Citrix-Engage Marquee Customers

1. HowtoEngagewith
Marquee-BrandCustomers
By Pascale Roumain Royal,
Senior Program Manager, Strategic Customers,
Citrix
State of the Profession Series
Case studies from the world’s top customer advocacy
and engagement programs, showing how to grow the
business in today’s buyer-empowered world.

2. 2
Pascale R. Royal is Senior Program Manager, Strategic
Customers, at Citrix, a $2 billion global leader dedicated
to powering mobile work styles and cloud services.
Citrix makes complex enterprise IT simpler and more
accessible for 260,000 organizations around the world,
providing solutions that touch 75 percent of Internet
users each day. Citrix partners with more than 10,000
companies in 100 countries.
Royal is currently responsible for creating marketing programs that increase
strategic customer engagement, build brands and influence sales revenue. She
also drives initiatives that leverage the power of social media, amplifying the
Citrix vision through the voice of the customer. Royal delivers results back to the
organization in the form of hundreds of case studies, videos, customer quotes,
on-demand webinars and other content that showcase Citrix customer success
and provide positive proof-points to prospects.
Royal joined Citrix in 2006, overseeing the planning, communication and
execution of the company’s customer advisory program, the Citrix Customer
Council. Additionally, Royal developed high-touch target account marketing
programs, created customer-centric sales tools and assets, moderated and
facilitated research activities in the Citrix Customer Advisory Community and
wrote executive reports following advisory council meetings.
Royal resides in south Florida with her husband, Jason, and precocious
2 year old son, Jonah.

3. 3
HowtoEngagewithMarquee-BrandCustomers
As effective and persuasive as all of your advocates are, your marquee-brand
customers represent the most influential loyalists among them. Moreover,
by “co-branding” your company’s products/services with a premier brand—
through their stories and in their own words—you will be enhancing the status
of your company’s brand. These are reasons enough to tackle the challenging
task of engaging your marquee customers.
Here's how to do that.
Threekeystrategiestorecruitmarquee-brandcustomers
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that you don’t “engage” with a brand.
You engage with a person, specifically, executives.
With that in mind, we use three strategies to get IT executives at brand-name
companies to be a reference for us.
Strategy#1:Solicitmarqueecustomers’feedbackandopinionson
meaningfulbusinesstopics
Engagement is a two-way street. That means that our relationship goal is to
promote meaningful, two-way conversations with marquee executives. And to
drive that forward, we provide them with opportunities to share their insights,
opinions and feedback. The topics vary, but examples include asking for their
take on our strategic vision, products and solutions and our R&D road map.
One way that we do this is through the invitation and participation of
marquee executives on our Customer Council. We first established the Citrix
Customer Council, our global customer advisory board, 15 years ago. Our
goal is to drive a business-level discussion that facilitates customer feedback.
Along with that we’ve established mechanisms to report that information to
our executives.
But to make that work, you have to be genuinely open to feedback, including
constructive criticism. So we make sure that our representatives sitting on
the Council really listen to what they have to say. And where appropriate, we
act upon what they share with us. That’s what’s in it for Citrix.
What’s in it for our customers is the chance to network with their peers. In
fact, our participants tell us that this is one of the most valuable aspects of
being on the Council. They also value the opportunity to interact with our
executive team, and to develop a close business relationship with them.

4. 4
Over time, participating on the Customer Council builds trust. And that trust
forms the basis for getting marquee executives to be advocates for us.
Many times we’ll invite an executive to join the Council, and they will flat out tell us that
their corporate policies prevent them from endorsing us. That’s fine. We still value their
contributions. And we bide our time. We earn their trust.
This happens so frequently, that after six to 12 months of proving our genuine
commitment to our industry and their success, many of them have a change
of heart. They take the time to convince their own executive and legal teams
that they can speak publicly about Citrix and about the work we are doing.
Strategy#2:Recognizeandcelebratemarqueecustomers’
accomplishments
Everyone needs to feel valued. Everyone has an ego. And for those of us
who work with IT executives, we know that they have a healthy ego. So at
a psychological level, it’s important that we honor and satisfy that need.
At Citrix, we do this by recognizing their achievements with awards. It’s a way
to not only share their success story, but also to provide a broadcast platform
that showcases it.
Citrix Innovation Award
We present this trophy at our annual user conference to customers who
have shown great innovation using our solutions. This year we received
36 nominations from our worldwide field teams. Then we narrowed
those down to five finalists.
Now in order for the finalists to be considered, they had to work with us to
complete a video, press release and do public-facing activities. There is a give
and take to be sure. But we structure it so that our customers feel that it’s
a win-win situation. In fact, our Innovation award has worked so well for us
that recently we expanded the program to recognize partners.
Industry awards
Another way we get
our marquee executive
customers recognition is
through industry awards.

