by Braden Kelley
What is an evangelist?
When many people hear this term, their minds used to picture Billy Graham or Pat Robertson, but this is changing. Why?
Our perceptions of evangelists are transforming as the pace of change accelerates to construct a new reality faster than most human brains can process the changes.
This creates a chasm in understanding and change readiness that evangelists can help bridge in a number of different ways.
Let us look at what an evangelist really is…
Oxford Dictionaries say an evangelist is a “zealous advocate of something.”
In business, the evangelist is a role that any of us can take on (with varying levels of success). Evangelism is very important to innovation success, which is why the evangelist is one of The Nine Innovation Roles™. This is how I define this particular role:
“The Evangelists know how to educate people on what the idea is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help build support for an idea internally, and also to help educate customers on its value.”
Notice at this point we are talking about an evangelist as a role that can be played by one or more people, and not as a job that one or more people hold. Evangelism normally will be a role and not a job, but there are inflection points where this must change.
Outside of an innovation context, evangelism often falls on the shoulders of CEOs, business owners and product managers within organizations. When the need for evangelism is small, this can work. But for most organizations, this is no longer the case.
When should you hire an evangelist?
The time to cross over from evangelism as a role to evangelism as a job is when:
- The pace of internal change is accelerating faster than employees can grasp without help
- The pace of external change is accelerating faster than customers can understand without help
- Your company is facing disruption by new entrants or existing competitors
- You’re considering a digital transformation
- You’ve already embarked upon a digital transformation
- You’re using Agile in product development
- Your brand essence is being shifted by you or your customers
- You need a more human and personal presence in your marketing efforts to better connect with customers
When one or more of these conditions are true, you’ll find that it isn’t possible for CEOs, business owners and product owners to meet the needs for evangelism in the short spurts of time these people can dedicate to the necessary activities.
As highlighted by Agile Product Development’s presence in the list, organizations leveraging Agile to develop software-based products will find that their product managers are always engaged with the backlog with little time to focus on evangelism. They’re always focused on shipping something.
Some organizations will resist adding evangelists to their team, feeling that such a role is superfluous, but having one or more people focused on evangelism delivers value to the organization by executing a range of incredibly important activities, including:
- Growing awareness
- Building a community around the company and/or plugging the company into pre-existing external communities (potentially taking the brand to places it has never been before)
- Generating interest
- Working with customers and the marketing team to identify the stories that need to be told and the themes that need to be introduced and/or reinforced
- Creating desire
- Building and maintaining conversations with the community that cares about your products/services/brands
- Engaging in an open and honest dialogue to help gather the voice of the customer
- Facilitating action
- Practicing a human-centered design mindset to continuously elicit needs and surface wants and desired outcomes
Depending on the size of the organization you may decide to have a single evangelist, or some larger organizations have more than one type of evangelist, including:
- Chief Evangelist
- Brand Evangelists
- Product Evangelists
- Service Evangelists
- Innovation Evangelists
This specialization occurs when the evangelism an organization needs become too big for one evangelist to handle. At that point a Chief Evangelist creates the evangelism strategy and manages the execution across the team of brand, product, service and other evangelism focus areas.
So what makes a good evangelist?
Evangelists arrive from a range of different job specialties, but key knowledge, skills and abilities include:
- Empathetic
- Passionate About the Company’s Mission, Products/Services, and Customers
- Comfortable Public Speaker
- Efficient and Effective Writer
- Human-Centered Design Mindset
- Experienced with Social Media, Audio and Video
- Skilled Content Creator
- Continuous Learner
- Self-Directed and Comfortable with Ambiguity
… and ideally your chosen evangelists will already have some presence in the communities important to you, or the knowledge of how to establish a presence in these communities.
Customer buying journeys are notoriously unpredictable, meandering, long and non-linear. Evangelism is a critical part of helping to build relationships with potential buyers and increasing the chances that your brand will be top of mind when a non-buyer finally becomes a potential customer of your products or services.
It’s a long-term non-transactional investment, one that will pay dividends if you see the wisdom in making the expenditure.
Has your organization already invested in evangelists? What learnings would you like to share in the comments?
Are you ready for the evangelists to rise in your organization?
