Saturday, August 7, 2010

Being a Reference Manager - Pros and Cons

Someone recently asked me why I am a Customer Reference Manager. The answer was easy - It's my passion and I feel lucky to have found a career I love! I have never had a job where I can impact a company as much as I can as a Customer Reference Manager. I can help sales in many ways including helping them close deals faster, answering their RFPs on time, give their customers recognition for being thought leaders, give them sales tools they love and so much more. I can help them
PR team have better press releases by including customer quotes and giving them customer advocates who are willing to do press interviews. I can help marketing by developing some of the most downloaded assets on the websites - video testimonials and case studies. I can help executives by giving them customer stories to share with analysts, with the press and internally. I can help employee morale by sharing how real-life customers are using the product and having great success with it.

There are of course challenges being a Customer Reference Manager. I heard once that the average time someone stays in this role is one year. I don't know if that's true but I have to wonder when I go to the Customer Reference Forum and people have switched companies and there are a lot of new faces. One year isn't long for a job but this isn't an ordinary job! The challenges include: stress of getting requests 24 x 7 x 365, pressure to find happy customers with minimal help from others, balancing your time between strategic and tactical, the ability to balance projects without dropping the ball EVER, a think skin to handle when you get told no by customers, sales skills to sell customers on why they should be references and internally to sell your program, and so much more... However even these things are fun for me. They are challenges that can be solved especially someone with passion, a positive attitude, enthusiam and some Chutzpah!