A decade back only a handful of folks carried the title of an ‘Evangelist’ on their business cards. This role was predominantly found within software product and developer platform companies. It is Apple, Microsoft, Sun and Google that made this title sound very cool. Today it is common to find Evangelists in the corporate world. I have also seen a few companies giving the title of an Evangelist to the honorary roles and external profiles associated with them. It is not uncommon to encounter sales folks, marketers and consultants in the guise of an Evangelist. I sometimes found that when the HR team cannot find a suitable title, they park the newly defined profile under the Evangelist title.
I want to touch upon the sensitive aspect of what evangelism is and what it isn’t.
First, let me start by calling out what doesn’t qualify to be called as Evangelism:
1) Sales – Evangelism is never about closing a sale. Sales folks are shrewd business people with a single-minded focus on clinching the deal. They are less emotional and sentimental about the product that they are selling. They can pretty much sell anything to anyone. On the other hand, an Evangelist would go any length to convince the customer about the value proposition and focuses less on the transactional outcome. Organizations should never treat Evangelists as pre-sales resources. They always help the company acquire and retain loyal customers who will be the advocates of the brand in the longer term.
2) Marketing – Evangelism is perceived as a marketing technique by many. Marketing is all about accelerating the sales cycle. It involves running the right campaign involving the customers, partners and the company with a goal to create a ‘pull’ for the product. A typical marketing campaign has a defined life-time and the success metric is always the market share. Evangelism is a long term investment and goes much beyond the time lines of a fiscal year. The success metric of Evangelism is qualitative than quantitative. If the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is measured through the market share, the real impact that Evangelism brings is the positive mind share for the product. Marketing Managers cannot replace passionate Evangelists. Period.
3) Consulting – This is another common misconception. Few companies project the Evangelist as the best-in-town technical expert and will put him through the scariest fire-fighting exercise at a customer. Not a good idea! Evangelists are generally good at a breadth of technologies and great at articulating the value proposition. Evangelists are at their best when put in front of 100 audiences and they walk out leaving the hall thoroughly impressed and completely convinced. They need not have the technical depth of a consultant who focuses on one and only one technology. Evangelists are not billable resources. They need their own space and the freedom of speech to excel!
4) Training – No doubt! Evangelists are the best story-tellers in the town. They simplify complex terminologies and explain the concepts in a lucid and easy manner. But that doesn’t mean Evangelists are the best trainers. Evangelism is all about influencing and not hand-holding the customers. They hate spoon feeding and delivering ‘courses’ based on a fixed curriculum. They paint the big picture and are great at instigating the desire to use a product. They are too impatient to stand up and deliver a day-long lecture.
5) Program Management – Sure! Evangelists are disciplined enough to run their mission like an independent business. They love to strategize, plan and execute to achieve their goal. But that doesn’t turn Evangelists into Program Managers. The force that constantly keeps the Evangelists on the move is the passion for the product and not the milestones, strategy meetings and long conference calls. I have seen some Program Managers at Microsoft who are the best Evangelists for their product or feature. But it is an exception! Evangelists who are forced to be Program Managers will lose the sight of the long term mission and end up being glorified coordinators.
So, you are wondering how the existence of an Evangelist is justified! If they don’t belong to any of the mainstream functions that are essential for the survival of a company, why should they get paid in the first place? Having a team of Evangelists is a luxury and not every company can afford it. But companies who have a long term vision and strongly believe in making customers an integral part of their journey do invest in them.
I want to point you to what Jonathan Schwartz, President & CEO of Sun said about Evangelism. In his blog post, Understanding Sun in Three Easy Steps, Jonathan puts Developer Advocacy as the number one priority.
“1. Recruit every developer on earth to use our software or services.
This is a strategic activity, not a financial one, so don’t look for revenue here. I’ll devote an entire entry to understanding the motivations and mechanisms driving technology adoption, and to discussing the varied audiences we target. As the head of developer technologies from a very large customer said to me last week over dinner, “I haven’t visited Sun in five years, but all of a sudden you seem to matter to my developers.” I’ll help parse that statement in my next entry.”
The above statement has a lot of inner meaning. It tells us that even after owning the most successful and a mature platform called Java, Sun still puts developer evangelism in the forefront of their strategy. The other fact that it highlights is that when you engage with the right set of technical audience within a customer account, you will start influencing the most crucial management decision. Read the interesting and impacting post by Jonathan on technology adoption and how evangelism influences it. I completely connect with it as I had the opportunity to be the first Microsoft Academic Evangelist in India to run the academic evangelism initiative that had a positive impact on the academic ecosystem and Microsoft.
I also covered the 7 key traits of an Evangelist in one of my earlier posts.
Now, let us see what value Evangelism brings to the table:
1) Trust – Evangelists are the biggest catalysts in building the trust around the product that they believe in. They naturally become the trusted advisor for the customer because they know the intentions of an Evangelist and believe in his conviction. No other role is as strategic as an Evangelist to win over the customer trust!
2) Credibility – This emerges from the trust element that I discussed earlier. Through honest and passionate discussions, an Evangelist will demonstrate that he is genuinely interested in the customer realizing the value of the product and get the best of it. There are more chances that the customer will involve the Evangelist before finalizing the next big bet.
3) Influence – The best thing about Evangelism is that it is viral. A good Evangelist not only drives the adoption of the product, but also turns the customer into his Co-Evangelist. Together they soon create an army of influencers, advocates and brand ambassadors for the product. No other job function can do this so effectively.
4) Community – This is a logical climax to the above. A successful Evangelist will herd all the influencers together to form an active community. He takes charge of keeping them excited and motivated all the time. The organic growth of this community is a positive sign of successful evangelism and the popularity of the brand.
5) Advocacy – An Evangelist is the first and the best advocate of the product. He is the default spokesperson to stand up and responsibly talk to the press or the critiques. He wouldn’t loose his cool when attacked by the competition or the hostile audience. He would have an objective yet meaningful discussion and walks out unscathed.
Evangelists are uniquely positioned to deliver unmatched value to the company. Organizations and managers should learn the art and science of managing the evangelist teams to get the best out of them.
There is an interesting post on Evangelism Beyond Boundaries by my ex-colleague and a good friend Vinod Kumar.
I want to conclude this article by recalling what Guy Kawasaki told me when I asked him about differentiating the fanatics from evangelists. Fanatics forcefully push their agenda whereas an Evangelist always puts the customer first.
Do share your experiences of interacting with an Evangelist that you have come across.
