Welcome to the Deeto Hub
A resource and community space for modern marketers, sellers, and builders using customer voice to grow — together.
A resource and community space for modern marketers, sellers, and builders using customer voice to grow — together.
This hub is built for anyone who wants to do more with the voices of their customers. Whether you're scaling advocacy, building trust with proof, or rethinking how to go to market — you're in the right place.
How-to guides and playbooks for building with customer voice
Campaign-ready templates and swipe files
Benchmark reports and reference best practices
Event recordings, expert sessions, and community spotlights
Ask questions. Share ideas. Trade wins. This is your space.
You don’t have to figure this out alone. The Deeto community connects you with other leaders using customer voice to build better GTM motions, faster-growing brands, and smarter strategies. If you are interested in joining when it launches, sign up below.
Automate advocacy management workflows
Dynamically generate customer stories and social proof
Eliminate manual reference management
Track and report advocacy impact on revenue
Discover practical guides, templates, and tools to help your team close more deals, faster.
Your customers are already telling you what works and what doesn’t. The question is: are you listening?
Buyers don’t take marketing claims at face value. They look to peers, read reviews, and rely on others’ experiences to make sense of it all.
That’s why customer feedback isn’t just a support or product function. When you integrate it into your marketing, you’re aligning your message with what real customers value, need, and say. And you’re adding a ‘proof’ factor that no other kind of messaging can replicate.
Customer feedback gives you unfiltered insight into what your audience cares about: pain points, priorities, objections, and outcomes.
While on the surface that sounds more like a product or sales issue, you have to consider the fact that the vast majority (roughly 70%) of the B2B buyer's journey happens before talking to sales. Not to mention, how effectively your product solves their pain points only matters once they’ve actually entered your funnel.
Marketing is how you get them there in the first place. If your messaging doesn’t reflect what customers actually care about, it won’t get them interested enough to keep browsing, let alone book a 30-minute demo.
B2B feedback loops used to be slow and surface-level. You’d run a quarterly survey or collect NPS scores and react after the fact. Better than nothing, but far from strategic.
Now, feedback loops are two-pronged:
You talk to customers, read reviews, analyze objections, and gather quotes. That gives you the raw material: what matters, what converts, what language resonates.
Once that marketing collateral exists, your systems take over. CMS and email platforms track what buyers click, download, and engage with, then automatically serve up more content like it. That’s the predictive layer that adapts to each buyer’s journey in real time.
But none of that automation works unless the core content hits. And it only hits if it’s grounded in real, unfiltered customer insight.
Really, customer-led growth is a natural response to the increasing number of options in nearly every purchase category (many of which are commoditized) and the simultaneous improvement in software's capacity to deliver better experiences.
The only real way to perfect a product, market it better, and sell it more effectively is to relentlessly apply the feedback of the people who are already using it successfully to all those areas, respectively. That’s how you retain your users and attract more just like them.
From a marketing perspective, your messaging, positioning, and content strategy all have to be reverse-engineered from what already-successful customers actually think, say, and care about. Not what your team assumes they care about.
Each piece of content has to be served on a case-by-case basis. Almost two-thirds of B2B buyers say they expect “fully” or “mostly” personalized content. And it has to actually feature those customers — social proof influences 9 of every 10 buyers evaluating solutions.
There are three kinds of customer feedback your marketing team is primarily looking for: direct, indirect, and passive feedback.
Direct feedback is the most explicit form of feedback. Customers tell you exactly what they think through surveys, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), interviews, and support questionnaires. It’s ideal for uncovering satisfaction levels, unmet needs, and common objections.
Indirect feedback isn’t said outright, it’s observed. Actions like drop-offs in your onboarding flow, time spent on certain product features, and recurring themes in public reviews show where your product or messaging needs work. Because of this, requires alignment with your product team.
Customers talk when you’re not in the room. Comments on forums, X (Twitter), Reddit, and even Zendesk tickets contain gold if you’re paying attention. Passive signals help you spot emerging problems or opportunities before they escalate.
Chances are, your goals are to tighten your messaging, improve conversion rates, and build more credibility across touchpoints.
The framework is simple:
You launch a short-form customer survey right after onboarding and again after 90 days. You also run quarterly customer interviews with your highest-LTV accounts.
From this, you uncover the real reasons customers chose you. You hear phrases like “simplified implementation,” “saved us from two failed pilots,” and “finally got buy-in from legal.”
Now you’ve got your raw messaging.
You check G2 reviews and content engagement analytics. Your highest-performing blog post? It aligns with what your best customers said during interviews. You also notice that demo bookings drop off after a specific page in your onboarding funnel.
You cross-reference this with product usage data and realize you’re overselling a feature that most customers don’t use until month two.
This helps you re-sequence your messaging and prioritize the actual buying triggers early on.
Your support team tags every ticket by topic. Your community manager monitors Reddit and LinkedIn threads where your product comes up. You’re seeing recurring friction around integrations not because they don’t work, but because buyers don’t understand how they work.
That’s a positioning problem, not a product one. So you update web copy, add a comparison page, and create a short explainer video. Now you're closing that loop and reducing support volume at the same time.
You use tools like Typeform for surveys, Gong for Voice of the Customer insights, and Userpilot (app) and Hotjar (web) for behavioral analytics. Your team relies on G2 data to stay on top of evolving sentiment and competitor mentions.
Then, you plug Deeto into the process.
Its integration with G2 lets you automatically pull in the most relevant quotes from happy customers. You use it to repurpose those insights into testimonial blocks, objection-handling content, and social proof snippets across your site.
Deeto also helps you distribute that social proof, embedding it into product pages, landing pages, and even sales decks and personalized microsites. At that point, you’re using feedback to improve your marketing, but you’re also using it to 10x that content’s impact and credibility.
Customer feedback shapes your marketing in two critical ways:
We’ve already covered this; talking to customers helps you understand what actually matters to them. Their words reveal the pain points, outcomes, and objections that your copy needs to address.
Great feedback isn’t just a guide. A relevant piece of social proof that mirrors your prospect’s own experience will almost always outperform copy you wrote from scratch, even if that copy was rooted in that same experience.
This is why the best B2B brands actively incorporate social proof throughout their web content rather than burying testimonials on a single “Reviews” page. They weave them into homepages, product pages, pricing pages, ads, and email nurtures.
It’s one thing to know feedback is important. It’s a whole other to consistently collect the kind that actually helps you shape strategy.
Start by embedding feedback collection into existing touchpoints.
This is where software sharpens the system.
Deeto, for example, pulls in high-quality feedback without manual scraping. Customers onboard themselves and leave it in the system. Then, it tags responses and helps you spin them into usable marketing assets like testimonial blocks, social snippets, and landing page copy.
Beyond that, there are a few more layers:
Chances are, you’re already using most of these. To get the most out of your feedback, your focus should be on integrating them so you can see the whole picture.
Collecting feedback is step one. Making it actionable is what turns it into a customer-led marketing strategy.
Start by looking for recurring language. How do customers describe your product, your value, or their frustrations? Look for:
That’s what forms the basis of your product roadmap.
Don’t let feedback pile up into a black hole. Categorize it by:
This helps you zoom in on the exact part of the buyer journey that needs work and gives you the right kind of quote or insight when you’re building content for that stage.
You don’t need a PhD in research methods. What helps:
The goal is to synthesize. When you can distill 1,000 pieces of feedback into five strategic takeaways, you start making the changes that have a huge impact on conversions.
Especially if you’re new to customer-led thinking, there’ll probably be some places you’ll mess up. Here are the most common (and costly) mistakes we see B2B marketers making in this department:
It’s tempting to build messaging around your cheerleaders, but all that does is give you a warped view of the market. The feedback that sharpens your strategy also comes from churned users, deal losses, and customers on the fence. That’s where the friction lives, and friction is what tells you where to improve.
