Seven Essentials of a Winning Reference Program

It’s 4 pm on a Friday. Everyone else has left the office. The phone rings. You pick it up and someone frantic on the other side asks: I just received a bid and the prospect is asking for names and addresses of companies we’ve done similar work for before? And oh BTW, the response is due back to the prospect on Monday.

You panic. You berate yourself for picking up the phone. Because you know you won’t have a happy weekend. You’ll be calling everyone you know to try to find some kind of customer reference.

You pull out your PDA or Rolodex or company directory and think: who can I call? You spend the entire weekend looking for the information.

You ponder: shouldn’t someone in the company already have this information?

Don’t we have some kind of repository of customer successes? Surely, some customers want to be our advocates, speak to others on our behalf…right?

YES! You can have a system, a repository of customer successes to make the marketing and sales job easier to turn customers into advocates. I’m sharing with you today seven essentials of a winning reference program based on IT-industry best practices.

Essential #1: Customers
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to think upfront about which customers you want to endorse your products and solutions. Are there certain segments or geographies you want to target? Certain customers you know have cache?
Most companies don’t have the resources to pursue all references from all customers.

Essential #2: Executive Support
Identify key executives – CMO, Sales support, bids and proposals, sales leads, line of business leads—people who have some stake in the program’s success. Speak with each individually and give them the opportunity for input and support. You may even want to pull them together into a governance council and together, they can be your biggest cheerleaders.

Essential #3: Results Focus and Metrics Tracking
Think about which metrics you want to track and report. Consider four different groups of stakeholders—executives, sales, marketing, and your own team—to whom results needed to be reported. That means possibly different metrics for each group of stakeholders.

What tends to be most important is impact on revenue. Think about how you might measure that. Some companies have proprietary systems, some are using Siebel or Sales Force.com, some are using Excel spreadsheets. Whatever you use, think first with the end in mind.

Essential #4: Flexible Options for Customer Participation
You’ll probably find that different customer segments want to participate in the program in different ways. From quotes to testimonial letters to full-blown case studies and industry conference participation, the more options you offer, the more customers will find activities that meet their own goals as well as yours.

Essential #5: Rewards and Recognition
Do you need to incent sales? Do you need to incent customers? Customers of many customers are more interested in peer-to-peer interaction and increased access to your executives.

Consider, too, recognizing your internal resources on a regular basis. Maybe that sales exec who brings in references every month. Or maybe that PR staffer who constantly lines up interviews for you while she’s working on a press release. Pull together your own network of ambassadors to champion the program internally as role models.

Essential #6: Passionate Evangelism
Beyond the senior executives and network of ambassadors, evangelism is still necessary. Dale Carnegie wrote that enthusiasm is the secret ingredient and he was right. If you and your executives are enthusiastically communicating about the program and your references, your audiences will feel your passion, too, and you’ll inspire them to help.

Essential #7: Continuous Innovation
There’s always room to grow—online community, social networking, NetPromoter®- based metrics, reference databases, and more.

Keep listening to your customers and what they want and need in a reference program. What will drive their advocacy? By using these seven essentials, you’ll be able to drive a program that can leverage your existing customers into advocates for your business to bring in even more business.