Voice of the (B2B) Customer

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Customer Reference Forum is now well into its 5th year, and we have some new initiatives to announce that reflect your changing needs as well as the changing nature of the reference profession.  I’m featuring these in this blog because we’re looking for your input.

 SURVEY: LET US KNOW YOUR NEEDS

We’re going to formally survey our entire community to get a better understanding of your current needs in areas such as:

- Research: What benchmark information do you need to help budget and build your reference program, and to guide you in adopting new technologies like Web 2.0?

- Vendor Services. How can we help you find and select the right vendors to help you with your program? 

- Fall Workshop: We'll invite your input here as well. 

- What else? We'll also give you an opportunity to let us know about other needs you have we may not be aware of. 

 In the past, we’ve relied on input from our Advisory Board and anecdotal input from members of our community. Time to make this a formal process that includes everyone.

For more information or to participatte in the survey, please drop me an email (upper right corner). 

 CUSTOMER STRATEGY GROUP

We’re forming an umbrella organization, the Customer Strategy Group www.customerstrategygroup.com, intended for senior marketing executives focused on key-customer engagement efforts – that is, their purview includes customer reference programs, advisory boards, executive forums, customer communities, Net Promoter Score programs, and related efforts. CSG will give both you and the executives you report to critically needed research and benchmarking information on how to realize the strategic value of these programs. 

What does this have to do with reference professionals like yourself? By themselves, reference programs are important but hardly top-of-mind to most senior marketing executives. But positioned as an important component of a broader, key-customer engagement effort, they are part of something seen as increasingly critical. This sequence of charts, developed by myself and a group of about a dozen leading reference pros at last February's Forum, makes the point:

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inEvidence, Metia, Projectline Services and SumTotal Systems are currently looking for Customer Reference Professionals. For more info, please click (requires brief registration).

Here's some more details: inEvidence, the specialist global customer reference agency, is expanding its Asia Pacific presence and is currently seeking additional freelance writers fluent in Japanese, Korean or Mandarin Chinese to create compelling customer case studies for its range of technology clients. 

Metia is looking for a full time marketing manager to plan, manage and build upon their client's customer reference and testimonial program. The role is based in the UK but some travelling will be required as the successful candidates will work closely with sales and marketing teams across Europe.

Metia is also seeking an Account Director for their Customer Reference Program who will be responsible for managing the Customer reference program in EMEA, providing tactical and strategic oversight for the region. This person will be responsible for achieving business results that support worldwide program goals, drive business impact, share dotted line management responsibility for local customer reference program vendors, and develop relationships with regional sales and marketing personnel. 

Projectline Services, Inc. is looking for an enthusiastic marketing project manager to help their clients produce high quality and influential customer testimonial case studies. 

SumTotal Systems is seeking a Customer Reference Program Manager. The Customer Marketing Team develops, executes and manages various processes and programs to demonstrate customer success and SumTotal Systems market leadership.  In this role you will serve as the single point of access to meet the customer reference requirements of various internal organizations (Corporate Marketing, PR/AR, Product Marketing, etc.)

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Despite the economy, we had strong representation again at last month’s 2009 Customer Reference Forum. Most of the world’s leading reference programs attended, including Microsoft, Oracle, EMC, Intel, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, SAS Institute, Hitachi Data Systems, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Genesys, Teradata, Qwest Communications, Research in Motion, Salesforce.com, Alcatel-Lucent, Red Hat, National Instruments and dozens of other great firms.

Please click here for a recap, including information about our President’s Award Winners for top presentations: Craig Frampton, Leslie Vaughan, Kerry O'Shea and Elizabeth Stack SAS Institute;  Laura Ramos, Forrester Research; Cynthia Hester, Hewlett-Packard.

Here is the major takeaway that emerged in presentations and discussion throughout the Forum - from the fireside chat with ex-Motorola CIO Patty Morrison, the keynote by Forrester Research’s Laura Ramos, the discussion in our Peer Exchange session with experienced reference pros, and other discussions:

Reference Programs can, and should,  increase their visibility with senior management. They are well positioned to do so – particularly in this economy. And we define “increased visibility” with senior management to mean that Reference Programs get the budget they need to make the contribution they’re capable of, along with ongoing attention and involvement of senior management.