You had a few interviews last quarter, got some great quotes, and feel good about your messaging. But customer needs evolve. Language shifts. New competitors enter. If you’re not gathering and analyzing it continuously, your strategy will slowly drift out of alignment.
Customers don’t always have the vocabulary to describe their real problem. They’ll ask for a feature when what they actually need is a clearer outcome. Your job is to read between the lines. Look at behavior. That’s where the deeper insight lives.
Yes, that glowing testimonial looks great on your website, but is it strategic? The best feedback highlights specific outcomes, objections overcome, or differentiators that actually move the needle in buyer decisions. Don’t just collect “we love it” — go after what made the difference.
If it’s stuck in a spreadsheet on marketing’s desktop, your customer knowledge and experiences won’t live up to their full potential. Feedback is more powerful when it’s shared, centralized, and used across the go-to-market team.
Deeto helps you:
Not to mention, it facilitates your entire customer engagement marketing flow: referrals, references, UGC creation, the list goes on.
At most B2Bs, customer feedback is the most underutilized growth lever. It sharpens your messaging. It fills your funnel with trust-building content. It closes the gap between what you think your buyers want and what actually drives them to act.
The main takeaway is that the best marketing teams treat feedback as an ongoing input. They build systems to collect it, tools to analyze it, and habits to apply it across product, sales, and brand.
Whether you’re refining copy or shaping strategy, your customers already have the answers. You just need to listen and build around what they tell you.
Discover how customer feedback influences marketing strategies, drives decisions, and helps build a stronger brand.
Long sales processes drain resources, slow down growth, and frustrate your team. But most sales cycles aren’t long because they have to be. They’re long because of inefficiencies at every stage: unqualified leads, unclear messaging, slow follow-ups, disconnected tools.
The good news? Every stage of the cycle can be optimized. And when you do that, deals close faster and more predictably.
In this guide, you’ll learn practical ways to tighten each stage of your sales process, from prospecting to closing.
The B2B sales cycle is the step-by-step process your business follows to turn a lead into a paying customer. It usually involves multiple stakeholders, longer timelines, and higher-value deals than B2C sales.
While the exact stages vary by company, most B2B sales cycles include:
The whole cycle can take weeks or months, depending on your product, deal size, and decision-makers involved. The goal is simple: move the right leads through each stage as efficiently as possible without sacrificing deal quality.
Despite having more tools, data, and automation than ever, B2B sales cycles are getting longer, not shorter. 58% of B2B professionals told SaaStr their sales cycles were even longer in 2024.
Why?
Longer sales cycles do present some opportunities, though. You have more time to build real trust, position your product as a strategic fit, and fine-tune your sales process to reflect how today’s buyers actually buy.
That’s exactly why I’m writing this article: to help you turn a slow, scattered sales cycle into one that’s efficient, focused, and built to close.
Shortening the B2B sales cycle requires you to attack friction at every stage. It’s not about rushing the process. It’s really more about removing bottlenecks, aligning with how your buyers make decisions, and keeping momentum from first touch to close.
Let’s break down each stage and how to optimize it.
Sellers have a hard time with prospecting because it’s time-consuming and inconsistent. They waste hours chasing the wrong leads by relying on gut instinct or outdated lists. Personalization takes too long, and outreach gets deprioritized when deals in the pipeline heat up. As a result, top-of-funnel activity stalls, as does revenue down the line.
The fix is smarter targeting. Use data enrichment tools to build accurate, up-to-date lead lists that match your ICP. Layer in firmographic filters like company size, tech stack, and recent funding to prioritize high-fit accounts.
Then, let AI do the heavy lifting.
Use AI tools to write first-touch emails, score leads based on intent signals, and predict which prospects are most likely to convert (lead scoring). The goal isn’t to automate the human out of prospecting. It’s to give your team more time to sell to the right people.
Lead qual is one of the most critical aspects to optimize because its downstream impact is significant. Without clear ICPs and buyer personas, your SDRs and AEs will end up sitting on calls and demos with people who don’t have budget, authority, or urgency (or who simply aren’t a good fit).
Your ICP = the companies that get the most value from your product. Once you’ve made certain of who that is, map out buyer personas: who they are, what problems they care about, and how they make decisions.
Then, bring in intent data.
Monitor signals like content engagement to identify leads who are actively in-market. Use that data to route hot leads to sales and deprioritize cold ones. Done right, this gives you fewer (but better) conversations, and a much faster path to pipeline.
You don’t need to choose between authenticity and efficiency. Use sales automation tools to handle the grunt work (sequencing, follow-ups, reminders) so reps can focus on personalization where it matters.
Start with a strong base template, then layer in smart personalization: industry-specific pain points, recent news about the company, or something relevant from their job role. AI can speed this up without sounding robotic.
During discovery, coach reps to move beyond checklists. Use AI tools to summarize CRM notes, highlight buyer intent, or suggest deeper questions in real time. When your outreach feels personal and your discovery calls feel valuable, deals move forward faster.
Too many reps rush through this stage or rely on generic questions. That’s a mistake. If you don’t understand why the buyer is in the market, how they plan to use your solution, or who’s actually making the call, you can’t strategize on how to move the deal forward.
Optimizing this stage of the B2B sales cycle is all about asking the right questions early. The goal here is alignment. You want to figure out:
If they’re not a fit, disqualify fast and move on.
If they are a fit, double down on the specifics. Use their answers to shape your demos, tailor your messaging, and anchor your value around what matters most to them.
If you’ve qualified your leads well and have a solid assessment of their needs, this stage should be smooth sailing. Since you’ve laid the groundwork, the effectiveness of your proposal ultimately comes down to (a) how quickly you can develop it and (b) how accurately it reflects everything you’ve been through with your prospect.
Collaborative proposal platforms let you co-build solutions with your buyer in real time. Tools like PandaDoc and Qwilr let you embed pricing tables, videos, and customer stories while also tracking views and comments.
To shorten turnaround time:
Even by this point, buyers usually aren’t fully sold (or they say they aren’t because they’re afraid of making the purchase).
We’ve all heard these before. Use a simple framework like “Feel, Felt, Found” or “Acknowledge, Ask, Advocate” to respond without being defensive. If you’ve gotten all the info you need in the steps above, use it in your response and the objections handle themselves.
To drive your response home, bring in the social proof. In B2B sales, nothing diffuses doubt like hearing from someone just like them who’s already succeeding with your product. Specifically, I’m talking about customer references here.
Deeto makes customer reference programs scalable by matching prospects with the most relevant existing customers based on industry, use case, company size, or role. Instead of vague testimonials, you get targeted, real-world validation that directly addresses their objections.
Even after you’ve gotten a “Yes,” there are things that hold deals back. In fact, legal and procurement teams have the potential to be the most bureaucratic. As a seller, you want to avoid this.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. To truly optimize your B2B sales cycle, you need to track the right metrics and segment them properly.
Here are four that matter most:
Track how many days it takes to close a deal from first touch to signed contract. Segment this by customer type (enterprise, mid-market, SMB) because they move at different speeds. A 90-day close might be great for enterprise, but terrible for a mid-market target.
Measure how many leads move from one stage to the next. Low conversion between qualified leads and proposals? Probably a messaging or fit issue. Improvements in per-stage conversions speak to sales-marketing alignment and more effective prospecting and qualification processes.
Pipeline velocity tells you how fast your deals are moving—and how much revenue you’re generating over time. The formula:
(Number of deals × Average deal size × Win rate) / Average sales cycle length
Use this to set baselines and see if your optimizations are actually speeding things up and driving growth.