Or do you need help with evangelism? (contact me if you do)
Share the love!
p.s. I wrote a follow-up article for InnovationManagement.se that you might also enjoy — Increase Your Innovation Reputation and Velocity with an Innovation Evangelist
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The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) approach offers a unique lens for viewing the people you serve. Instead of looking at the demographic and psychographic factors of consumption, JTBD focuses on what people seek to achieve in a given circumstance. People don’t “hire” products and services because of the demographic they belong to; instead, they employ solutions to get a job done.
After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020:
Tom Koulopoulos is the author of 10 books and founder of the 
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, 
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.
Eric Eskey is a Managing Director at Strategyn, an innovation consultancy. Eric is in the business of creating the future. I aim to use the resources he has – his work, investments, voice, and imagination – to encourage innovation and defeat the hidden forces that resist it.
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.
Nicolas Bry is Orange Startups Studio Founder. He entices Orange employees in engaging as intrapreneurs, bringing their idea to life within Orange business. Nicolas is equally a passionate expert for innovation labs exploring new business. International speaker (TEDx), delivering Masterclasses @Google Academy, and Tech/Business Schools, ISPIM Prize for innovation management, Nicolas is Writer of 
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at 
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Dimis Michaelides is a keynote speaker, author, consultant and trainer in leadership, creativity and innovation. Contact him for a workshop or a presentation at 
Greg Heist is the Chief Innovation Officer at Gongos, a decision intelligence company.
Gijs van Wulfen helps organizations to structure the chaotic start of innovation as author, speaker and facilitator. He is the founder of the FORTH innovation method and author of the innovation bestseller The Innovation Expedition. He was chosen by LinkedIn as one of their first 150 Influencers. Follow Gijs @gijsvanwulfen
Shawn Nason, founder and CEO of MOFI, lives his life with a commitment to make everyone he meets a part of his family. Armed with the gift of discernment, he has the uncanny ability to walk alongside people as they struggle to connect with their deepest passions and engage their most debilitating demons. He challenges the world around him to be fully present, get real, and knock down the barrier that separates the various compartments in their lives.
John Carter has been a widely respected adviser to technology firms over his career. John is the author of 
Ludwig Melik is CEO of Planbox, whose mission is to help organizations thrive by transforming the culture of agile work, continuous innovation, and creativity across the entire organization… Connect with him on LinkedIn or join the conversation by following Planbox on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.
Mick Simonelli is an innovator with 20+ years of implementing change and positive disruption at USAA. As a military veteran, he held transformation roles in numerous military organizations; and as a business executive, he purposely hired vets to help launch numerous innovations as the Chief Innovation Officer for a Fortune 500 company. Mick currently serves as an innovation consultant and can be found at www.micksimonelli.com Follow @MickSimonelli
Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of “Awake at the Wheel”, as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.
Peter Cook leads Human Dynamics and The Academy of Rock, providing Keynotes, Organisational Development and Coaching. He is the author of seven books on business leadership. His three passions are science, business and music, having led innovation teams for 18 years to develop life-saving drugs including the first treatments for AIDS and the development of Human Insulin. Peter is Music and Business editor at Innovation Excellence. You can follow him on twitter @Academyofrock.
Mukesh Gupta is Director of Customer Advocacy, SAP India Private Limited. He also served as Executive Liaison for the SAP User group in India, and as a Global Lead in Sales & Business Development. He blogs, and shares podcasts and videos, on his site rmukeshgupta.com
Urko Wood helps clients of Reveal Growth find and capitalize on the best opportunities for innovation and growth in their markets. He is one of only a handful of people in North America who are expert practitioners in the breakthrough “jobs-to-be-done” (JTBD) innovation approach that has enabled over 400 of the Fortune 1000 to generate billions of dollars in new revenue and achieve new product success rates of over 80%.
Neil Sholay is re-shaping innovation and digital experiences as a Vice President of Digital Innovation for EMEA & JAPAC at Oracle. He leads a curious, multidisciplinary team of thinkers, Ideators, strategists, designers, developers, storytellers, rebels and proud geeks, who are reshaping Innovation and digital experiences. They bring new ideas & business models to life, using co-innovation and rapid prototyping.