• Ex-Motorola CIO Patty Morrison described how reference managers can play a key role in building close relationships with senior decision makers at your customers. Particularly if you offer such customers the full gamut of what might be called “Customer Engagement” opportunities - including referencing, advisory board and community participation with their peers. This allows your customers to engage with their peers in a meaningful way, which they value highly, and it gives them direct contact with senior decision makers at your firm, as well as input into your firm’s strategy, which they also value highly - provided their input translates into action on your part. In addition, it lets them partner with you in promoting not only your business but theirs as well.

• Forrester’s Laura Ramos described a larger vision of “Community Marketing” that can include customer decision makers. Laura believes that Reference Programs can and should play a key role in such efforts - "their time has come" as she put it. One of the most compelling findings in Forrester's research is - contrary to come conventional wisdom - the growing propensity of decision makers to use social media in business decision making/ adoption activity.   

• At our Peer Exchange session, experienced reference pros identified a key need: raising their visibility with senior management. As Patty and Laura pointed out, they are well positioned to achieve this.   

• As several other presenters mentioned throughout the Forum, senior management understands  that references are even more critical in a downturn, as buyers become increasingly cautious and therefore increasingly dependent on “proof points” -- the most credible of which are references.
  

What are the implications of this for you professionally and for your program? Stay tuned! We’ll look at those in the next post.

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I thought I'd give you a heads-up on new initiatives underway for the community, including introduction of a Membership option for Customer Reference Forum, a new Vendor Match Service to help you keep abreast of vendor solutions, an initiative to make the incredible content from the upcoming 2009 Customer Reference Forum available to those who can't attend, a possible 2nd conference this year on the East Coast, and more.

New Initiatives for Customer Reference Forum

Membership Model

We'll be moving Customer Reference Forum to a Membership Model soon. Membership will be entirely optional of course, but we'll structure it so that the Membership fee will more than pay for itself by including valuable reports and surveys, discounts on the yearly conference, access to our vendor service, an expanded jobs service, and more. Plus, it will raise the visibility and the profile of our organization, its members, and our profession as a whole.

Vendor Service

We'll be kicking off a Vendor Service for reference managers in the next couple of months. This is at the request of a couple of our Advisory Board members, who'd like to have one location where they can keep abreast of which vendors provide what solutions and services, as well as info about emerging vendors in this space. Details are being worked out as I write this, but some obvious things we'll want to include would be educational materials to help you understand new solutions coming along; vendor reference information and perhaps other due diligence information, help to save you time in sorting through vendor options, and the like.

2nd Event This Year?

I've had many people, particularly on the East Coast and in Europe, ask if we'll be holding an event on the East Coast. We'll be sending out a survey to gauge interest in that soon.

Access to Content from the 2009 Forum

Also, for folks who can't make it to upcoming 2009 Forum, we're looking for practical ways to get the content to you, perhaps in a series of Webinars from some of our presenters. Of course, nothing replaces being there in person to exchange ideas and nurture your professional relationships with your peers. But the content at this year's Forum is too strong to miss - from Forrester Research's take on the importance of References; to our hands-on Web 2.0 workshop; to insights from high-profile CIO Patty Morrison; to new ways to establish the value of your program; strategies for dealing with the economic downturn, and more. I'm constantly amazed at how dynamic our profession is.

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This week I had a chance to interview Craig Nunes, VP of Marketing, 3PAR about how they are engaging previously 'unreferencable' customers - or "the other 90%" - through a remarkable application of Social Media and web-based survey tools. Craig will be a presenter at the  2009 Customer Reference Forum. 

A. I have been with 3PAR since 2000 and am Vice President of Marketing. 3PAR

provides a highly virtualized storage array for virtual (utility) data centers within medium to large enterprises, cloud service providers, Internet and Web 2.0 companies, and government agencies. We were founded in 1999 by the engineers and architects who developed the core of the Sun Server products back in the '90s. 3PAR is headquartered in Fremont, California and has offices across the US, Europe and Asia. The company is also publicly traded on the NYSE Big Board under the ticker symbol 'PAR.' Gartner has positioned us in the enterprise disk array market as leading in vision for 5 straight years and has recognized the company as #2 in the US Hosting market.