How quickly are reps following up after a lead comes in? Minutes matter. As many as half of all deals go to the vendor who responds first. And a 5-minute response time increases conversions by 100x.
Bottom line: Faster responses lead to more conversations, higher conversion rates, and shorter cycles. If your lead response time is measured in hours (or days), you’re leaving revenue on the table.
Beyond the basics, there are a few things the most successful sellers do that put them above the rest. Ultimately, sales is a game that requires you to take decisive action based on what you observe on a case-by-case basis.
Talk to both customers and closed-lost prospects. You'll uncover hidden deal-killers and figure out which language actually lands. Use that to tighten your pitch and preempt objections earlier.
Stop defaulting to hour-long walkthroughs. Build short, targeted demos tied to a specific persona’s pain point. You’ll get faster buy-in and save discovery time. If a longer demo is needed, you’ll usually know.
If a lead opens your proposal three times in one day, follow up now. Don’t wait two days because your sequence says so. This is how you keep interested leads interested (and prevent them from coming up with an objection).
Figure out which redlines tend to slow things down. If you wait until the deal’s on the table to find out they need a 30-day security review, that’s on you.
A mid-market deal might seem easier to close because it’s smaller and has fewer people involved. But if there’s only one person championing it internally, it’s fragile. If that person leaves, gets cold feet, or can’t convince others, the deal dies.
An enterprise deal with three active stakeholders (e.g., someone from IT, finance, and the end user team), plus a pre-approved budget, has more internal momentum and less risk, even if it’s a bigger deal.
Build a lightweight content drip that runs in the background for deals that go cold. When they’re ready again, you won’t be forgotten. And if the messaging is right, it might bring them back into the funnel.
Your customers are your best resource when it comes to accelerating the sales cycle. Deeto helps you turn them into a scalable, on-demand growth engine.
All that translates to more qualified leads in your pipeline, shorter sales cycles, higher deal sizes, and deeper prospect/customer relationships (not to mention, a better selling experience for your reps).
Request a demo to see it in action.
Discover strategies to streamline the B2B sales cycle and reduce time spent in each stage for faster conversions.
In the rush to “AI everything,” it is tempting to focus only on whether AI can write case studies, summarize interviews, or generate testimonial copy.
At Deeto, we believe the real opportunity in AI-powered customer advocacy is not just about what gets written. It is about when, how, and why that proof gets delivered at the speed of the sales cycle and with the confidence of knowing it is trusted and compliant.
We want to share how we are thinking about the future of advocacy and why scaling customer proof means more than generating content. It is about reducing lag, removing guesswork, and unlocking the full potential of your happiest customers.
Most marketing and CS teams already have customer wins happening every day. You do not need more satisfaction surveys or “tell us your story” forms.
The problem is lag, the delay between a great customer moment happening and anyone being able to use it.
It sounds like this:
By the time that proof is ready, the buyer has moved on or the opportunity has gone cold.
This lag kills momentum. It also creates burnout because reference management and content creation become a never-ending game of chase.
Yes, AI can help draft summaries, reword testimonials, and even assemble lightweight case studies. And yes, Deeto does that.
But we are building for something bigger. Because the real power of AI in advocacy is not just generating the story. It is making sure the right story reaches the right buyer at the right time with the right controls in place.
That means using AI not as a copywriter, but as an orchestrator.
It means helping teams:
That is what moves the needle, not just volume, but precision and timing.
When this orchestration works, everything starts to click:
No digging through folders. No bottlenecks. No burnout.
Just real voices, matched and shared with purpose.
Buyers are skeptical. They are trained to ignore vendor pitches and polished PDFs. What they want is proof, real stories shared by real people who have solved the same problems they are facing.
At the same time, marketers and CS teams are under pressure. Headcount is tight. Content requests are up. Everyone is expected to do more with less.
That is why this next wave of advocacy cannot just be about scaling output. It has to be about scaling impact.
It is not about having more stories. It is about having the right proof ready before the ask is even made.
Teams using Deeto are already seeing the difference:
And most importantly, marketing and CS teams finally feel like they can stay ahead of demand instead of playing catch-up.
We believe the future of advocacy will not be defined by how quickly you can write a case study. It will be defined by how intelligently and confidently you can activate your customer’s voice.
AI should make that easier, smarter, safer, and faster.
That is the future we are building toward at Deeto, where proof is not just created. It is connected, trusted, and ready when it matters most.
If you are rethinking your advocacy strategy or just tired of the backlog, we would love to show you what this can look like. Let’s talk.
The future of advocacy is not content or even customer volume. It's connecting the right customer to every right moment.
Sales enablement sounds simple: give your sales team what they need to close more deals. It’s the implementation where most companies struggle.
You can’t just throw content into a shared drive and call it a day. You need the right tools, the right process, and alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success. If your strategy doesn’t serve the rep and the buyer, it won’t move the needle.
This article walks you through how to build a practical, effective sales enablement strategy, so your reps close deals and drive revenue across your org.
As of 2023, 90% of organizations have a dedicated sales enablement team or program, according to Highspot’s 2023 State of Sales Enablement Report. If you don’t have one yet, you’re officially behind.
But stats alone aren’t the reason to act. Sales enablement is the system that addresses the core problems holding back revenue:
QuotaPath’s recent study found 91% of companies fail to hit 80% of their quota targets. Reps spend just 28% of their week actually selling. The rest goes to admin tasks like CRM updates, coaching calls, digging through cluttered content folders.
Even if you continuously train your reps, the vast majority of what they learn is forgotten unless you reinforce it with structured, accessible playbooks and tools.
That’s what a strong sales enablement strategy gives you:
Enablement is a force multiplier across your entire GTM motion.
With a solid strategy in place, reps no longer waste time hunting for content, second-guessing messaging, or improvising their pitch. They get:
Enablement helps your reps show up smarter and close with confidence
Instead of creating decks and one-pagers that sit unused, enablement aligns marketing output to sales needs. That means content gets delivered at the right time to the right rep, and messaging stays consistent across touchpoints. It also creates feedback loops, which show you which marketing collateral is actually driving new business.
There’s no more mystery around what reps are using, saying, or sending. With the right tools in place, sales leaders can standardize winning behaviors across the team, spot coaching opportunities based on real data, and track what’s working (and fix what’s not) faster.
This means that in addition to visibility and control, they can be more hands-off. So, sales performance is a lot more scalable.
When your sales motion is consistent, consultative, and relevant, the customer experience improves. Today’s B2B sales teams are less “selling” and more “guiding prospects toward the best solution.” Enablement tools and materials facilitate that.
In return, buyers get faster deal cycles with less complicated buying processes, more conviction they’re getting the right product for their needs, and stronger, higher-trust relationships with your brand.
Before you roll out tools, templates, or training, you need a clear picture of where your sales org stands.
Phase 1 of building a sales enablement strategy is about taking inventory. You’re identifying what’s working, what’s broken, and what needs reinforcement. It also means setting clear, measurable goals so you know whether your enablement efforts are actually moving the needle.
This is where you find the gaps and opportunities in your current process. Start by mapping out your current sales landscape from top to bottom.
Start by analyzing your full sales process: prospecting, discovery, proposal, closing, and post-sale handoff. Where are the friction points? Where do deals stall or go dark? Which reps are excelling, and why?
Then, look at how your effectively your CRM, content library, training platforms, and call recording tools are being used and whether or not they’re integrated.
Also assess rep performance and knowledge. Look at onboarding ramp times, average deal size, win rates, and activity metrics. Then go deeper: do reps actually understand your buyer personas, product value props, and competitive differentiators?
Get feedback from the field here. Interview top-performing reps, frontline managers, and even customers. Ask:
With Deeto as a component in your enablement toolkit, you’ll have an up-to-the-minute window into which customer references, sales assets, and proof points are driving deals forward. It makes it easy to spot what’s resonating so you can course-correct faster.
