The Journey to Advocacy

There is a lot of debate, not just on Social Networks including Ecademy, but also in many of the Business Networks, BNI, BRX, NRG, 4 Networking and so on, about the relative mix of quantity or quality, and how to go about building advocates, and having an active advocate group who promote you and sing your praises at every opportunity.

I'm often asked about how I've built the advocates that I have and I've given this a lot of thought. The journey to advocacy, is not complicated but it is something that cannot be short-circuited. After all, an advocate is someone who provides a continuous stream of referrals for you and your business, and that doesn't happen overnight. Giving referrals is something I discussed in this article... One aspect of that article that is important in this context is this passage...

When you make a referral you refer more than the business because the donor is referring the recipients skills and experience, but he is referring the donor's reputation. The subject of the referral will hold the donor responsible for the outcome of the referral as much as the recipient. Personally, I won't refer people to my contacts beyond the level of my current reputation with that contact. Sometimes, I've held back on a referral, not because I have doubts about the recipient himself, but because of my experience of others in the same company, my reputation with my contacts is too important to risk with those who do not show equal or better regard for reputational matters.

Understanding how to move through the journey to advocacy should make it easier to advocate, and be advocated. I describe the journey to advocacy as being all about 4 'A''s and a TIP. 

The Journey to Advocacy

Quantity Awareness     Visibility Approach              Interest Talk   about you to others   Acknowledge      Understand Introduce   you to others (when asked) Quality Advocate        Trust Promote   you pro-actively

Awareness

Nothing can happen until people are aware of you.

Only by building awareness can we hope that others will get to know us and start the journey to advocacy. Most won't stay with us for the whole journey, but none of the people who don't start will be there at the end! Building awareness is about being visible, for the right things when others are around to see your contribution. Here on Ecademy that might arise through a Blog posting, public club thread or Marketplace listing, all of which get visibility in the internet as a whole through the search engines.

Getting the SEO keywords right are important in terms of being found and getting the right SEO description important in terms of being clicked through when you are found. In private clubs we build awareness with a much smaller group, but we'll develop the awareness faster there, so it's not to be ignored. Far from it in fact, forget this step of the journey and, as I've said, nothing much else happens.

This is about quantity, whether people link up with you or not, this is about broadcast, big potential audience with a transitory attention span. Be good, be noticeable, or be missed. Some, though, choose to be noticeable for any reason, you still have to be consistent, people will judge you in the first impression you leave. Visibility brings a responsibility for consistency, and taking responsibility for the actions that you take. Joining the Ecademy Life Members community - BlackStar - puts awareness on to you, awareness that you are a committed member of this community means that others can be confident that you are here for the long term, and that's useful for the next phase.

Approach

Once people start to become aware all your existence, both as an individual, and your business then they will start to approach you, to find out more about you.  You'll recognise the success of building awareness from the fact that individuals, whom you have never heard of, contact you out of the blue via private message on Ecademy or, through e-mail, phone calls, and connections at networking events. What's happening here is that other people are beginning to talk about you.

They are not yet introducing you to others for business, they are not promoting you, but there are mentioning you, your business, your products, and your services at (some of) the appropriate points in (some of) the conversations that they are having. Fewer people are doing this that are aware of you, and this is the first filter in the journey becoming advocates. As people become aware of you, and approach you, their intention is to learn more about you, and your business. It's a great time to have a one to one. In my experience around 10% of my network as a whole approach me, keen to learn more.

As a BlackStar other BlackStars know that you are committed, and that means that it's more likely to be profitable to invest time in approaching you.

There's certainty that you will be here for the long term and so the rate of approach and the depth of desire for learning is higher inside that group than outside. The difference is evidenced by the fact that of the BlackStars many more than 10% - perhaps 50% approach me to learn about my business.

Acknowledge

Through the one-to-one meetings, the continued discussions via e-mail, telephone and more general meetings, and discussions that others have with their network about you, they'll learn progressively more about you and your business. As they learn they will start to understand the way that you work, the people you work with, the needs that you meet, your target market and the associates that you work with.

