Do You Have an Executive Sponsor With Political Influence and Budget Authority?

February 8, 2010

In our last post on the checklist for a successful customer reference program, we discussed making sure that the value of customer references is fully acknowledged by sales and marketing. The next important question on the checklist is whether you have an executive sponsor? In our experience many do not.

While it is important to have a manager that supports you, that is not an executive sponsor. Even if your boss is a VP, he or she may not really be an appropriate executive sponsor. A customer reference program is a challenging, cross-company initiative. To be successful, we’ve found you need someone with a visible and respected position who has:

- The ability to work with other groups. You will want your customer reference program to work effectively with other sales, marketing and company initiatives. This can be a challenge for an individual who works solely with one group. 

- The ability to secure funding. In order to run an effective customer reference program you will likely need some level of budget. 

- The ability to help create and maintain credibility. You will need a person who has the respect of the majority of your employees. This will help convey the importance of the program and keep the momentum going. 

An executive sponsor is someone with the influence to mobilize and energize the people you need. You, of course, will be responsible for taking the action to complete the tasks. If you are not sure how to enlist an executive sponsor first take the time to really understand your organization, because the organization chart may not tell the whole story. Networking with many people will help you gain access to key executives. This can be a challenge if you do not hold a management title in your company however; even working with your own manager can help you gain access to higher ups. As you begin to talk with others make sure you have a solid justification, clear vision, and lucid plan so that you can communicate your goals and demonstrate your accomplishments. This will help get people on board quickly.

Once you have secured your executive sponsor, keep the communication lines open so that your sponsor can maintain consistency. Remember that this will not always be your executive sponsor’s top priority, so demonstrate your ability to adapt to the changing priorities and find ways to make it easy for your sponsor to continue advocating your program.

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Is There Consistent Acknowledgement That References Are Valuable?

February 1, 2010

Whether you are building a new program or already have a program underway, it’s important to know the answer to this simple question. Does your company acknowledge that references are valuable to sales and marketing? We’ve seen too many customer reference managers focusing on process best practices, automation tools and creative deliverables without first securing confirmation on this important question. Customer reference tactics are important, but if your organization doesn’t have real appreciation and active recognition that customer references drive revenue, then your efforts will be undermined or encounter friction along the way. So this is the place you need to begin. If there is partial acknowledgement but you hear qualifications in the answer you receive, then you need to refocus the discussion back to this fundamental question.

If your immediate management team appreciates the value, then you are off to a good start. Expand by taking the pulse of your executives, sales staff, marketing department as well as PR and Investor Relations. If there is still general agreement that references do hold value, then you can move on to defining and communicating the goals that will maximize your program efforts.  

We suggest that your goals be as specific and measurable as possible so that you will have solid data with which to report ROI as the program develops. Some examples of customer reference program goals are below:

  • Increasing the frequency of reference use (greater use of references adds greater value)
  • Increasing the coverage of your portfolio (greater match is more effective)
  • Increasing the longevity of references (reduced effort to obtain, demonstrated effectiveness)
  • Reducing the turn-around time to provide better experience for prospect and less time wasted
  • Reducing the amount of distraction of sales to obtain (more benefit with less cost)

If however, your organization does not value customer references then you must do some homework to demonstrate it to your key constituents. Look for a champion in the Sales department. He or she will help create the positive perception and momentum you will need to carry the program forward. Also, look at your competitors and compare what they are doing to your process. Look for opportunities to point out areas of improvement or to validate your own activity in customer references. It is also very helpful to use third party research to prove your case on the value of customer references. There are industry analysts and groups that provide updated statistics and projections on the future importance of this discipline. Finally, enlist an executive sponsor for your program. Executives can effectively communicate your message and instill its importance to the company overall. 

This post is part of our checklist for a successful customer reference program. 

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Building a Checklist For a Succesful Customer Reference Program

January 25, 2010

Over the years we have created customer reference management solutions for a broad range of clients. Throughout this work, we’ve really been able to hone in on the elements and factors that make up a successful customer reference program. Perhaps the greatest insight we can share is that success has less to do with performing the customer reference activities and much more to do with engaging in and embracing program management best practices.

We have created a checklist that we think will be helpful to any program regardless of size and budget. We consider these to be the most important considerations for every reference program. Whether launching a small, modestly funded program or expanding a large, well established program, refer to this list to stay on track for success. If you can answer yes to all these questions, you are in great shape. If you can’t, and the majority of your peers can’t, then use this as an action list to guide your efforts.