Once you understand the gaps, it’s time to define what success looks like. That starts with alignment. That’s why you tie enablement to business outcomes.
Your sales enablement goals should directly support broader revenue targets. Ask yourself: What changes in rep behavior or sales performance would create the most significant bottom-line impact?
Of course, enablement needs focus. “Make sales better” won’t cut it. Set goals that are:
An example of a sales enablement objective that meets these criteria could be “reduce average sales cycle from 45 days to 30 days” or “increase win rate on inbound leads by 15%.”
This phase is about building the foundation: the right content, training programs, tools, and processes that enable your sales team to perform at their best. Each element needs to be intentional, aligned to your goals, and designed to scale.
Content is one of the most critical (and most overlooked) pillars of sales enablement. But it’s not about volume, it’s about utility. Your sales content should align with specific deal stages, address real buyer concerns, and be easy for reps to find and use.
Build a content strategy that includes:
Make sure every piece of content has a clear purpose and owner. Marketing creates it, sales leaders package it, and reps delivers it.
Training isn’t a one-and-done event. To drive behavior change, you need structured, ongoing programs that reinforce skills and keep reps sharp.
Create a layered training plan that includes:
Top-performing B2B sales teams tie training to sales outcomes. If it doesn’t improve activity quality or revenue metrics, iterate.
Your tech stack should make selling less complicated, not more. Believe it or not, this is where a lot of companies get stuck because their software creates process and information silos.
That’s why we always say to consolidate where you can. Look for platforms that are purpose-built for sales workflows and integrate natively with your CRM.
Once your core systems are streamlined, layer in smart tools that surface real-time insights without adding noise:
Deeto is unique in the “sales enablement” category because it surfaces both social proof content and live customer references. Whether that’s a case study, testimonial, or a peer-to-peer reference call, Deeto’s smart-matching algo handles the heavy lifting, automatically connecting the right asset or advocate to each seller based on persona and deal context.
Tools and content don’t matter if your process is broken. That’s why you design clear, consistent workflows for:
Document best practices. Standardize your sales stages. Define what “good” looks like at every step. And build systems that make it easy to follow.
In Phase 3, you move from planning to action. Here, you’re building your team, launching your programs, driving adoption, and measuring impact. The key is to start focused, roll out in phases, and reinforce your efforts with clear support systems and feedback loops.
You don’t need a 10-person department to start, but you do need ownership. Designate someone responsible for leading sales enablement. They’re the ones who’ll sit at the intersection of sales, marketing, and RevOps, with a mandate to:
Don’t try to launch everything at once. Start with a pilot. Choose one segment — a team, region, or product line — and test your new enablement assets, processes, and tools. Then refine based on feedback before scaling it org-wide.
This approach lets you work out kinks early, collect success stories, and build internal advocates before you fully roll it out.
Train managers first because they’re your frontline influencers, and they’ll end up transferring that knowledge to their teams. To increase retention, make sure that knowledge transfer happens on a recurring basis through regular enablement sessions rather than one-off training. Office hours, Slack channels, quick-reference guides also help.
To drive adoption as quickly as possible, embed your enablement strategy into all your workflows by making tools and content accessible in your CRM or selling platform.
It’s a good idea to celebrate early wins. Call out reps using new tools effectively. Highlight closed deals driven by new assets.
To prove value and guide improvements, you need to track the right metrics across three dimensions:
Consistently monitor for improvements in these areas and use that data to optimize your strategy in real time.
Once your strategy is live, the work shifts from rollout to refinement. This phase is about staying agile: analyzing what’s working, removing what’s not, and doubling down on what drives results.
If you can do those six things, you’ll be in a good spot long-term.
Plenty of sales enablement strategies fall flat because of a few avoidable missteps. If you want your efforts to actually drive results, not just check a box, steer clear of these common mistakes:
Enablement is where both teams meet in the middle. When marketing creates content without input from sales, it’s often either too product-heavy, not relevant to the buyer’s stage, or simply goes unused.
Fix this by building shared goals, regular syncs, and feedback loops into your strategy. Sales should influence content creation, and marketing should track how that content performs in live deals.
A lot of teams fall into the trap of buying flashy tools without a clear plan for usage or outcomes. More tools won’t fix poor processes, weak content, or lack of training. Remember that tech is the supporter and facilitator, not the strategy.
Always start with your objectives: What behavior are you trying to change? What outcome are you driving? Then find tools that support that, not the other way around.
Not every buyer, product, or sales motion is the same. But sales orgs tend to push generic decks and templates to every rep.
Great enablement content is segmented by:
If your reps don’t feel like the content fits their deal, they won’t use it. Customize intelligently and make it easy to access the right asset at the right time.
Maybe you launch a content hub, onboarding program, or call coaching tool… and never check whether it’s driving performance.
Track what’s getting used, what’s converting, and what’s helping reps ramp faster or close more, then act on what the data shows. Kill what’s not working. Double down on what is.
Sales enablement isn’t just about giving reps tools. Really, it’s about helping them build relationships with their prospects. And few things build trust faster than real voices from your customers.
When your sales team can bring solid customer proof into the conversation, you shift from persuasion to conviction. That’s why customer-led growth (CLG) has to be baked into your enablement strategy from day one.
When reps share relevant customer stories but real use cases tied to the buyer’s pain points, they add instant credibility to the pitch.
To make this scalable:
The key is to systematize this. Once you’ve activated your customer base, you’ll be able to:
And because these advocates speak from experience, they frequently do a better job addressing your buyers’ concerns than your pitch ever could.
The above is where Deeto becomes a game-changer. Deeto bridges the gap between customer-led growth and day-to-day sales enablement. It gives your team:
You can access it all within one centralized platform and sync it to your CRM, so reps can bring customer voices into the deal flow without lifting a finger. Then, your customers become part of your sales team, which is what top sales orgs do to dominate in the “enablement” department.
Request a demo to see it in action.
Learn how to build a sales enablement strategy that aligns teams, boosts productivity, and drives consistent revenue.
If you're in B2B sales or marketing, you've probably heard the term “sales enablement” tossed around. But what does it actually mean, and more importantly, how do you use it to drive revenue?
Done right, sales enablement bridges the gap between sales and marketing. It gives reps the right content, insights, and training at the right time, so they can guide buyers more effectively and close deals with confidence.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Let’s break it down.
Sales enablement is the process of providing your sales team with the tools, content, training, and data they need to engage prospects and close deals effectively. It ensures that reps always have access to the right information at the right time, whether that's a case study, a pricing calculator, or a quick objection-handling guide.
The goal is simple: help sellers perform at a higher level by removing friction, improving consistency, and supporting every stage of the sales cycle.
These terms get mixed up often, but they serve different purposes.
TL;DR: Enablement equips. Ops runs. Training teaches.
Each function plays a role in driving revenue, but sales enablement is the one that connects strategy to execution in the field.
Buyers now expect a self-directed, on-demand experience. They research on their own, involve at least 10 to 11 stakeholders, and generally don’t talk to sales until they’re already deep in the decision process. In fact, the average buyer is 70% of the way through the decision process by the time they engage company reps.
At the same time, AI and automation are transforming how sales teams operate. Reps are flooded with tools, dashboards, data, and content. Without clear direction, it’s noisy and impossible to personalize.
This is where sales enablement comes in.
It aligns your messaging, content, and training around the buyer journey. It uses data to show reps what to say, when to say it, and who to say it to. And it integrates with the tools your reps already use, so guidance fits naturally into their workflow.
In 2025, the teams that win are the ones who can move fast, speak with clarity, and meet buyers where they are. Sales enablement makes that possible.