Q. Can you also give us a quick overview of the Reference Program at 3PAR.

A. Until recently, our customer reference program was very conventional, aimed at the following:

·    Customer success stories or win announcement published via a press release and pitched to targeted journalists

·    Supporting product launch activities with customer quotes

·    Placing customers in speaking opportunities at large storage events

I would characterize our efforts as blocking and tackling, but not making the most of an awesome customer base and viral enthusiasm.

Q. What led you to implement the Social Media/ Web-based survey platform you're using? What problem were you trying to solve? Also, what do you call the platform?

A. We have been selling our products into the social media space - to firms such as MySpace and Facebook - and have watched with interest as these and other Web 2.0 companies have revolutionized communication. Our customer base is very passionate about our solutions, and about 10% ALREADY are publicly vocal about them. We were looking for a social media strategy that fit our B2B application, specifically finding a way to engage the OTHER 90% who weren't able for a variety of reasons to publicly reference for us. That's when we ran across TechValidate.

Q. Tell us a bit about how the platform you set up at 3PAR, and how it functions. How difficult and costly was it to implement?

A. We turned to TechValidate which is a web-based software service that allows us to engage our customer base in a very natural way, pose questions to them, and derive "certified" value statements that can be used on our website and in our public announcements. Set up was very simple. We developed a couple of simple questionnaires and an email list of targeted 3PAR customers. If you like immediate gratification, you will love applying social media to your customer base -- responses to the survey arrive in real-time with nuggets of pure gold.

Q. Can you describe for us some of the more important results your Reference Program has achieved using the platform?

Once our surveys were closed, after about two weeks, we were able to perform quick and simple analysis with the tools provided by TechValidate's website. This led to a new type of reference. Previously, 3PAR customers like Credit Suisse or Deutsche Bank, large financial services firms, were very strict about what could be publicly referenced. However with this new platform, we are now able to reference what might be called "aggregated testimonials" like these non-market specific statistics called "Tech Facts:"

"50% of 3PAR customers surveyed say they have saved at least $50K of Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) costs over the past 12 months with 3PAR Thin Provisioning."

Or this:

"32% of 3PAR customers say they have reduced physical capacity requirements by at least 10 TBs over the last 12 months with 3PAR Utility Storage"

These could have just as easily been done by market or by application type, depending upon your preferred segmentation.

Once results are distilled into useable conclusions (Tech Facts), they are certified by TechValidate. We have now leveraged these results into content for a couple of press releases and webpages - and we just started in November! And I can tell you that when we issue the releases with third-party certified statistics such as these, the media is much quicker to pick them up and use them in their articles. Our Tech Facts possess an inherent credibility versus the traditional vendor claims in a press release. 

Another important result: we're picking up additional new references from this platform as well. That is, we're converting about 10-20% of that 90% who weren't referencing in the traditional way, and converting them into traditional references. I'll be describing how that works at the Forum

Q. What are your plans for expanding and building upon this platform, going forward. What do you see as it's ultimate potential?

A. We are just scratching the surface in this area and have more learning to do. We are also interested in how we can take information from this tool and publish it within our BoulderLogic customer database so that our sales team can not only view the traditional information we capture about a given customer, but also details about a customer that may surface from a TechValidate survey.

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The 2009 Customer Reference Forum is just a few weeks away and this week I had the chance to chat with Intel's Rhett Livengood and Umang Shah, formerly of Xerox and VMware about a fabulous workshop they're planning.   

The workshop will be a 90 minute "bring-your-laptop-and-get-your-hands-dirty" event showing how to move your reference program online. When you leave, you'll have a Web 2.0 strategy, together with the tools and knowledge you need to implement it as painlessly as possible. 

Q. Rhett and Umang, can you give us a quick overview of your Customer Reference programs and the role you play in them?

RHETT: I manage Intel's Worldwide Customer Reference Program and Enterprise Customer Reference Board (CRB).

UMANG: I have managed worldwide Sales and Customer Reference programs for Xerox, BEA and VMware.

