The most valuable sales and marketing tool your company has isn't a tool, it's your customers! Your job as a customer reference or marketing manager is to find your customer advocates and share their success stories. What are customer advocates? I estimate about 5% of your customers are 'true' advocates, customers who love your product and will do anything for you. The trick is finding them. For those of you who have Net Promoter or other customer surveys, you might have a higher percentage of 'happy' and 'satisfied' customers but are they really your customer advocates?
There are many ways to find customer advocates. First, ask your sales and support teams. They talk to customers daily and know who is passionate about your product. Second, check your online forums. Typically, these customers are the biggest contributors as they not only use and like the product but they want others to find success with the product too. Third, get your hands on customer survey results and analyze them. When I did a customer survey at LANDesk, I would not only look at the responses for the Net Promoter question but also correlate that with other responses to look for patterns. In fact, at the last two companies I've worked at I have added a survey question asking customers if they are willing to be references and the options were Yes, No, and Maybe and then a comments section. The comments section was so helpful as some of the advocates would mark yes and then in the comments field put comments like "whatever you need" or "I really love your product!". Fourth, check out their LinkedIn and Facebook pages as often an advocate will mention your product on these pages. For example, their headline on LinkedIn might read "Passionate LANDesk Network Administrator." These are just four suggestions. Get creative as there are many more ways you can find these advocates!
A few last thoughts about customer advocates. A customer advocate who is passionate about your product can also become a detractor if mistreated. Their passion can work for you or against you so always treat them with utmost respect, ensure your vendors treat them well and don't misuse them by asking for too many reference activities. Also, they are usually customer advocates for many things. They typically have the type of personality that if they like something they will share their positive experience whether it's software, a book they've read, a doctor they like, a restaurant they enjoye etc. For fun, Google their name. Typically you'll see they've done success stories for other companies and will most likely do that for you as well!
