Sponsor Tracking Overview
Gainsight NXT
This article introduces Admins and CSMs to one of Gainsight’s churn minimization feature; Sponsor Tracking.
In today’s world of cut-throat competition, it is extremely essential to keep track of all customer facets. Sponsors are the key contacts at your customer's site. If your Sponsor leaves your customer, the new individual can easily influence the customer to change vendors. Many companies are not aware when their key advocates and sponsors leave. The top controllable indicator of future churn is "sponsor change."
Sponsor Tracking works on the principle that prevention is better than cure, and thus provides timely notifications to CSMs, every time there is a change in the status of the contact being tracked. Sponsor tracking monitors Linkedin profiles and then notifies the CSM about the changes in the contact's profile, the changes include Sponsor’s role /title/designation, location, sponsor’s company, etc.
The notification (a number displayed next to the Sponsor Tracking section on the Global Navigation pane) appears as shown in the following image, when there is a change in sponsor’s profile.
How Sponsor Tracking Works
When a user selects a contact to begin tracking, Gainsight passes the name, company, and email (and other configurable fields) to the API. Gainsight tries to match this information to its database of contacts and returns a profile or set of profiles that might be a match. If the contact's LinkedIn profile is not found, users can paste the contact's LinkedIn URL. For more information on tracking a sponsor in Gainsight, refer Track Sponsors From C360.
At this point, a match still may not be found, in which case Gainsight will search publicly available social networks for the details on the user's social profile. In the meantime, Gainsight identifies the contact's Sponsor Tracking status as Pending. Users can return to the Sponsor Tracking section to "view matches," and to confirm the match. Once confirmed, the contact is moved to the status, Tracked.
Sponsor tracking finds the Gainsight Person’s social profile links and images on LinkedIn and displays them on the sponsor tracking card. If a user clicks the social media links, it will open the respective social media link in a new tab/window. However, only changes to the contact's LinkedIn profile (title, company, location) trigger the card to change color, and trigger a Call to Action (CTA) for the CSM.
Advantages of Sponsor Tracking
Flag changes for Sponsor Status
Sponsor Tracking can monitor advocate departure automatically and send notifications with a CTA. A rule can be configured to track these sponsor changes and a CTA can be created to notify CSMs. CSMs can take suitable actions as per the prescribed playbook configured to the CTA to mitigate this risk.
Note: Individuals without a 3rd degree or closer connection can also be monitored.
Capitalize on opportunities and monitor gaps
CSMs can reach out to erstwhile champion/sponsor in their new role or organization for introductions. A report can be generated to display aggregated information on Sponsor Tracking across customers. If sponsor changes are notified, CSMs can take the following actions:
- Connect with your outgoing sponsors for the potential opportunities to sell your solution in their new role.
- Track changes and report across thousands of accounts and individual roles.
- Easily identify gaps of sponsors in key accounts, and take action to close these gaps.
Sponsor Tracking can be added as a section on the Customer 360 page and the Relationship 360 page.
Use Sponsor Tracking from C360 page
You can use Sponsor Tracking from the C360 page. The Sponsor Tracking section in C360 page allows you to perform various tasks like adding a Person record to be tracked, Viewing tracked person’s social profile and so on. To learn more about using Sponsor tracking from C360 page, refer the Track Sponsors from C360 page article.
Configure Sponsor Tracking
Admins can add the Sponsor tracking section to the 360 layout from the Company admin page and configure the Sponsor Tracking feature from the Sponsor Tracking admin page. Refer the Configure Sponsor Tracking article to learn more on the configuration. CSMs can manage Sponsor Tracking from the C360 page.