5. 5
The conversation with them goes something like this. “I’ve been working with
you for a year now. I know your story, I understand your vision. I know the
hard work that you have put into changing the way your organization is run.
And you’ve done an exceptional job with that. I would love to nominate you
for an industry award and recognize you for the work that you have done with
Citrix.” We’ve found that marquee executives are very appreciative of that. It's
a great way to get more of them invested in what you’re doing.
Strategy#3:Sharemarqueecustomers’storiesofsuccess
The common theme of all the content we create is that it’s all the customer.
Not us. This thread permeates all of our content tactics:
Videos White PapersCase Studies PowerPoint
Slides
We deliberate our process carefully. We think through every customer touch
point and every engagement opportunity to understand what’s important to an
executive and when. Then we tailor our content accordingly. And of course, we
showcase our high-value, marquee, assets. This does a couple of things for us.
For one, the experience of a brand-name company executive carries more
weight with customers and prospects. So we judiciously use them with our
best possible opportunities. Secondly, showing that marquee customers are
using our products boosts the image of our own brand.
It’sallaboutthecustomer
Casestudy:MiamiChildren’sHospital
A great example of how we focus on the customer is the reference video that
we created of Miami Children’s Hospital. The approach we took is to NOT
showcase the IT team. You don’t even see the CIO in the film.
Instead, we asked our customer, “Who is the best person to exemplify the
work that you do at the hospital, as well as the technology that helps them do
better work?” The answer was pediatric heart surgeon, Dr. Redmond Burke.

6. 6
So the story features him, the work he’s doing and his use of Citrix solutions
to enable mobile technologies and a mobile work style.
Dr. Burke is a great choice because he is recognized in his industry as
a leading surgeon. He teaches doctors all over the world and even has his
own YouTube channel.
He’s doing really great work with children. And that connects with viewers. So
does the fact that he works hard to balance work and family. Our solutions
help him do that because he can quickly respond to patient needs wherever
he is, even at his daughter’s soccer game. His work is to save the lives of
babies, but at home, he’s a husband and father. Those two things really
resonated with our audience.
This customer-centric approach led to a truly successful campaign for
us. The Work Better campaign, which features three compelling customer
stories, delivered:
3,000,000
50,000 NEW
20,000 VISITORS TO CITRIX.COM
VIEWS ON YOU TUBE & CITRIX.COM
TWITTER FOLLOWERS & FACEBOOK FANS
WHO ON AVERAGE:
SPEND
1:37MINUTES
ON THE SITE
VIEWED
3.4
PAGES
75%OF VISITORS
'NET NEW'

7. 7
Providemarqueecustomersabroadcastplatformtotelltheirstory
As we generate customer reference content, we constantly ask ourselves,
“How can we make it more valuable?” Not just for us, but for our marquee executives as
well. One thing we came up with was the idea of providing
them with a platform to broadcast their story.
Most people make a video or case study or whatever and just put it up
on their Website. We have a number of media channels that we distribute
that content across. So we make sure that our marquee customers know
that their story will have a lot of reach with industry peers. That’s not just
talk. We’re a worldwide company with over 9,000 employees and we have
connections in the media as well as systems that can effectively broadcast
our content.
Sharingmetricswithyourexecutives
One of the reasons that we have, and maintain, a healthy budget is because
we can show the impact of our activities on revenues, (see Figure 1 below.)
Pipeline Total Closed/Won revenue
Total for 2013
112 Deal & 201 in Pipeline
Q4 2013
57 Deal & 34 in Pipeline
Q3 2013
32 Deals & 37 in Pipeline
Q2 2013
22 Deals & 113 in Pipeline
Q1 2013
1 Deal & 17 in Pipeline
$70,693,731
$11,402,113
$11,918,633
$44,800,000
$2,572,985
$15,056,957
$8,009,021
$3,444,989
$3,577,873
$25,074
Figure 1: The influence of content and activities on sales pipeline and closed deals.
Showing the impact that we have on the business makes us more credible
and gives our program greater prestige. That’s because we can prove that
we’re not just getting people to say nice things about us. They’re speaking on
our behalf, and we’re able to tie the influence their advocacy has on sales.

8. Partingthoughts
If you can implement the three strategies I’ve detailed above, I believe you
can significantly increase the success you have engaging with your marquee-
customer executives.
You’ll get crucial business intelligence in the form of feedback about your
products, services and roadmap. When you engage with marquee customers
via councils and boards, and recognize them with awards, you’ll earn their
trust and make them want to take reciprocal actions with you. And by
embracing story themes that put the customer first, you’ll develop content
that performs with your customers and prospects significantly better than
the status quo.
All these things combine to help you contribute to your company’s bottom line.
CENTER FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Bill Lee, Founder
bill@c4ce.com
www.c4ce.com
+1.214.907.5600
3225 Turtle Creek Blvd,
Suite 1801 Dallas
TX 75219
CONSULTING
We help firms create “rock star”
(aka "marquee, " "champion,"
"MVP," etc) customer advocates
and influencers who attract new
buyers daily and dramatically
increase growth.
“When it comes to developing
high-impact customer relationships,
all roads lead to Bill Lee. His energy,
passion and excitement for the
subject were evident from the first.
His consulting was superb.
”Jackie Breiter
Vice President, Customer Success &
Flagship Program
CA Technologies
SUMMITONCUSTOMERENGAGEMENT
World’s largest and most respected
conference for professionals
who run customer advocacy and
engagement programs
“There’s really nothing I’ve seen like
[Bill’s] Summit in the country.
”Lisa Arthur
Chief Marketing Officer
Teradata Applications
“The Summit is a “do not miss
event" for you and your team.
”Rhett Livengood, Director
B2B Business Client Customer
Engagement
Intel
SPEAKING
Includes keynotes, executive
workshops, implementation
workshops, private webinars, etc.
“Content was excellent. I learned
a lot, validated some things and
also got some great ideas … Highly
recommended.
”Asim Zaheer
Senior Vice President, Worldwide
Marketing
Hitachi Data Systems