Does your company have a Customer Reference Program? If you have one, are you doing a good job managing it? How are you doing at balancing strategic and tactical tasks to ensure you are truly adding value to your company's bottom line?
Let's start at the beginning. What is a customer reference program? A Customer Reference Program (CRP) is a business function frequently found in large business-to-business organizations. Customer Reference Program managers are responsible for gathering and fulfilling requests for references to help Sales people obtain new clients and provide proof of customer success stories for Industry Analysts and the media. (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_reference_program)
Honestly I consider customer references to be the single most powerful and influential sales tool a sales person has. When I worked at Novell years ago, I was responsible for a sales survey that went to 1200 sales employees. Every quarter I heard the same things. Success stories were the most influential piece of collateral they used and references were VERY critical to them closing deals! Companies need to have Customer Reference Programs for these three main reasons:
1. FREE Your Sales Staff - Your sales guys have a hard enough job especially in this economy, so why burden them with hunting down sales references?
2. INCREASE Your Sales - Research shows that sharing customer successes help close a deal more than almost any other resource. Here's a good article on "Using Success Stories to Close Sales". At the end of the day a prospect wants to hear about or speak to a customer who has a similar scenario to them(industry, company size, network environment, customer pains etc)
3. HELP Your Customers - There are customer advocates of yours that WANT to share their success. It's your job to find them and get their stories published on your website, in the press etc. If done right, this is the biggest win-win of reference programs!
I have been a Customer Reference Program Manager for five years and it's not easy. There are not many of us out there. I would estimate maybe 1000 worldwide full-time or part-time reference managers. There are also a lot of resources but they are scattered all over the web. In this blog I will share information on:
- Customer Reference Program basics
- Vendors that can help you with your program
- Resources that can help you be more successful with your program
One of the first tips I will share is a great handbook! Big Sky Communications, Inc. and Boulder Logic have teamed up to offer this comprehensive series of articles to highlight and discuss some best practices around developing customer references. http://customerreferencehandbook.com/
In the meantime, if you have a topic you want me to cover in this blog or a question about reference programs shoot me an e-mail at mslizpedro@gmail.com. I look forward to our journey together!
