advocacy-asklisted

# Advocacy Ask Advocacy is the one thing in customer success where the customer does the work and your company gets the benefit. That asymmetry is the whole problem, and pretending it is not there is why the asks land badly. The failure this exists to prevent: **asking at renewal.** The timing converts a favour into a trade. Even when the customer says yes, they now know that agreeing to be a reference is worth something at the negotiating table, and you have taught them that at your own expense. --- ## What this needs **Shared context.** If an `account-context` document exists, read it first for the segments and the value metric, which decides what a useful reference story even is here. Where it is absent, carry on and name the assumption. **Minimum: the account and what is being asked for.** Enough to judge whether to ask, who to ask, and how to shape it. **Better with** the account's recent history, any open escalations, and a record of what they have already been asked for. That last one prevents the most common damage. **Best with** an outcome the customer has stated themselves, because an ask that starts from their own words is a different conversation from one that starts from your need. --- ## Step 1: Decide whether to ask at all Four disqualifiers. Any one of them and the answer is not yet. - **An open escalation or an unresolved commitment.** Asking for advocacy while something of theirs is broken reads as tone-deaf and is remembered - **No realised valu