Playbook: Turning Conversations into Conversions with Community

# Theme: Sales & Business Development

# Theme: Community Building & DevRel

# Theme: GTM Strategy & Trends

# Format: Best Practices & Playbooks

# Challenge: Advocacy

How authentic customer voices in community settings help prospects build trust, accelerating decisions and shortening sales cycles.

October 15, 2025 · Last updated on November 7, 2025

Anthony DeShazor

Joshua Zerkel

Learn how community-driven conversations between prospects and customers create authentic trust that accelerates enterprise deals.

Enterprise sales are complex. Prospects evaluate multiple solutions, require proof points, and often ask for references before they commit. Trust is the deciding factor, and it usually takes time to build. Community can shorten that process by creating spaces where prospects and customers connect authentically.

At our Executive Insights with Gradual session, Anthony DeShazor, Founder and CEO of Protia Revenue Systems, explained how he has used community to accelerate deals throughout his career. A three-time Chief Customer Officer, Anthony has helped SaaS companies scale to more than $1B ARR, while eliminating hundreds of millions in churn. He sees community as a natural way to build trust and speed up decisions.

“People don’t want to be sold to. They want to hear from their peers,” Anthony said.

The challenge of references in enterprise sales

Anthony shared an example from one of his past roles. At that company, every enterprise deal required at least two customer references. On paper, this made sense — prospects wanted reassurance from real users. In practice, it slowed down the sales cycle. The team had to identify willing references, schedule calls, and hope the timing aligned with the prospect’s decision process.

That process was not scalable, and it left deals at risk of stalling.

Community as the accelerator

Anthony’s team decided to rethink the problem. Instead of arranging individual reference calls, they created opportunities for prospects and customers to interact naturally through community. These took the form of both digital forums and in-person events such as dinners or roundtables.

“By creating community events, digital or in-person, where prospects could talk to customers, we found that served as an actual deal accelerator,” Anthony explained. “We didn’t have to cherry-pick references. Just getting people in a room was enough to build trust.”

The result was shorter sales cycles and less strain on customer advocates, since they could participate once and influence multiple prospects.

Why authenticity works

The effectiveness of this approach comes down to credibility. Prospects know that marketing content is polished and that sales teams are incentivized to close deals. Peer conversations are different. They feel authentic, because customers share their experiences in their own words.

“You absolutely don’t want it to be scripted in any way,” Anthony emphasized. Overly managed conversations risk losing the trust that makes community powerful in the first place.

How to apply this playbook

Community leaders and sales teams can work together to design programs that create authentic spaces for prospects and customers. Here are three ways to start:

Curate spaces for prospects Invite qualified prospects into parts of the community where they can interact with current customers. These spaces can be open forums, private groups, or dedicated events. The goal is to provide visibility into real customer experiences without overwhelming prospects with too much unfiltered content.

Keep it authentic Give customers the freedom to share openly. Encourage honesty, even if it includes challenges. Prospects are more likely to trust feedback that acknowledges both strengths and areas for improvement. That trust can accelerate decisions.

Track deal velocity Measure how much faster deals close when prospects engage with community compared to those who do not. This evidence makes the business case clear and helps justify investment in community-led programs.

The business case for deal acceleration

Accelerating deals is not about replacing sales with community. It is about strengthening sales by layering in authentic customer voices. Community provides prospects with the confidence to move forward, and it does so in a scalable way.

As Anthony explained, the benefit is both relational and operational: prospects get credible insights, and companies reduce the burden of one-off reference requests. Over time, these efficiencies add up to shorter cycles, more predictable outcomes, and greater capital efficiency.

Takeaway

Trust is the currency of enterprise sales, and community is one of the most effective ways to build it. By curating authentic conversations between prospects and customers, organizations can accelerate deals, reduce reliance on ad-hoc references, and strengthen relationships across the board.

For leaders looking to prove business impact, tracking deal velocity provides hard evidence of what community makes possible.

▶️ Watch the full replay here: https://community.gradual.com/public/events/executive-insights-with-gradual-unlocking-the-revenue-engine-hiding-in-your-community

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