling into a heat wave here in Boston this weekend but there is even hotter news to report from the SlapFive front. Today we officially rolled out and formalized our very own Customer Voice Program, SlapFive RockStar.

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KIM PLANK - SLAPFIVE ROCKSTAR AWARD WINNER - SEPTEMBER 2019

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KIM PLANK - SLAPFIVE ROCKSTAR AWARD WINNER - SEPTEMBER 2019

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Today I am pleased to announce our FIRST RockStar Award recipient. Kim Plank, Customer Success Marketing Manager at Acumatica! Kim has been a SlapFive customer since 2018 and she encompasses a RockStar customer to the fullest. One key driver to her success as a customer marketer and using customer voice is that Kim follows our recommended pillars of success which in turn helps her be successful within her day to day role.

Being a SlapFive Customer allows you the benefit to participate and join our very own Customer Voice Program, SlapFive RockStar. Kim is one of the first members and qualified to receive our first ever RockStar award. We acknowledge this RockStar as being an innovator in the customer marketing field, has cool and interesting use cases for SlapFive boards and widgets, participated on a panel webinar, and socializes customer voice and SlapFive internally to continue to grow the program with their organization.

Kim uses a phrase "infuse customer voice everywhere", and she does just that. She takes customer success stories and puts them into blogs, newsletters, and widgets on the website. Slices and dices up the video content and assets in all ways possible. She does not let one bit of customer voice go to waste. She talks about her process and her "infuse customer voice" mentality in our latest VoiceX Customer Marketing Therapy Session webinar panel she was a part of. Listen to the session here.

We truly value Kim's partnership with SlapFive and are eager to see the relationship grow within Acumatica to help them with reference burnout, celebrating sales big wins, and continued customer success stories. Learn more about Why Customer Voice and how it has made Kim's life easier by viewing her SlapFive Customer Success board here.

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Kim Plank - SlapFive RockStar Award Winner - September 2019 - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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Today I am pleased to announce our FIRST RockStar Award recipient. Kim Plank, Customer Success Marketing Manager at Acumatica! Kim has been a SlapFive customer since 2018 and she encompasses a RockStar customer to the fullest.

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EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON - DANA'S YEAR END REVIEW

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EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON - DANA'S YEAR END REVIEW

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Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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As we say goodbye to 2019 and start a new year and a new decade, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some amazing experiences I have had.

Some of you may or may not know I am relatively new in my current role at SlapFive. I started full time just this past summer in July. But my path to how I got to where I am today is an interesting one and one I would like to share.

My passion for Customer success and ensuring I have returning happy customers started early in my career at Enterprise rent a car. I was trained to make sure every customer that rented a car was COMPLETELY SATISFIED, no matter what. Our promotions and bonus structure was tied to it that's how important it was weighted. One branch I managed had a large Mandarin Chinese population so I worked with one of my employees to translate our offerings and other signage to help my customers experience while in my office and renting with me and my team be a more pleasant one. A completely satisfied experience specifically. When the car rental burn out struck, my path like many other ERAC alums led me to sales.

Fast forward through a couple sales jobs later I loved the chase and the excitement of closing the deals, but I wanted the follow through. I wanted to bring my customers vision to light and help ensure their success. I did not just want to hand them off to another person in a different department who had not been there the whole time uncovering their pains and mapping out a success plan. That's when I knew I needed to be on the other side of the deals. Growing the customer relationship and ensuring their long term success. Having my history within retails sales, inside sales, outside sales, sales training, and sales management has led me to be the strong customer experience leader I am today. I love solving problems and building processes that help make me and my customers lives easier.

Last January 2019 I had the unfortunate news of a department lay off that included myself as the Customer Success Education and Advocacy Manager. I was heartbroken to say the least as I really enjoyed what I did and know that my programs I created brought value to the customers and throughout the organization. In my end of year planning I had some big goals I was going to be focusing on in 2019 prior to the lay off. One of the tools I was evaluating was SlapFive a Customer Voice platform to help with customer references and capturing customer feedback.

Shortly after my layoff I did my professional courtesy of reaching out to the CEO who I had been working with at SlapFive to let him know the contract would not be signed and shared I wanted to network with him for my next role. We continued to stay in touch and about a month later he mentioned a role at SlapFive he was forming which was right up my alley.

A handful of phone calls and a life changing lunch in Davis Square over pizza ( with cape cod potato chips on it!) I learned my values and my passions aligned perfectly with two of the Co Founders of SlapFive, Jeff Ernst and Tim Leonard. As I was a sales prospect first I had a fresh perspective with a forward thinking mindset and I talked about my ideas on how to bring customer voice to the forefront and use it for SlapFives very own customers with various programs. Which before then had not been done yet. Getting the opportunity to absorb some of Jeff's knowledge and experiences over the years with his buyers and buyer persona research was also a big selling point for me. This is a big differentiator with SlapFive, they only partner with forward thinkers and game changers and I know I was and am one as well! Customer voice is a new way of marketing and breaks the mold of traditional forms of marketing and I was ready to break down those molds!

Today I am the Director of Customer Experience and I manage all the customer programs, conduct weekly and daily interactions with our customer base, created a customer program the SlapFive RockStars, run customer Minute Booths at our customers user conferences, and I LOVE every second of it. Everything happens for a reason.

Being a prospect prior to an employee has helped me succeed greatly. I empathize with my customer base, I have been in their shoes, and I am in their shoes as well. It's a dynamic and cool situation. I have many plans for 2020 - and I believe it is going to be a HUGE year for us. We are coming off of our first big product release - SlapFive 2.0 which not only includes enhancements to better our customers, but it also will help me do my job more efficiently. Not too many people can say a product release at their company directly relates and impacts their day to day. We are also planning our first customer user conference, CustomerX Con 2020 this Spring where I will run a Customer User Group and get to hear my customers tell their amazing stories of how customers voice has positively impacted their role and their company.

I will leave you with a quote Jeff has put in the end of webinar slides that has stuck with me. "You can do it" I had full support from the SlapFive team and my family to take this chance and take this dive into this role and I am so glad I did. I will continue to say "You can do it!" as I forge forward in 2020 with some amazing new processes, programs, and knowledge to be consumed.

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Everything Happens for a Reason - Dana's Year End Review - Customer Marketing Platform | Capture and Unleash your Customer Voice | SlapFive

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As we say goodbye to 2019 and start a new year and a new decade, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some amazing experiences I have had. Some of you may or may not know I am relatively new in my current role at SlapFive.