Q. How is the current downturn affecting your reference programs?

A. The day-to-day management of our reference pipeline hasn't changed but we're seeing many organizational changes in our customer base.  Executive sponsorship of our program is strong with pressure to control spending and make the most of our existing reference customers.  There is a greater focus on one-to-many events wherever possible.

Q. The workshop you're planning is called "Get Your Hands Dirty in Web 2.0: Bringing Your Reference Program Online in an Hour and a Half."  If attendees bring their laptops and some reference content, you'll get their reference program online right there during the workshop. And when they leave, they'll have a Web 2.0 strategy, together with the tools and knowledge they'll need to implement it as painlessly as possible. How will you pull this off?

A. With today's Web 2.0 tools and the knowledge on how to use them, anyone can get started on moving their reference program online. This session is designed to be a "kick start" using real references data and content from Customer Reference Forum® attendees. The session will be a "master class" with industry experts telling you the "answers".

Q. Tell us a bit about the strides your own reference programs are making in leveraging social media tools?

Rhett: We moved our entire reference program online in 2008. In 2009, the challenge is to continue to "go where our customers are online" and refine our processes in developing online content.

Umang: Our focus at Xerox was mutli-pronged. We minimized traditional case study development and took advantage of multimedia (podcasts, webinars), blogs, LinkedIn, and even Twitter to push our content out to our customers. Furthermore, we took advantage of 3rd party sites that our customers tended to visit.

Q. Where are you finding that Web 2.0 is making the biggest, measurable impact on your reference programs? Where is it helping your reference programs make the biggest impact on sales and marketing?

A. The communities that we foster and others that develop on their own allow our customers to interact with each other more easily and share feedback with us directly and quickly. Additionally, our reference content is getting so much more exposure than ever before. For example, Rhett has increased exposure for his reference summaries by 100X over his standard reference library.

Q. How is Web 2.0 helping you to cut reference program costs and streamline operations?

A. We are able to cut reference program costs by reducing the number of new, expensive case studies we create. Social media lets us do this by leveraging our existing content, optimizing it for the web, and then syndicate that content to get the most traction out of it.

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This week I had the chance to chat with SAS Institute's' Director or Marketing, Craig Frampton, who along with several members of his reference team will moderate a panel at this year's Customer Reference Forum on how they are redefining - and expanding - the role of their program in the current economy. 

This will be one of several presentations showing how reference programs are not only cost cutting or streamlining in this economy, but are finding ways to provide important new strategic value. 

Q. Craig, Many reference managers are talking about cost cuts, layoffs, scaling back, "hunkering down,"etc. But you're finding opportunities for your reference program. Let's explore those. Why don't you start by telling us where senior management is seeing new opportunities for SAS' business in this turbulent environment?

A. We believe that in the midst of turmoil stands opportunity. Like many technology firms today, we recognize that our software and services can help companies navigate today's challenges and also create new opportunities - by helping them make the right decisions, helping them leverage better integrated information across the enterprise, and so forth. In fact, we have some compelling value propositions. For example, organizations that are prepared during rough times can seize the moment and perhaps leap ahead of the competition. At the least, a turbulent environment represents a burning platform to get things done in order to survive.

As a result, from a customer reference standpoint, the only way that SAS can definitively understand what our customers need in this environment is to listen to them. As reference professionals, creating a community of conversation for our customers to share not only what they are currently doing with SAS solutions, but what their emergent business challenges are, is a critical component in growing our overall business. My team plays a crucial role in that chain of understanding. In turn, senior management sees customer referencing as an extremely high priority function. Without new references being added to the program and without existing references to help drive ongoing value, we lose an important piece of a very customer-centric puzzle at SAS.

Q. What are some of the more important ways that the SAS Reference Team is providing value in this economy?

A. For one thing, we play a key role - among several stakeholders at SAS - in refining our products and services. The reason we can play such a role is that we're the ones talking to customers about how they actually use - and benefit - from our offerings. As we all know, these often differ from the ways that planners, product development and sales people think customers will use and benefit from our solutions. Getting that information into the feedback loop is therefore critical, and it's why we play a key role in the process.