  • Is there consistent acknowledgement that references are valuable among the sales and marketing staff?
  • Do you have an executive sponsor with political influence and budget authority?
  • Do you have support from sales and sales management?
  • Do you have a roadmap for how you’d like your program to evolve?
  •  Are you interacting with others that engage customers?
  •  Is internal marketing a core part of your program?
  •  Have you defined the metrics for measuring your program?
  •  Are you using technology wisely?

In the upcoming posts we’ll dive a little deeper into why these questions and points are so important. We will offer ideas and advice on what you can do if they don’t exist in your organization today, and help you get on the road to success with a productive and valuable customer reference program.

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Questions Your Customers May be Asked…

January 7, 2010

If you are involved in coordinating customer reference phone calls, you are doing a disservice to everyone involved if you aren’t doing a little work to help prepare your customer for the questions they might receive.

One approach we’ve seen used successfully is a Customer Reference FAQ document that can be shared with customers when they join your program. While each prospect is going to have their own set of questions, they usually won’t veer too far from the basics. Here is a link to a timeless post with a set of customer reference questions related to Software that may help you get started. Prepare your own questions by collecting feedback from customers, your sales team and product management.

The original purpose of Kalsey’s list was to prepare the potential buyer so they could get good information from the reference. In fact, once you’ve prepared your own Customer Reference FAQ you could consider sharing it with your prospects. As long as you don’t imply that they are limited to any set of questions, you may gain goodwill by helping them conduct an effective evaluation in ways your competitors haven’t considered.

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Like At The Birth Of PR?

December 16, 2009

Is customer reference management an untapped discipline like public relations might once have been? Was there a time when organizations didn’t proactively look for media opportunities or form strategies for maximizing their impact?

Take a look the definition of public relations from Wikipedia.

Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics…Because public relations places exposure in credible third-party outlets, it offers a third-party legitimacy that advertising does not have.

I would argue that customer reference management is very much the same except the end points are between customer and the community: which may be prospects, investors, analysts or media themselves.

Certainly the credibility of third-party has the same effect. Yet surprisingly, organizations are just beginning to give focus and attention to manage this flow.

Today positive and negative information flows in ways like never before. It seems remiss not to look for ways to maximize opportunities, amplify and channel constructive messages, and invest in strategies and programs towards those ends. I wonder what Bernays would have to say on the subject.

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Boston Area Customer Reference Professionals Quaterly Meeting

December 10, 2009

We would like to take a minute to invite you to attend the next meeting of the Boston Customer Reference Professionals. These meetings are super informative and a great way to connect with other professionals in the reference community.

The next Boston Customer Reference quarterly meeting will be held at The MathWorks located in Natick, MA on February 5th from 12:30-3:30.

The topics of discussion will be “Running a Global Reference Program”, and “Permission for leveraging reference activities from a contractual perspective”. 

If you are interested in attending please contact Kara Manfredi at karamanfredi@deltek.com. If you are not located in the Boston area and still would like to attend please let Kara know as there are several members located outside of MA. Kara will provide dial in and webex details.

Happy Holidays !

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Recruitment Strategies – Plus Webinar

December 1, 2009

If you are interested in best practices for building references, you might want to check out this recorded webinar on Customer Reference Recruitment Strategies.  It was prepared based on feedback from some of our clients that have the formula down.

I’ll give you the key points here, but definitely check out the webinar itself for the full picture!

1. Build your strategy. Define what you are looking for and how you are going to get there. Don’t just wait for it to happen. Use survey techniques and some simple math to understand what you need and how much of it based on the audiences you intend to serve.

2. Communicate. Reach out to the different groups within your company that work with customers. Let them know what you are doing and why. Anticipate their concerns with information about why customers won’t be overused. Set expectations clearly and hold to those promises at all cost.

3. Make it easy.  Ensure that your process is easy! Don’t ask too much of your participants at any one time. Use clearly defined forms and an organized way to keep track, this way nobody has to guess what to do and nothing falls through the cracks. Stick to your guns when people try to take short cuts, guiding them back to your process. Reinforcement of good behavior is key!

4. Ring the bell. Most important, celebrate your successes! Bring that visibility to executives and don’t be afraid of internal marketing. Use metrics to show results, branding to create an identity and campaigns to increase awareness. The more buzz you can create, the more it drives people to want to be a part of it. 

The webinar is about 20 minutes and goes into a lot more depth. Enjoy!

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Getting the Most Out of Your Customer References

November 18, 2009

We all know that getting positive references from a customer can be a challenge, no matter how great the relationship may be. Because of this fact, we try to maximize existing material to get the most out of each reference. To do this, we recommend using the 4 Rs: Reconnect, Repurpose, Recycle, and Reward.