Sales enablement is a system built on five critical pillars. In 2025, these areas define how effective your enablement strategy really is.
Sales enablement ensures that reps can easily find, personalize, and share the right content when it matters most, whether that’s a case study to build credibility or a comparison sheet to handle objections.
Enablement content includes:
Essentially, any type of marketing collateral or sales resource that can be used to push deals forward is sales enablement content.
Top-performing reps aren’t just hired, they’re developed, which is why eablement delivers structured onboarding, ongoing product education, sales methodology training, and real-time coaching. The best programs also leverage call recordings and AI to surface coaching moments and reinforce skills at scale.
Enablement is powered by a stack of integrated tools:
The right tech gives your team visibility into what’s working, where deals are stalling, and how reps can improve without adding friction.
Most sales orgs get “lucky” with a few great sales hires, but struggle to replicate those results across their entire department.
You have to standardize how reps qualify leads, run demos, handle objections, and follow up. When these playbooks are clear and repeatable, it reinforces the training pillar and makes every rep more consistent in how they execute.
Process optimization also makes performance measurable. You can spot bottlenecks, test new approaches, and improve workflows without starting from scratch every time.
A huge factor in a successful strategy is your ability to connect the dots between teams. Marketing creates content that reps actually use, sales docs are aligned with Marketing’s positioning, and Customer Success shares feedback that sharpens messaging.
This is what turns one-off wins into a scalable, repeatable system.
In 2023, 90% of companies had a dedicated sales enablement program. The reasonadoption is nearly unanimous now is that it’s a proven revenue driver. When implemented well, it impacts every part of the sales engine.
Companies with a strong sales enablement strategy see 49% higher win rates on forecasted deals. Why? Because reps are more prepared, more relevant, and more confident at every stage of the sales cycle.
Sales enablement cuts onboarding time by 40% to 50%. New reps ramp faster, understand the process sooner, and become productive contributors in less time. For experienced reps, it eliminates time spent searching for content or guessing what works.
When reps have the right tools, they can personalize every interaction, offering content, insights, and support tailored to the buyer’s needs. This helps qualified buyers make decisions faster and with greater confidence.
Sales enablement aligns sales, marketing, and customer success around shared goals and systems. That alignment produces cleaner data, clearer reporting, and more visibility into what’s driving (or blocking) revenue.
“Sales enablement software” is the category of tools designed to help sales teams sell more effectively. It’s not usually one single platform. Instead, it’s a combination of systems that support content delivery, training, coaching, engagement tracking, and sales process guidance.
Some companies use an all-in-one sales enablement platform. Others build a stack using specialized tools: one for content, another for training, another for deal insights or call coaching, and so on.
Whether you’re using a single platform or a collection of tools, your sales enablement software should cover these capabilities:
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to sales enablement software. Some platforms are built for large, complex sales orgs. Others are leaner, AI-native tools built for speed, automation, and real-time insights.
Here’s a breakdown of two key categories: enterprise-level and AI-native options.
Enterprise sales enablement platforms are built for scale. They offer robust content management, onboarding systems, analytics, and deep integrations with CRMs and marketing tools.
A few examples:
These tools are better for large or fast-scaling B2B orgs that need enterprise-grade control, customization, and global enablement infrastructure.
AI-driven sales enablement tools are built with automation and intelligence at the core. They help teams work faster, get smarter insights, and personalize at scale. They’re less of all-in-one solutions, but solve one or two major challenges of sales enablement exceptionally well.
A few examples of AI-powered platforms for sales enablement:
These kinds of tools are best for GTM teams that want real-time data, intelligent automation, and workflow acceleration without the bloat.
Deeto brings a powerful and often overlooked layer to sales enablement: customer-led enablement.
Instead of relying solely on internal messaging or rep-driven content, Deeto helps you activate your happiest customers to do the talking through peer stories, user-generated content (UGC), and automated reference calls.
This creates a level of trust that no pitch deck or demo alone can replicate.
Deeto makes it easy to capture and distribute authentic stories from your best customers. That includes testimonials, case studies, review snippets (via G2 integration), and more. Reps can instantly pull relevant peer proof into their outreach, follow-ups, or deal cycles—without waiting for marketing to build it.
Modern buyers are skeptical. They want to hear from people like them before making a decision. Deeto puts real user voices into your sales process at scale. Whether it’s matching a prospect with a reference or sending a video from a similar customer, you create instant credibility and shorten the path to “yes.”
Deeto doesn’t just support sales; it connects the dots across your go-to-market teams.
That’s why Deeto is quickly becoming a go-to tool in modern enablement stacks: it turns customer voice into a strategic asset across your entire revenue team.
To know if your sales enablement efforts are working, you need to measure it. Most sales enablement software has more metrics than you actually need, though. The following five KPIs are the most important ones if you want to connect enablement activities to real revenue impact.
Track which assets reps are using, how often, and at what stage. This shows what content actually supports deals and what you need to improve or cut out from your sales process and replace it with to make selling more effective.
In the early stages of implementation, it also shows you how many of your reps have adopted the software. If you see low content usage across the board, it probably means there aren’t enough people using it consistently. If that’s the case, look into why.
Don’t only look at your overall win rate. Break it down by stage to see where deals stall or drop off. This info helps you fine-tune your messaging, content, and coaching at critical points throughout the funnel.
A shorter sales cycle usually means better enablement. If reps have the right tools and buyers feel confident, decisions happen faster.
For instance, Deeto accelerates sales cycles by giving buyers instant access to peer validation. Instead of waiting weeks for a reference call, prospects hear from real users early, which eliminates doubts and speeds up the path to Closed Won.
If you’re using it properly (and using it enough), you should see a reduction in sales cycle time. If your software isn’t netting you that, it’s either an issue with team-wide adoption, the sales workflow itself, or the content you’re presenting to buyers.
Measure how long it takes new reps to become productive, on average. A strong enablement program and platform should cut this down significantly through structured onboarding and access to proven playbooks.
Track how buyers interact with shared content, emails, and calls. Tools like Deeto, Gong, and Salesloft can surface which reps are creating real interest and which touchpoints drive responses.
Whether you're building your program from scratch or leveling up an existing one, choosing the right tools and partners makes all the difference. A platform like Deeto plays a pivotal role where trust, validation, and customer voice are what set your deals apart.
But the real power comes from tying it all together: content, training, technology, process, and cross-team alignment. That’s what modern sales enablement is all about.
Discover what sales enablement is, why it matters in 2025, and how to build a strategy that empowers your sales team.
During my decade at Highspot, I had the rare opportunity to help build something big from the ground up. We scaled with intention, indexed on quality, and always put the customer at the center. We were customer-obsessed. It was at the core of everything we did. But ironically, that passion created complexity – every team trying to do the right thing for our customers, often in different ways, through different systems, with different goals.
That fragmentation, despite the best intentions, created friction. And it raised a hard question I kept coming back to: How do we create a unified experience for our customers when every team sees and engages with them differently?
I didn’t initially see this as the start of a new chapter. I saw it as a problem to solve – a challenge I was eager to take on. I wanted a system that could listen to signals across the customer journey, surface what matters most, and help teams – from marketing to product to account teams – act in harmony. To hear the full voice of the customer and act on it with clarity and precision. That’s what ultimately led me to Deeto – it almost felt like destiny.
The challenge I was trying to solve wasn’t unique to Highspot. Nearly every growth-stage company hits this point: your teams grow fast, your systems get specialized, and your customers suddenly feel like they’re talking to five different versions of the same company.
I didn’t want to lose the magic of being customer-led. I wanted to operationalize it. To build something that could connect the dots across the company – and actually reduce the burden on customers while improving the experience.
