“Despite the fact that sometimes we’re living in such a digital world, human relationships still truly matter.” – Allyson Stinchfield

Allyson Stinchfield is the Chief Customer Officer at Needle Space Labs, a marketing agency in Berkeley, California. Prior to that, she was the Customer Marketing Director at Splunk, an enterprise software company. We spoke about how her comms background influenced her overall approach, how to build trust with sales, and how she structured and built out her team. Ally also has an improv comedy background, so she’s hilarious to be around, and I had so much fun chatting with her.

You can connect with Allyson on LinkedIn. I highly encourage you to check out her one-woman comedy show, Death By A Thousand Papercuts, which was “inspired by both empowering and toxic time periods in technology workplaces in Silicon Valley.”

On this episode, we cover:

• Why she likens her background in PR to sales — and how it helped her when pitching to customers about advocacy opportunities
• How she used thoughtful pitches to persuade companies like Coca-Cola and Carnival Cruise Lines to become advocates
• Why she’s adamant that sales and account teams must always be kept in the loop
• How she structured her 5-person customer marketing team at Splunk — and how she might do it differently at another company
• How her improv background has helped her in the corporate world — and why she thinks every company should hold improv workshops for their employees

Ally also mentioned that her team used the tool, ReferenceEdge, for their sales reference program.

You can find the full transcript of the episode here.

Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoyed this podcast, I would be over the moon if you could share it with others, especially those in the customer marketing and advocacy space. For more interviews with advocacy leaders and tips on creating customers that will sing your praises, head on over to beatingthedrum.com.