One of the questions I usually hear is how do you know if a customer is a reference? It's easy. You ask and you ask everyone. First of all, start with your sales people, they know who their 'advocates' are. Second, see if you can get your hands on any customer surveys. If you are lucky, your company has a Net Promoter survey and you can find your promoters and ask them. Third, ask around the company. Ask product management, support, executives, inside sales and anyone else who works with customers.
To help refine this more, I made a "Customer Reference Map". Basically you can ask two questions. How positive has the customer's experience been? What are the company policies around giving references? By doing this you can 'map' where your customer fits. Now take note because sometimes a company policy won't allow a customer to do a 'public' reference (ie talk to the press, written success story, etc) but they can do 'private' references (talk to analysts and sales references) Here is the map I've developed to help you identify what type of reference you have.
Another question I get asked is how many references should I have. It's a good goal to have five percent of your customer base be a customer reference at some level. I was fortunate to work at a company where I had 12%! One last note is it's better to go for 'quality' than 'quantity'. I would rather have 50 solid references that I could count on to help me with reference activities than 500 references that aren't as solid or at least a good mix!