So when I came across Deeto, it hit different. This wasn’t just another tool. It was an AI-native way to make that vision real.
Deeto is an AI-native platform, purpose-built to solve the exact challenge I’ve been trying to crack for years. It doesn’t just collect feedback or highlight engagement metrics – it actively listens across every customer touchpoint, analyzes those signals, and deploys intelligent agents to activate the right actions, at the right moment, across your business.
That means it can help demand gen teams surface proof points that move pipeline. It can help product marketers ensure real product-market resonance. It can help CS teams catch and respond to churn signals early. And it gives every team – not just marketing – a direct line to the customer, powered by that customer’s actual experience, not guesswork.
That’s what drew me in. Not just the innovation, but the opportunity to help shape the future of what it means to be truly customer-led.
There’s something electric about this stage of a company. The foundation is solid, but the blueprint is still in your hands. You get to shape the culture, define the narrative, and build the systems that scale.
Deeto has something truly special – a visionary product, a tenacious team, and a shared belief that customers should truly guide strategy. And, we’re just getting started.
As CMO, I’m here to help build the next era of this category: one where customer voice isn’t a one-off quote, case study, or yet another survey response – it’s a system that powers go-to-market, informs product decisions, and unlocks growth at every stage.
That means building marketing from the ground up with an eye toward influence, not just awareness. It means operationalizing customer insights across campaigns, content, messaging, and roadmap planning. And it means championing the professionals – from marketers to enablement to product leaders – who’ve long understood that our most powerful growth lever is the customer.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely trying to solve a similar challenge. How do we better serve our customers? How do we use AI responsibly to scale empathy, not just efficiency? How do we turn customer input into actual business advantage?
My answer is this: stop treating customer insights like isolated artifacts. Start treating them like a living ecosystem. Build the systems and processes that allow your teams to hear, understand, and act – consistently and cross-functionally.
And if you’re a marketing, product, or CX leader who’s on this journey, I’d love to compare notes. That’s how we all get better.
If you’ve followed my work, you know I believe in the power of community. So this isn’t just a role change – it’s an open invitation.
If you’re a customer-led leader who’s trying to amplify the voice of your customers, simplify the chaos of siloed systems, or build a better experience across the customer lifecycle: let’s talk.
I’m here to share, learn, and build – with you.
Let’s make customer-led growth more than a mantra. Let’s make it a movement. Let’s build something that makes our customers proud.
Joining as Deeto’s New CMO: Turning customer insight into action isn’t just a goal—it’s the future of GTM.
In fact, 74% of buyers do more than half their research online before they ever speak with a rep (Forrester). They want real proof, from real customers — delivered in a way that feels helpful, not salesy.
That’s why we built Deeto Microsites to begin with. When we first launched Personal Microsites, we reimagined how sales teams build trust in competitive deals. By giving prospects curated access to customer testimonials and references in a sleek, easy-to-navigate microsite, we helped reps deliver trust at scale—at just the right moment.
But great products evolve. And today, we’re excited to introduce the next evolution of Deeto Microsites.
The new Deeto Microsites deliver a completely redesigned experience — one that helps reps stand out, and helps prospects feel supported.
This isn’t just another web page. It’s a dynamic deal companion — personalized, interactive, and always timely.
Here’s what’s new:
Whether your buyer is early-stage or ready to sign, your microsite adapts to meet them where they are.
Every prospect is different—and now, your microsite can be too. In our latest edition of Deeto Microsites, calls-to-action adapt to where the buyer is in the sales funnel:
Your buyers never feel like they’re being sold to—they feel like they’re being supported.
While customer stories are still front and center, Microsites now support external attachments too. That means you can include:
Now your reps don’t have to manage a dozen different threads and decks—everything lives in one place, tailored to each buyer, and always up to date.
Here's what your prospects will see:
Everything behind the scenes still runs on Deeto’s automation engine:
If you’re already using Deeto, upgrading to the new Microsites is simple—no workflow changes, just a better buyer experience.
And if you’re new to Deeto, now is the time to give your prospects what they actually want: social proof, relevant content, and a seamless path to value—delivered in one beautiful, always-on microsite.
Want to see Microsites in action?
Book a demo or reach out to your Deeto Customer Success Manager to activate the new experience today.
Let your references work smarter. Let your content close faster. Let your microsite move with your buyer.
Today’s B2B buyer doesn’t wait for your sales call to start evaluating.
A strong customer reference program is the secret weapon behind faster sales cycles, higher win rates, and stronger brand credibility. When prospects hear real success stories from people like them, it builds trust that no ad campaign ever could.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a customer reference program that’s strategic, scalable, and actually gets used by your sales and marketing teams.
A customer reference program is a structured way to showcase happy customers who are willing to vouch for your product or service. These “referenceable” customers join reference calls or take emails from potential buyers in the same industry, role, or use case.
The goal is simple: leverage real customer success stories to influence future buyers.
Think of it as social proof on steroids. Instead of relying only on stats or feature lists, you let your most satisfied users do the talking, face-to-face with your prospects.
Customer advocacy, testimonials, and references all fall under the umbrella of social proof, but they serve very different purposes.
They’re written quotes, video snippets, or logos used in marketing. They’re great for credibility on your website or in decks, but they’re one-way communication. The customer isn’t actively involved after the content is created.
They may write reviews, engage in communities, refer new prospects, or join your customer advisory board. They’re supportive, but not necessarily hands-on in your sales process. Your reference program is just one aspect of your broader customer advocacy program.
These are customers who agree to speak directly with your prospects, usually 1:1. They share their experience on sales calls with prospects similar to them. It’s personal. It’s contextual. And it can be the tipping point that pushes a deal across the line.
A well-run reference program creates a flywheel. Sales reps close more new business, marketing gets better stories, customers feel heard, and your product improves faster. It’s a strategic growth lever across multiple teams.
Prospects trust your customers more than your sales deck. A reference call with someone who’s been in their shoes can move a deal from stalled to signed. It builds confidence, reduces perceived risk, and speeds up decision-making.
Testimonials are good. But real-time customer validation? That’s powerful. Reference programs give your marketing team access to real voices, not just polished quotes. This adds weight to campaigns, case studies, and events.
When you invite customers to share their success, they feel valued. Being a reference reinforces their positive experience and turns satisfied users into long-term advocates. It’s a subtle, effective retention tool.
Putting your best customers front and center builds community. References show that your company isn’t just about features or price. It’s about real results, delivered consistently.
Referenceable customers are, in many cases, your most engaged users. Tapping into their feedback gives your product team direct insight into what works, what doesn’t, and what to build next.
Before you recruit your first reference customer, you need a solid plan. A customer reference program is a cross-functional engine that supports your entire go-to-market strategy. This is where you set the tone. Without prep, you’ll scramble to find references on a deal-by-deal basis.
What are you trying to achieve with a reference program? Is your goal to support enterprise sales? Increase conversion rates on late-stage deals? Bring a new product to market by highlighting a few power users?
Set clear, measurable KPIs like:
Your program should tie directly to what matters most to the business. Whether that’s driving more revenue, shortening sales cycles, or increasing customer retention, make sure your reference program maps to key company priorities.
Not every happy customer makes a great reference. You want people who have seen measurable success with your product, reflect your target industries, roles, and use cases, and are invested in your partnership and willing to engage. They should also be articulate and confident speaking with others.
Create a framework to qualify potential references. Ask:
Map out your different buyer personas and what their decision-making processes look like. Find references that match not only the type of company you’re after, but also the specific buying group members involved in the final decision.
Your program lives across teams. Sales, marketing, product, and customer success all play a role.
Get buy-in early. Set expectations. And make it easy for everyone to contribute.