As a result, we're now able to play an important role in developing solutions that will meet the needs of customers - such as Financial Services firms, for example - in this very tumultuous economy. We'll be developing and refining lots of solutions, rapidly. It's critical to have a robust feedback loop to refine these solutions, and it must obviously include customer input. That's why we'll continue to play a vital role in this environment.

Q. Are there new areas in which your Reference Team is providing value to SAS business goals?

A. Yes. One of the things we're focusing on as a company in this economy is to dive deeper into the needs of our biggest customers. Often these are huge, global firms that, in this environment, may well be growing through acquisition - such as healthy banks acquiring faltering banks.

By taking a deeper dive into these customers' needs, SAS can provide better value. Obviously our Reference Program can help in the process of understanding these needs.

In addition, SAS is working very hard to focus on the solutions providing the most essential value to customers at a critical time. Our Reference Team is playing a key role in sharpening this focus. Once priority solutions are identified, we make sure that we're developing marketing resources - references, case studies videos, industry event speakers and the like - for these solutions. I'd suggest that any Reference Program make very sure that you're not working on reference resources for solutions that were popular five year ago. Your program priorities need to be up-to-the-minute in sync with current business initiatives.

At the 2009 Forum, we'll talk more about the process we're a part of that implements this tight focus on key products and solutions.

Q. Where does your team focus its time and efforts currently?

A. We spend a lot of time focused on cross-functional collaboration.  Across sales, professional services, product marketing, field marketing, media relations, analyst relations, research and development, the list goes on and on, we all have valuable interactions with and intelligence about customers. The trick is to have just enough process, structure, and technology in place to not be overly burdensome but actually create value for the company. As you extend the reach across geographic regions, this quickly becomes a fairly complex organizational scenario. But it's worth it because we're able to complete and benefit from a collective customer picture in a global economy.

Q. How do you see the role of the SAS reference program changing as we move forward?

A. The recent and continued proliferation of information and the ability to participate in networking virtual communities on the web changes the way that referencing will be done into the future. I believe the reference evolution that is underway is moving us closer toward what looks like a "community of open conversation" between customers, prospects, and the general marketplace - obviously within reason.  Essentially, we need to facilitate or create an environment for those interactions. I'm not sure that anyone truly knows what that will look like, but considering the convergence of referencing, influencers in a buying decision, and social networking, it is a fundamental topic at SAS. It will require testing things over time, but the reality is that if we do not create a community that customers see as valuable, they will seek interaction with one another through alternate avenues.

Q. Let's look at a couple of particularly interesting markets for SAS as well as other technology firms, and the role your Reference Program is playing there. Let's start with the  Financial Services market. What opportunities is SAS seeing there?

A. Certainly, consolidation activity, government support, and a shrinking number of overall companies is a reality. However, for those companies that remain, now more than ever there is a need to manage their operations and serve and protect consumers more effectively. SAS is very active in this space, in areas of operational and credit risk, fraud, customer intelligence, data intelligence, and anti-money laundering, among other core areas. Current market conditions will create the need for more and more of the solutions that SAS offers today. In addition, as we listen to our customers in banking and insurance, for example, new business challenges will emerge and we will be able to apply analytics as a solution and value driver.

Q. What specific challenges - and opportunities - is your Reference Team finding in the Financial Services market?

A. Traditionally, the hypercompetitive and regulated Financial Services industry presents a referencing challenge - they tend to be less willing to speak publicly. We've had great success at getting customers to speak in a more controlled and structured environment. It is amazing, but one to one sales opportunities or confidential analyst community interactions have been well-received and, often, direct competitors will talk to one another. In certain instances, even before the current changes to the industry, some customers truly see the value of gaining visibility in the marketplace and are intrigued at the thought of being positioned as a thought leader.

As the market changes and the crisis continues, we're finding some interesting opportunities. First, companies that are having success, in the face of so much failure, are increasingly willing to talk about positive things. It creates a mechanism to cut through the noise of the crisis and showcase how they are differentiating from the companies that are struggling. Second, we're seeing a real spike in interest in the mid-market and regional sector. Some of the mid-size players have not seen the same level of consequence from the meltdown, and are really working to raise their profile in a shrinking space. Our Financial Services Reference Managers are working to navigate the daily changes and create opportunities for customers to express their successes and also share their challenges. This is about as volatile a market as anyone could have ever imagined, and we are working to help our customers stabilize and identify truly valuable silver linings to an ever-changing cloud of activity. At the Customer Reference Forum, we will spend some time during our panel discussion talking about the current state of affairs and how the industry is both an ongoing challenge and growing opportunity.

