Quality vs. Quantity is the key to success

When you are building a customer reference program, it is easy to be sucked into the fallacy that more is better. You or your manager may have been given a goal to bring X number of new customers into the program this quarter (or else you don’t get your bonus!). While having a large pool of customer references is important, it is also important to consider the quality and effectiveness of these customers. It may be a better use of your time to focus your limited resources on recruiting ‘high impact’ customers.

What makes a customer ‘high impact’? Here are some characteristics of what might make one customer a stronger candidate than another. The customer is:

• A well-known brand, a household name (Dell, Google, Coke, Safeway)
• From a vertical market that is a target for your sales team (finance, retail, healthcare)
• Able to show quantifiable results from using your product or service
• Articulate and able to convey a clear message
• Genuinely passionate about your company and product
• Willing to be involved in a variety of reference activities

Customer A
Here is an example of how this affects your program: After you spend weeks chasing them, Customer A reluctantly agrees to be a reference. You set up a call with the prospect. A few days later, the sales person calls you to tell you that after the reference call happened, his prospect decided not to buy! Here’s why – on the reference call, Customer A was from a small, five person IT shop that no one had ever heard of. He didn’t have any real benefits to talk about, but said that the solution was forced on him by his boss. He gave the prospect one-word answers and mostly mumbled throughout the call. He said he was busy and didn’t know much about the solution.

If you have many customers like this in your program, you have a problem and your program is fundamentally weak.

Customer B
Instead, let’s see what it looks like with a high impact customer: Customer B enthusiastically and promptly accepts an invitation into your reference program. He works for Kellogg Brand Foods. You set up a reference call with the prospect. On the call, he shares his ROI dashboard with the prospect and gives specific dollar amounts of how much money was saved by switching to your product. He answered the prospect’s questions with the right amount of technical detail as well as the business benefits. He even explained why they purchased three more of your company’s products and got your prospect interested in them as well! Without even being asked, Customer B talked about the high level of customer service he receives from your company’s support department – and this seals the deal. The sales person sends YOU a gift basket for setting him up with such a fantastic, well-matched reference which helped him attain his quota for the quarter!

If your reference program has 50 Customer Bs, it will be much more successful than if you had 100 Customer As. This may sound obvious and certainly isn’t rocket science but it’s often forgotten that quality vs. quantity is the key to success when deciding which customers would make a good reference. Now go get ‘em!

Boulder Logic would like to invite you to join us for our upcoming webinar.

Event Title: Managing a Global Customer Reference Program – Understanding the Cultural Differences

Date: February 2 at 10 a.m. PST

If you are fielding reference requests from all over the world, then you know how challenging this can be.  Understanding and respecting your customers’ cultural differences is essential to maintaining positive relationships and running a succesfull international program, but it’s often difficult to know what’s expected in each country.

Boulder Logic is excited to have Claudia Koenig share her thoughts and experience on this subject.  Claudia is a true customer reference professional with multiple years experience managing global customer reference programs for some of the world’s leading companies.  Claudia started her own customer reference consultancy firm back in 2009, CKoenig-Consulting, where she provides guidance and support for her client’s best in class customer reference programs.

This 30 minute webinar will focus on the importance of understanding your clients and their regional differences.  Claudia will share tips on how best to interact with people in different parts of the world, such as:

• What is expected in terms of formality in Germany or France?
• Is it necessary to apply for a visa or will a passport suffice when travelling to and from Russia?
• Do they prefer site visits or phone calls in LATAM?

When: Thursday, Febuary 2

Time: 10 AM -10:30 AM PST

Register at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/262055830

 
Finding new references can be challenging especially if your customer list is not as long as you would like it to be just yet.  But, believe it or not, sometimes those that do have a lengthy list of customers, have just as hard a time finding good references than those that have a dozen or fewer.  Regardless of the length of your list, there are several ways to uncover and cultivate a variety of great references for your company.  Below are three to get you started.

1. Build relationships with your sales team.  Depending on the size of your sales organization you may need to be selective about who you focus on as it may not be possible to have a relationship with everyone.  But getting to know your key sales reps is the yellow brick road to uncovering hidden customer gems.  You will have the inside knowledge about what the customers are doing and how they feel about the company.  This will put you on the fast track to adding new reference customers.  Make yourself valuable and likeable to the sales team and you will be rewarded.

2. Send a survey out to your sales team.  Just ask a few key questions or use it to request that they each nominate a few new customers for the program and then do the follow up research yourself.  Try to do this in bite size chunks so as not to overwhelm them and turn them off to the process.  Remember, every sales team is different in terms of their willingness to participate in these types of activities.  So, if your group is likely to be less motivated, try enticing them with some type of  incentive or play on their competitive nature by making it a contest.

3. Scour the list.  Whether your list is scribbled on your office white board, maintained on a spreadsheet or securely housed in a customer reference management database, take a good hard look at who you have, who you have already used and who you have not.  Try to give those you have used recently a break and find ways to use the others, the underused members of your program should be considered a wasted asset and given some extra love and attention.

Sometimes it helps to step back from your day to day routine and take a look with fresh eyes.  Be creative, switch up your typical way of thinking.  Dig a little deeper, you will find fresh resources that will take your program further.