Not all customers are reference-ready (or even want to participate to begin with). That’s okay. The key is knowing who to tap, when to ask, and how to match them to the right prospects. Then, you’ll be able to zero in on the best-fit advocates for your program.
When you’re building a reference pool, remember that reference customers share a few common traits:
Once you have that info, the easiest place to start is with Net Promoter Score (NPS) data. This is how you identify your promoters — those who rate you 9 or 10 out of 10. Combine that with product usage metrics, CSAT, and customer health scores to narrow in on your most engaged, satisfied users.
Look for the sweet spot: high satisfaction + strong results + strategic value.
Since you probably have multiple different types of customers, segment your reference pool based on their own use cases, roles, and industries (this is something you can do with Deeto). That way, when they’re connected with prospects, the conversation feels completely relevant to the prospect’s exact buying needs.
Even your happiest customers won’t volunteer to be a reference unless you ask (and ask the right way). How and when you approach them makes all the difference.
The best time to ask is when the customer is feeling the most successful. This typically happens right after a major win or milestone. It can also happen following a successful onboarding or implementation, glowing feedback, or a renewal, upsell, or expansion.
Point is, you want to strike while the momentum is high. That’s when enthusiasm turns into immediate action.
Now… getting that “yes” is equal parts strategic. Frame the ask as recognition, not a request for free labor. Let them know you see them as a leader or role model for others in their industry.
Example: "You’ve achieved INCREDIBLE results with Deeto, and we’d love to spotlight your success. Would you be open to connecting with other leaders who are exploring similar solutions?"
People are more likely to say yes when they feel valued and empowered.
Now that you've identified and recruited reference customers, it's finally time to build the system that keeps everything running smoothly. Structure is what turns a few helpful users into a strategic, scalable asset for your business.
Not every customer wants (or needs) to be on calls. Offering a range of participation options allows you to tap into different comfort levels and strengths.
Broadly speaking, there are six types of reference contributions:
Give customers the ability to set their own preferences within your customer advocacy platform so they only take on what they’re comfortable with.
The magic happens when you match the right reference with the right prospect. Here’s what to align on:
A dedicated platform will give you the ability to add searchable, structured data points like these. That’ll let you filter and match at scale. Or, in Deeto’s case, our smart-matching AI does it for you automatically.
Managing references manually in spreadsheets or Slack threads breaks fast. You need a system designed for speed, scale, and control.
This is where Deeto shines. It’s an end-to-end customer reference and advocacy platform built for modern B2B teams.
With Deeto, you can:
Unlike generic CRMs and static spreadsheets, it’s purpose-built for advocacy. That means you’ll be able to operationalize your program at every step, and nobody from your CS team will be sending out invites individually.
If you want your reference program to thrive, you can’t treat it like a one-way street. The highest-ROI programs we’ve seen from our own users are built on a foundation of reinforcement. That means rewarding participation and recognizing your advocates in ways that feel meaningful to them.
It’s also worth mentioning that the companies getting the most out of Deeto aren’t just checking a box. They’ve made customer advocacy part of their culture.
They reinforce it with internal playbooks on how to appreciate advocates (using the things they’ve mapped in the steps above) and assigning dedicated team members to focus on advocate engagement. And they use Deeto’s analytics platform to report on which advocates are making the biggest impact.
The next challenge is scale. Manually managing every request, match, and follow-up might work in the early days, but it breaks fast as your team grows and deal volume increases.
The first step here is knowing when to scale. You’ll feel the signs:
You can avoid many of these things altogether by setting up the right tech stack from the outset. Automation just means making the manual parts frictionless. You can
At that point, you’ve gone from reactive to proactive and your team can fulfill requests instantly.
You need to know what’s working, what’s not, and how your efforts are influencing revenue, customer satisfaction, and team efficiency. This will all be available within your dedicated customer reference platform.
Here are the most important metrics to monitor:
You should also monitor content outcomes like traffic, engagement, and influenced pipeline. Chances are, you’re using UGC to drive deal closure and using social proof to drive web conversions.
Numbers only tell part of the story, though. You also need qualitative feedback from both the people requesting references and the advocates themselves.
Ask sales reps:
Ask advocates:
This feedback helps you refine your program, improve the experience for everyone involved, and show leadership that your program is not just a feel-good initiative.
Even the best-intentioned reference programs fall flat if you overlook a few key pitfalls. The most common mistakes we see at Deeto are asking too soon or too often, ignoring approval processes, failing to offer value in return, and not training sellers on how to properly use references.
Timing matters. If you ask a customer to serve as a reference before they’ve seen meaningful results, it feels rushed and risks damaging trust. On the flip side, leaning too heavily on a small group of advocates leads to burnout and disengagement.
Fix: Wait until customers hit a clear success milestone before making the ask. Then, rotate your references to avoid overuse and keep the experience fresh for everyone.
Especially in enterprise sales, public references often require internal signoff from legal, PR, or leadership. If you skip this step, you risk headaches down the line or getting pulled from published materials.
Fix: Build approval workflows into your reference program. Track what's been signed off for what type of use (calls, emails, public case studies) and always get written confirmation.
If your reference program feels like a one-way street, your advocates will eventually stop showing up. Customers need a reason to stay engaged beyond being “nice.”
Fix: Offer tangible value, whether it’s exclusive access, visibility, perks, or simply recognition. Show them that their time and input matter.
You can have the best customer reference program in the world, but if your sales team doesn’t know how to use it, it won’t move the needle.
Fix: Train your reps on when to request a reference, how to frame it with prospects, and how to follow up afterward. Give them tools (like Deeto) to request and match references automatically, so there’s less room for error.
Building a customer reference program from scratch is one thing. Running it at scale across teams, markets, and hundreds of deals is a whole other. That’s why you need Deeto.
With Deeto, you can:
Whether you're just starting out or scaling a mature program, Deeto gives you the structure, automation, and visibility to make your customer reference program a true growth engine.
Want to see how it works? Request a demo to see it in action.
Learn how to build a powerful customer reference program that boosts trust, drives sales, and scales customer activation
Customer feedback isn’t just a support ticket or a survey score. What it really is is a direct line to what your market actually wants.
Get it right, and you can use it to improve your product, optimize your messaging, boost every type of conversion, and even shorten your sales cycle.
The key? Knowing which types of feedback to pay attention to and how to turn those insights into action.
Customer feedback is any insight a user shares about their experience with your product, service, or brand. It comes in several different forms, from direct complaints and survey scores to offhand comments in support tickets or social media posts. It’s raw, unfiltered data from the people who use your product or service daily.
Every piece of customer feedback is a window into how your customers think, what they need, and where you’re falling short. It validates what you’re doing right and surfaces gaps you didn’t know existed. That’s why it’s so important.
It’s also one of the fastest ways to grow organically. When you listen closely, you can:
The real benefit of feedback isn’t in having a pile of survey results, it’s in making meaningful changes based on what customers say. Whether that’s fixing a broken feature, simplifying a confusing process, or reshaping your support team’s tone, action is what builds trust.
That means:
When you do this, it gives you a competitive edge. Customers stick around and tell others about you when they see their input leads to change. That’s something no competitor can take from you.
Most companies treat feedback like a bug tracker. Useful, but reactive. The smarter play is to use it to shape strategy, not just patch holes. When you put 2 and 2 together by looking at patterns across channels, customer feedback enables you to make smarter bets on where to build, how to serve, and what story to tell.
Your roadmap shouldn’t come only from your internal wishlist. Feedback helps you build what the market is already asking for.
But don’t chase every request. Instead:
The key here, though, is to treat feedback as a starting point. Customers surface problems but they don’t always know the best solution, which is why the biggest mistake you can make is assuming it means “build this exact feature.”