As people really understand your business they will start to acknowledge it, in their conversations with others. You won't simply be mentioned, or talked about, but you will be introduced where those who have reached this stage believe you could provide help or add value. However, people won't yet be doing this proactively, and your name will only come up where you are the most obvious person for a particular need that has been expressed.

Clearly those who take the time and effort to learn about your business, and to acknowledge it for what it does, only only a subset all those people who  approach you in the first place. however, one thing that I have learned in the last few years is that I'm lousy at predicting who chooses to acknowledge me (or my business) from the people who have become aware of it/me and approached me. Talking to others I'm fairly sure that it is so difficult to be highly skilled at selecting the "right" people that, I think, a safe assumption is that it's impossible. Between 25% and 50% of the people who approach me, acknowledge the business for what it does.

Within BlackStar, again, this proportion is much higher. As a group there tends to be much more acknowledgment of each other. It's a factor of greater knowledge. The BlackStar Boardrooms, project collaborations, regular meetings, 121's that we participate in ensure that happens, it's here that the value of BlackStar starts to be realised.

Advocacy

Advocacy comes from confidence, deep knowledge, and absolute trust between the people.  it's the last leg of the journey and the longest one.

Building sufficient trust to ensure true advocacy requires both people to understand each other on many levels, to be open and to share a mutual respect. Once the trust exists it's likely that a small referral will be made, and the results of making that referral will undoubtedly be checked with all the parties involved. If the referral is being well handled; if the person referred feels that they have been extremely well looked after; and if the approach taken met (in almost all respects) the expectation then it is possible that they will become an advocate.

As an advocate you can expect them to be thinking about you in many, even most, conversations that they have with others. You will be mentioned regularly, promoted to others.  Pro-activity is regular, and referrals are strong, and pre-sold. The journey to advocacy is complete, but the journey to profitability over many years is just beginning. If you are lucky 10% of all of the people who acknowledge you will become advocates.  Here is where I find immense quality, not quantity. However, without the quantity the likelihood would be remote of having the quality of referrals that I received from those people kind enough to advocate me.

Not surprisingly, with much higher levels of knowledge and support within BlackStar, Trust and advocacy rates are also higher in that community.

So, where are you?

If you have a great number of existing advocates then you probably have more opportunity to do business with annual business can support.

However, if that is not the case then you need to take action to increase the number of advocates if that is part of your marketing and networking strategy. The first question is whether you are advocating enough people rather than are enough people advocating me? I review my network to identify people who I would wish to advocate (that currently I can only acknowledge) and I seek proactively to meet with them. I listen for opportunities to find work for them, by introduction, rather than referral, reactively not proactively.  I seek testimonials about them from others who know them. I listen to what they say, and write, about their business and I question and challenge them until I feel comfortable, trusting, and able to refer them with confidence.

I also review my network to decide whom I should approach to learn more so that I can acknowledge a larger group of people.

Finally, I keep making myself visible, making more people aware that I exist, each day I set a goal to ensure that more people are aware of me today than were aware of me yesterday. I work in groups and collections of people where this journey is facilitated, BlackStar is one of those, perhaps the one where this happens fastest and with greater depth, but, it's not the only one, but if you haven't got enough advocates to bring you business, think about finding a group, like BlackStar, which facilitates this journey.

I sense that this is a journey on which I shall continue to travel from many years to come.

Comments

[Niiraj R Shah]

Hi William
AN important part of advocacy comes from the VCP formula (Visibility or awareness as you mentioned here) + Credibility = Profitability

I think for a person to gain credibility they need to show a combination of character (he is a nice guy) and competency (he is able to do a good job). If a person is able to demonstrate a combination of these two then usually it's easy to advocate this person.

Dr. Stephen Covey talks about how this helps develop TRUST in the Speed of Trust.

[Niiraj R Shah]

Hi William
AN important part of advocacy comes from the VCP formula (Visibility or awareness as you mentioned here) + Credibility = Profitability

I think for a person to gain credibility they need to show a combination of character (he is a nice guy) and competency (he is able to do a good job). If a person is able to demonstrate a combination of these two then usually it's easy to advocate this person.

Dr. Stephen Covey talks about how this helps develop TRUST in the Speed of Trust.

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