Before You Start - Develop Your Plan

For any of you who have built a home you can probably remember how important the blueprints are. In fact, there is no way that a contractor would build a home for you unless you have blueprints. Well just like with a home, you are building a reference program, so you need blueprints also know as a plan. If you can take a few weeks or months to build your plan this will make a huge difference in how successful your program will be.

As you develop your customer reference program plan, here are some things you my want to include in your plan:

• Executive Summary (benefits to company and customers)
• SWOT (Strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
• Business Challenges (Challenges to getting references)
• Program Goals and Objectives (Top three goals and supporting objectives)
• Customer Program Components (Web, newsletters, deliverables)
• Project Strategies (Guidelines, Rules of engagement, scripts, forms)
• Proposed Program Changes (Levels 1-4, benefit matrix etc)
• Job Details/Responsibilities (Including expectations, timelines etc)
• Action Items (90 day plan to get started and then goals for rest of year)
• Research (Industry Research, survey results, Target 100 references, Target 50 success stories )

Before You Start - Research

Before you start your reference program, you need to do some research. First, you need to research your own company. You need to know things about your company including company history, the products/solutions, executives etc. When you talk to the customers you are representing the company and need to represent well. Sometimes in conversation with customers they will ask a question, bring up a concern, etc. Be ready so you can help them out as much as possible or get the customer to the right contact at your company.

Second, you need to know your customers. You need to know who the main contact is at the company. Will you be working with the IT Admin, Database Administrator, Chief Marketing Officer etc? Know who your customers are including the industries they work in, the type of business challenges they face and how your solutions help them overcome these challenges. There is a lot more information you can research about your customers including what products they bought, survey responses they have provided, if they left the publicity clause in their contract with you, etc.

Finally, you should research your company and marketing objectives. You need to align your reference program with these objectives. Here's an example. If you know that your marketing department has a marketing campaign in January focused around virtualization, keep in mind that you'll probably need some references to support that campaign. Or if your company has an initiative around energy savings then you'll need to keep your ears open for customers who have had success in this area. Being aware of these initiatives and being proactive can help you stay ahead of requests and your life will be a lot less stressful.

Customer Reference Programs and Strategy

Being a Customer Reference Manager can be stressful with requests from Sales, Public Relations, Analyst Relations, Marketing, Management, etc. If you aren't careful, you will spend 100% of your time handling tactical tasks rather than being strategic. Balancing my time between being tactical and strategic is definitely one of the biggest challenges I've faced as a reference manager. Therefore, I'd like to recommend some ways you can be more strategic with your Customer Reference Program.

First, make sure your reference program aligns with your company's products/solutions. If your company's sells 75% management products and 25% security products, then you should have references and success stories that align with these numbers. It's also really important to look at your company's yearly initiatives and make sure your reference program support these. For example, if your company's 2010 company objective is to increase product sales of document management then you need to have some document management references and success stories to support the initiative. You should be really hooked into your beta program and working with product managers and beta customers to track which beta customers you can use to get references, success stories, quotes for press releases etc.

Second, I highly recommend you spend at least five hours a week planning and staying organized. Years ago I learned this in a Stephen Covey Time Management class and it has helped me tremendously. I have a special planner that I use to track my current projects and every Friday I spend a few hours following up on items and planning for the next week. This can be a challenge in our roles which I why I usually do my planning Friday afternoons as there are not many meetings scheduled Friday afternoons, some people leave early on Fridays and in general it's a slower day. Another thing you need to spend time doing is tracking customer reference requests. Tracking this information is really important to prevent customer overuse and burnout! One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not tracking what you ask of customers and re-asking them. Your customers are gold and you should never overuse them.

Third, you need to realize your company is going to be around for a long time (hopefully) so never go for a short-term win that might jeopardize your long-term relationship with your customers. Here's an example, let's say you have a press release you've been asked to get a quote for. Everyone keeps pressuring you to get this quote including your manager, public relations, product management etc. In order to get them off your case, you push the customer more than you're comfortable with to ensure you get the quote. Ok so you've got the quote now. Was it worth pushing your company's most valuable asset to get this ONE quote? By pushing too hard you could jeopardize your relationship with the customer and even lose the account. I don't think it's ever worth it. Plus you might need to go back to that customer later to ask for a success story, video etc and they'll remember how you treated them.