That’s why you need to ask “What’s behind this request?” If a user says, “We need a dashboard,” what are they trying to track? What’s hard to see right now? Is this about visibility, control, or speed?
When customers complain about slow responses or confusing workflows, those are points of friction that quietly kill your retention. Support-related feedback gives you a peek into how users actually experience your business in the wild.
It shows you:
Feedback can help you improve the support experience itself as well. Send a quick survey after every resolved ticket asking about tone, speed, and helpfulness. Look for patterns across agents, times of day, or issue types. You’ll spot weak links fast, and you’ll know what “great” actually looks like from the customer’s point of view.
Brand is perception, and for those who are already your customers, perception is shaped by experience. Feedback highlights the gap between what you intend to communicate and what actually lands.
It shows you:
Instead of guessing what your brand stands for, use feedback to map reality back to your strategy. If customers consistently describe you in a way that doesn’t match your positioning, adjust. Either the experience is off or the messaging is.
In this way, customer feedback is a branding calibration tool. It tells you where to amplify, where to clean up, and where to focus on engaging your audience.
But it doesn’t stop there. Your customers are your marketing. When they leave a glowing review, post a screenshot on LinkedIn, or tell someone else about your product, that’s branding in motion. Customer feedback helps you identify your champions and gives you the raw material to turn them into case studies, testimonials, and UGC.
To get insights you can actually use, you need to meet your customers where they are, time it right, and make it easy to be honest.
Use in-app surveys for real-time product feedback, post-support surveys for service insights, and email or CRM-based check-ins for deeper qualitative input. Social listening and review sites can also surface unfiltered opinions.
The best times to ask are after key moments like after onboarding, support resolution, and major product updates. That’s when it’s clearest in the customer’s head and therefore most actionable for your team.
Collecting feedback is only half the battle. To turn it into action, you need systems that help you organize, analyze, and scale what you’re hearing.
Deeto.AI is built for customer-led growth; it helps you centralize all your feedback in one place. And with our new Imported Contributions feature, it pulls in feedback from external sources like G2, survey tools, and support chats, so you never miss a valuable insight just because it lives outside your forms.
To make sense of what you're collecting, you need structure:
Once feedback is sorted, you can actually analyze it. Quantitative feedback like NPS, CSAT, and frequency of specific complaints is the easiest place to start. Take that insight and identify trends and patterns over time. What’s rising? What’s resolved? What’s linked to churn or conversions?
Then, visualize it. Dashboards and heatmaps make it easier to spot priorities at a glance and communicate them across teams.
The most successful companies treat feedback like a roadmap instead of a report card. It guides everything from product improvements and feature development to UX/UI changes, customer support process enhancements, pricing or policy adjustments, and even internal training and enablement updates.
If users consistently ask for better customization and more metrics, that might mean building configurable dashboards.
If users keep missing a key button or drop off mid-flow, that’s not user error. Small tweaks like changing button placement or adding in-app guidance can reduce friction and cut support tickets.
If people say they can’t stand repeating themselves across channels, consider integrating your helpdesk with your CRM so agents have context from the start. Or if “slow response times” are trending, set up auto-triage or expand your support hours.
If feedback shows your free trial is too short for users to see value, consider extending it or adding onboarding support during the trial window. On the flip side, if people are confused by your pricing tiers, it’s probably time to simplify your plans or improve the way they’re presented.
If feedback reveals inconsistent experiences across sales reps or support agents, that’s a signal to tighten internal playbooks or run targeted training. Even feedback about tone or attitude can be turned into roleplay exercises or coaching opportunities.
You might not realize it, but your customers play a foundational rule in several types of marketing collateral. Case studies are the obvious ones, but you can drive web conversions with all sorts of social proof content. Stats and testimonials on your commercial pages. User stories to reinforce your articles. The list goes on and on.
Deeto makes it easy to collect, organize, and activate customer feedback at scale. And our new Imported Contributions feature lets you bring in external reviews, surveys, social mentions, and success stories from any source, then turn them into usable social proof assets inside your sales and marketing motions.
Loyalty comes from feeling seen. When users take the time to give you feedback — good or bad — they’re opening the door for you to build that emotional connection. The nuance most businesses miss is that it’s not necessarily about fixing everything instantly, but rather about making customers feel like they’re part of the journey.
If you want to turn feedback into loyalty, start here:
Don’t wait for a feature launch to acknowledge the feedback they’ve left. Even a short, personal reply like “Thanks, this is on our radar and we’re working on it” builds trust. Use automated flows (email, in-app messages, chatbots) to close the loop at scale without sounding robotic.
Most companies are so focused on acquiring users, they forget to make their current ones feel like insiders.
Spot a user who left a thoughtful comment or uncovered a bug? Shout them out in release notes. Give them early access. Send a thank-you. It doesn’t have to cost anything. Just show them they matter.
If someone leaves positive feedback after onboarding, trigger a loyalty sequence: invite them to your referral program or ask them to share their story. If someone flags a frustrating issue, route them into a proactive check-in workflow. Maybe even offer white-glove support.
This is where AI helps. With tools like Deeto or CRM-connected triggers, you can scale this without hiring a team of 50.
The customers who love your product the most are already your best marketing channel. You just need to give them the tools and structure to step up.
Start by identifying your promoters. Use NPS or other sentiment signals to find your superfans. The moment someone gives you a 9 or 10, there’s your cue. From there, invite them to join your customer advocacy program.
With Deeto, that’s easy. Customers self-onboard through a simple guided flow and set their preferences, whether they want to leave a written testimonial, hop on the occasional reference call, or just provide feedback for internal use. It’s advocacy on their terms, which means you get higher participation and better content.
Once you’ve built that pool of advocates, repurpose that feedback into different kinds of content across all your marketing channels:
When future buyers see people like them getting real results, trust goes up and friction goes down, so your goal is to get as much credible content as possible.
If you don’t execute the above correctly, though, you’ll increase churn, misalignment, and wasted spend. Not to mention, you’ll waste your customers’ time.
Here are the landmines to avoid if you want to build a feedback engine that actually drives results:
Not every comment deserves a roadmap slot. Prioritize input from power users, high-value accounts, and repeat themes across a significant portion of your ICP. If you chase every one-off suggestion, you’ll end up with a Frankenstein product that serves no one well. That’s the opposite of product-market fit.
One person says “your onboarding is terrible,” and you immediately redesign the whole flow. That’s a panic move. Always validate feedback patterns before allocating resources. Look for data to back it up, like conversion drop-offs, activation gaps, and ticket spikes.
Timing matters. Ask too early and people don’t have enough context. Ask too late and they might’ve lost interest. The sweet spot is right after a clear outcome: completed onboarding, resolved support issue, or new feature used.
If your product team has no idea what sales or support is hearing and vice versa, they won’t actually know how to act on the data they’re getting. Integrate feedback loops across your CRM, helpdesk, product analytics, and marketing ops.
Yes, AI and workflows help you scale. But if every response feels templated, you’re killing the relationship before it has a chance to deepen. Nowadays, most people can spot AI-generated responses from a mile away.
You can automate while still being authentic if you use it primarily for basic tasks like instant-response triggers, content segmentation and distribution, and feedback analysis. But don’t inject it into the complex sales and CS processes that necessitate the 1:1 interaction.
This one’s a silent killer. If customers give thoughtful input and hear nothing back? You’ve lost trust—and probably future feedback too. Always follow up, even if it’s just to say “we heard you, and here’s what we’re doing.”
Deeto is a cut above the rest because it takes an advocate-first approach. It’s built for companies that don’t just want to collect feedback, but want to turn their best customers into growth engines.
With Deeto, you can:
It’s one of the only end-to-end customer marketing and advocacy platforms designed to help you unlock the full power of your user base.
Want to see it in action? Request a demo to see how it works.
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