Q. Elizabeth Stack has described in her interview how she's managed to build a particularly robust Federal Government reference program - another key market in this economy. Are you seeing additional opportunities to expand the value of this particular reference program?

A. Elizabeth has done a fantastic job working in building Federal and also State & Local Government references. We've built an extremely tight partnership with our Government group and have a great approach to engaging Government customers.  As Elizabeth described in her recent interview and will describe in more detail at the Forum, we have established a win-win situation for Government customers; building lasting relationships, and working within the construct of the way Government agencies do business.

Assessing the current state, it appears that a solid approach to Government referencing will pay great dividends. Prevailing thinking, given challenges in so many industries, is that Government will need the ability to dive into industries, diagnose and fix problems based on analysis, and get things back on track. Looking at Financial Services or the Auto industry, for example, the Government is taking a great deal more control of the marketplace. In turn, the Government will logically grow. With an established pool of Government references and a track record of large-scale success, SAS is excited to support the efforts of agencies and find ways to highlight successes in appropriate and relevant ways. 

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We all know that cutting costs and streamlining reference programs are important in our current environment. But they aren't ALL you should focus. In all likelihood, your senior management is looking beyond cost cutting and streamlining.  Technology CEOs in particular are hot on the trail of exciting new opportunities in this tumultuous, historic economy.  

Key Question for 2009: Is your reference program positioned to be a player - to provide robust support - for your senior management's 2009 strategic initiatives? 

Here's a suggested test:

1. Are you aligned with your firm's efforts to GROW revenue in this economy?

Yes, I said "grow revenue." In this economy. Trust me, senior management at every technology firm in the world is looking for markets with growth potential.  There is huge opportunity out there - in markets such as the Federal Government, Financial Services (the entire industry is undergoing radical restructuring), Health Care, and others. There are huge opportunities in markets with entrenched market leaders. There are huge opportunities in helping companies - in any industry - cut costs and streamline operations.

At Hewlett-Packard for example, Mark Hurd is planning to challenge Cisco's core business. He's also planning to place strong emphasis on services that help customers streamline their technology infrastructures and business processes. Those are just two.

Are you aware of and is your reference program aligned with all of your firm's goals for growing revenues in 2009? 

2. Has your CRP team thought through what it can do - what it must do - to support revenue growth initiatives?

New value propositions from your firm will require new case studies and success stories. New customers and new markets will require fresh new pipelines of customer references. And in a recessions, buyers will demand more references - more proof points - not less. Do you have the budget and staff to support these efforts?

3. Has your CRP team thought through what new value it can provide in this environment?

SAS Institute's reference team, for example, is increasingly playing a key role, not in just creating and managing references, but also in helping product developers refine the new value propositions SAS is developing in this economy. Reference programs are ideally situated to provide significant help with this.  (The SAS US Reference team will be showing how, at the 2009 Forum). Is your CRP looking for such new areas to provide value?

Or take Intel and Xerox, who are finding creative ways to integrate references into their social media efforts, dramatically improving the measurable visibility of their reference material, while cutting costs of content production - a two-fer. (They'll be leading our social media workshop at the 2009 Forum).

4. Do you have clear criteria for being adequately staffed and funded to help your firm pursue these new opportunities - criteria that will get rapid buy-in from senior management?

Let me suggest one: you are properly funded if no salesperson in the field will have to spend one single hour hunting down a reference. As Infor's Abby Atkinson will show at the 2009 Customer Reference Forum, every dollar your CRP saves by not being able to fulfill reference requests will cost your firm $2 in sales salaries and benefits, plus $5 in lost revenue. All these numbers are conservative, and easily calculated using numbers probably already known to HR and Sales. In fact, she and Mainstay's Amir Hartman, who run our Metrics Special Interest Group, will provide an ROI Calculator to help you assess the impact on your own firm of underfunding your own program.

