Whether you are a new reference manager or a long-timer one of the biggest challenges you will face is trying to avoid customer reference burnout. Your customers are your biggest assets and if you annoy your customer references by overusing or abusing them, you not only hurt your reference relationship but it can impact your company's bottom line as well. This is especially challenging when you have a customer reference for a new product/solution and you have to ask them for various reference requests. Here are some tips I've learned over the years:
First of all, track your reference requests! Whether you use cool reference software from companies (BoulderLogic and Point of Reference) or an Excel spreadsheet, you need to track your customer asks so you make sure you are overusing them. This is also helpful so you can follow up on them. I know it takes time to track these but this is a critical activity to avoid customer reference burnout.
Second, if possible try to funnel all reference requests through yourself and the sales rep. I remember at one company when I called a customer to be a reference and the customer said they had also gotten a call from a product manager, someone in PR, and someone in sales. This can be so frustrating to customers. Make sure to communicate internally that you are the reference manager and that reference requests should be funneled through you and the sales rep. Or at least establish ONE contact that works with the customers on reference requests.
Third, build up the number of customer references you have and have a good variety of references by industry, geography, size, product/solution, etc. I heard recently about a multibillion company that has two PR references that the PR team uses. This was astounding to me as they are a multibillion company and I would think they would have a much bigger pool of references to choose from.
These are just a few of my ideas. What do you do to prevent customer reference burnout at your company?
