Do you find yourself stuck in a reference rut? Are you using the same handful of customers time and time again to fulfill reference requests? Worried about burning them out? It might be time to recruit some new customer references.
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.
Posted by Joshua Horwitz 
