Stakeholder Interviews to Build An Internal Roadmap of Collaboration

Nov 25 / Mary Green
When joining a new company or team, you should engage in a listening tour or go through a round of stakeholder interviews. 

Executive Listening Tour

A listening tour is what Andrew Sevillia uses as a  strategic approach to meet the executive team and to gain insights into the company's structure and priorities when joining a new team, to set the foundation for a successful advocacy program.

Here are some of the questions Andrew asks during the listening tour:
  1. What are the needs of various teams within the company?
  2. What are the priorities of different executives?
  3. How can customer advocacy support attracting new prospects?
  4. How can customer advocacy help accelerate sales cycles?
  5. What role can customer advocacy play in expanding within existing accounts?
  6. How can customer advocacy contribute to retaining existing customers?
  7. What challenges are different teams facing?
  8. How can customer advocacy initiatives support the goals of various departments?
  9. What metrics are important to executives (e.g., Net Promoter Score, customer retention rates)?
  10. What quick wins can be achieved to demonstrate the value of customer advocacy?

Stakeholder Interviews

Similarly, I (Mary Green) have done these, but I call them Stakeholder Interviews. When I join a company as an employee or Customer Marketing contractor, I ask about the teams I'll collaborate with. 

Generally, for Customer Advocacy and Community, I know I'll work with the following teams: 
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Customer Success


Most of the time, I'll also work with: 
  • Product
  • Sales Enablement
  • Education
  • Events


By combining my stakeholder interviews with Andrew's executive listening tour you'll have a great foundation for working with new teams and leadership.

When I start, I'll talk to each team and ask the following questions: 
  • Have you worked with Customer Marketing/Advocacy or Community before? What was it like?
  • How can these initiatives help the customers and the company? How can they help your team?
  • What goals are you working on now?
  • If I'm able to help you reach goals, could we possibly collaborate to bring even more value to the customers, our teams, and the company?


My goal with the first question is to learn what they already believe about the work I'm going to do and to uncover any negativity around collaborating. 

The second set of questions is about helping them realize this work can help the entire company and our customers, and then to show that I want to help their team as well. 

I ask what they are working on now to compare that to my goals later on and see if there is a way I can contribute to their work. 

Finally, I want to know if they are interested in working together. I mention helping them so that they understand I'm looking out for them as well, this isn't about me taking from them. 

Building My Internal Roadmap

Once I've completed my interviews, I start to envision my roadmap for working with each team. Generally, I'll begin by working with the CS and Sales teams, but as I need to reach new goals and I will incorporate others over the next 3-12 months.

The following is an example of my roadmap, you can access this as a logged in member, in PDF format on your dashboard. 
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