Customer References

Building a Customer Reference Pipeline to Differentiate Your Business

by Dick Heermance

Do any of the following scenarios sound familiar?

• It’s the end of the quarter and your sales team asks you for a customer reference in a specific vertical market to help close an important order.

• An editor at a key publication calls with a request for customer references he can use in an upcoming article. And by the way, he needs them in the next few hours to meet his deadline.

• Engineering requires a list of customers of a certain size, located in specific geographical areas, who would be willing to participate in an upcoming beta program.

• The marketing VP asks you for new and long-term customer contacts to provide real-world feedback on a new product direction.

Powerful customer references are the key to growing your business. Yet a variety of obstacles hinder many companies’ ability to respond quickly to these requests. For example:

• The sales team may be too far removed from the customer after the sale, especially in companies using the channel model;

• Public relations managers are already overwhelmed with media/analyst relations and agency management doesn’t have time to take on another task; and

• Marketing/sales departments, still reeling from budgets cuts, cannot support a full-time customer reference manager.

The result is lost sales and missed opportunities to participate in valuable activities that will enhance future business growth.

Building a Customer Reference Pipeline

Smart companies are realizing that they need to build a customer reference pipeline just like they do their sales pipeline. Taking this strategic approach enables them to get quick access to the right set of customer references to respond quickly to requests from marketing, sales and their executive team. By leveraging a systematic customer reference process they can mine, qualify and maintain the database, and match customer references to sales or PR opportunities, enabling them to reap the maximum benefit of a satisfied customer base.

A customer reference is only as good as your last meeting with that customer.“A formalized Customer Reference process can improve support for sales and marketing”

Customers relocate, get new email addresses, and may even change how they feel about your company. That’s why an ongoing process is needed to provide fast access to accurate and current customer references. New references must be added and existing references updated on a regular basis so that there are no surprises when it’s time to name names.

Why Formalize Your Customer Reference Process?

Companies that have formalized their customer reference process see a large growth in qualified customer references, while increasing customer reference referrals from channel partners and other evangelists. Following are some of the benefits of a customer reference process:

• Build and maintain a pipeline of qualified customer references to support key sales and marketing activities

• Increase sales revenues by having quick access to references meeting specific company characteristics in a variety of markets and regions

• Reduce fear, uncertainty and doubt by providing relevant references to make prospective new customers feel comfortable about doing business with your company

• Quickly identify and utilize current customer references for sales, PR, and marketing opportunities

• Prevent customer reference burnout by building a vast army of evangelists to distribute the load

Expected Outcomes from a Formalized Process

By making the commitment to systematize its customer reference efforts, a company can support its sales and marketing functions with important deliverables, including:

• A pipeline of references to help marketing teams, the sales force and partners generate leads, reduce sales cycles, and evangelize the company and its products

• Case studies to post on its websites or use in a variety of its or its partners’ marketing tools

• Testimonials to use in its marketing and prospecting activities

• Customer speakers willing to evangelize the company’s technologies and brands at industry events

• Lead-generation participants willing to partner with the company in webinars, seminars and other demand creation activities

• Article writers willing to promote the company and its customer solutions in the trade press

• Press references to respond to spontaneous, fast-turnaround requests from the media who are hungry for customer references to include in news stories, articles and case studies

• Analyst references to provide real-world customer data to the analyst community, ensure that that the company’s value propositions is reflected in their research studies, and increase the likelihood that analysts will refer the company to thei clients

• Quotes to use with websites, event signage, case studies, presentations and other marketing tools

Dick Heermance is a marketing consultant with extensive experience working with companies of all sizes in marketing communications, product marketing, channel marketing, partner marketing and marketing programs.

This paper and the material it links to are published with permission of the authors.  All rights to these materials remain with the authors.