Reference Program Tools for Sales

One of the traps you can fall into as a reference manager is to spend all your time doing tactical tasks (fulfilling references, handling reference requests from public relations and analyst relations, etc) and not being strategic. To be a great reference manager you need to spend time being both tactical and strategic. Some examples of being strategic include developing your customer reference plan, setting customer reference program goals, strategizing how you can help other teams at your company, setting goals around your company's yearly objectives, and developing your customer references for your newer products/solutions.

The teams you can help most as a customer reference manager are your sales teams. Customer references are a very powerful tool to not only help close sales but also to help arm your sales reps with customer successes to generate interest with prospects, promote selling new products to current customers and to use in competitive situations. Here are some of the favorites I have developed and/or used.

• Customer Success Examples - This is a document that lists customer successes by industry and includes the company name, the original pains, the products/solutions they've implemented and their successes. The best successes are specific metrics like how much they saved in dollars/ time/headcount, productivity increases, ROI, etc. These are very powerful tools for sales, inside sales and others to learn customer successes they can use when they talk with customers and prospects.
• Customer Success Slides - These slides take some time but are really worth it. They are similar to the success examples but it is one customer success per one Powerpoint slide. On this slide you can include the customer logo, customer profile (revenue, number of employees, industry), then you list the customer pain, the products/solutions they've implemented and their successes. These are helpful for sales to have background on your customer successes but also because they can use the slides for presentations they give to customers.
• Customer References by Industry and Geography- This are simply Powerpoint Slides which list your customer references by industry and geography which again helps your sales teams know customer references and also customer names they can drop during conversations with customers.