A well managed reference program can help unify an organization and enhance relationships with customers while conserving internal resources. We invite you to check out our recent article in Chief Marketer and learn more on how remembering the 4 Rs can help you get maximum results from your reference efforts.

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Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Quick…Define a Customer Reference

November 11, 2009

quick define a customer ref.jpegI just got off the phone with a marketing person who wanted help defining the term “customer reference” for his company. 

One aspect of confusion comes from who you are talking to. Sales people are usually thinking about those late in the deal requests that come in from prospects. Marketing folks, particularly if they aren’t closely involved with sales support, are typically thinking about a written document like a success story or case study. The PR team may be thinking of a request from a reporter looking to speak with a customer. We’ve seen this a lot. 

From our perspective the above are either activities or content, but a customer reference is really the “story of a successful delivery of products or services” that can be shared. It doesn’t matter if that story is told in print, as part of a speaking opportunity or in a personal conversation. The goal of customer reference management is to amplify and repeat the telling of that story in ways that can help create market impact.

Defined this way, a customer reference could consist of multiple products or services, having several people within a single company acting as advocates. The key is grouping these based on the “story” rather than the specific solution. This allows each story to be shared to its maximum  potential, and since one product may be used by different people to solve completely different problems it doesn’t make much sense to group them together.

I’d be interested to know how your company defines a customer reference.

3 Comments | Customer References, Program Tips, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Joshua Horwitz

Guest Post: Think Small

October 28, 2009

iStock_000000081309XSmallIn this economic downturn our budgets are shrinking and we are all trying to stretch each dollar. It seems that all this really takes is a little creativity, a few hours, and a very small budget. Today’s post is written by Anika Lehde of Projectline. Anika gives us some really simple (and inexpensive!) ideas on how to get the most bang for our B2B marketing buck.  Enjoy!

Think Small

The bad news is that marketing budgets are tight. Surprise. The good news is that if you have a great product, you still have your most influential sales and marketing crew: your happy customers.

You don’t have to delay or shrink your customer reference and testimonial program because you can’t afford $30k videos, or a collection of expensive deep-dive analyst papers. Even in the business-to-business world, you can let your customers tell their story naturally and unproduced. You’ll end up with genuine messages for a fraction of the cost. Here are some examples of small formats with big impact:

Handheld Videos: Send your customers a Flip camera or other small camera with a list of questions, and ask them to film their offices and interview their employees. They can send you the footage on a memory stick, and keep the camera as a “Thank You” gift. Then you only need to edit the pieces into a 1 minute snippet and publish both to your external site and your internal reference database. Be sure to publish in a format that one can easily pass along. Ask your customer to publish it on their site too. Make it a fun storytelling event.

Solo Quotes: Create a simple place on your website to allow customers to write reviews of your products and services or use a tool like TechValidate. You can take the best quotes and integrate them into your marketing content repository, internal reference database, and CRM database. Then share these quotes via Twitter, Facebook, customer communities, direct mail, and other targeted locations unique to your audience. Be sure to package your quotes in an easily shared format. Some of the strongest quotes submitted by your customers can easily segue into more formal case studies.

Phone Audio: If you are going to interview your customers for case studies, splurge for a high quality recorder to record phone interviews. Then have your customer approve 3 or 4 audio quotes per interview. You can integrate these into online documents, presentations, community sites, your reference database, and podcasts and radio content, all for much less than sending a high-end production team to record onsite. The quality of the sound recording over the phone will add to the authenticity of the content. Hire a local photographer to take a few professional photos of your interviewees to accompany the audio quotes and bring the story to life. Just make sure to keep it short. 3-4 sentences max.

Each of the items above will cost less than $1000 in productions costs, and if you already have a reference program in place, about 10 extra hours of time devoted to the project each week. This relatively small investment can produce dozens or even hundreds of unique pieces of customer evidence required to sell in this economic environment, and add serious heft to your word-of-mouth marketing and corporate reputation efforts.

About Projectline
Anika Lehde is one of the principals at Projectline Services, Inc.  Founded in 2003, Projectline is a global consulting firm dedicated to helping clients expand customer relationships and get the insights needed to make operations efficient and marketing effective. Through our expertise in Customer Engagement, Business Intelligence, and Marketing and Consulting Services, we connect customers—to our clients’ technology, to their marketing efforts, and to each other. We also connect information, bringing together comprehensive data and deep industry knowledge to deliver actionable insights that help drive technology adoption. Each of our consultants has the talent to deliver effective (and measurable) results and the commitment to share wholeheartedly in clients’ missions.

1 Comment | Customer References, Program Tips | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Joshua Horwitz

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