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I thought I'd summarize in one place the resources we'll provide at this year's Customer Reference Forum to help your program thrive in the recession. Indeed, many reference pros are finding ways to provide important new, strategic value in this economy.

RESOURCES FOR MANAGING (AND THRIVING) THROUGH THE MELTDOWN at the 2009 CUSTOMER REFERENCE FORUM

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The recently appointed manager of the customer reference program for a major global technology firm gives a thoughtful response to my recent comments. Please see below – I love informed debate!

She responds to my argument that reference managers shouldn’t accept travel restrictions, budget cuts and possible layoffs passively, because their programs can play a strategic role in helping their firms both deal with the downturn and position themselves for recovery.  In particular, they should consider asking for budget increases (as Infor’s Abby Atkinson has done, successfully).

They can also make a strong case for budget exemptions to attend the February Customer Reference Forum as a way, among other things, to gain rapid exposure from multiple reference programs to best practices in this dynamic field. Much of the program we’re putting together is geared precisely to showing how reference programs are making themselves strategically important to their firms during the downturn – which is why firms like Microsoft, Intel, SAS, Research in Motion and others are sending multiple members of their reference teams.

Here’s her case for not doing so. (She wishes to remain anonymous).

In [our firm] we are currently ‘battening down the hatches’ in preparation for what might be ahead through the course of the next year. As a result budgets have been scrutinized both at a program and OPEX level. . . . Our travel budgets have been cut dramatically; therefore, I cannot support attendance at the forum. This isn’t about ‘passively’ accepting these cuts, or being afraid to ‘rock the boat’ – this is about a wider appreciation of the strategic decisions that the leaders of our company are making in order for the company to keep performing at the levels our shareholders and the Street demand of us.
 
Let me put this in context for you: I . . .  have been managing the team now for approx. 6 weeks. If I had travel budget I would be using it to visit my team and see them face-to-face.
 
This isn’t about not appreciating our reference program either, far from it; our reference program in **** has got more visibility now than it’s ever had before.

Bill – I hope you understand our position on this. I wish you all the best for your forum and hope that I will be able to attend one in the future.

I wrote back that of course I understood and respect her decision, and in fact will be responding to it. In future posts, I’ll flesh out my (and others’) arguments a bit more for why reference programs often can and should play an important role in furthering “the wider . . . . strategic decisions that the leaders of [your] firm are making”  in this economy. 

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Following is the most powerful justification I’ve seen for protecting a reference program’s budget and headcount during a downturn. Infor’s Abby Atkinson – who’ll be presenting at the 2009 Customer Reference Forum - used it to reverse a request that she cut discretionary spending by 10%, and instead received a 64% increase in funding for her program.

She did this by answering two critical questions, using both internal research,  and external research from other reference programs:

1. What is the impact and cost of having a sales rep hunt for his or her own reference?  That is, what would it cost to have no reference program, or an underfunded one?

2. What does it cost to have her reference program fulfill such a reference request?

Abby showed how much time each reference request fulfilled by her reference program saved a sales rep – time better spent out selling (especially precious in a downturn) rather than digging for references. Multiplying that by the number of Infor reps worldwide, Abby showed that freeing up that amount of time would result in $3 million in extra sales using conservative and well accepted  assumptions.

As a result, the request that she cut discretionary spending in her program by 10% was withdrawn, and instead she won a 64% increase in funding for her program.

Abby will present at the 2009 Customer Reference Forum (February 18-19). See my interview with her, below.

INTERVIEW WITH ABBY ATKINSON, SENIOR DIRECTOR, INFOR AMBASSADOR REFERENCE PROGRAM

Abby's been working in marketing for high tech companies throughout her career, and has helped evaluate and initially develop reference programs with previous employers. 

Infor makes business software better by acquiring and improving proven, functionally-rich software backed by domain experts. Infor improves it via continuous innovation, faster implementation options, global enablement, and flexible buying options. In a few short years, Infor has become one of the top 3 leading providers of ERP business software. Infor's revenue is $2.2B and it has over 70,000 customers and 125 direct offices.

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Merv will be co-keynoting at the upcoming 2009 Customer Reference Forum  on February 18, along with Laura Ramos, Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester. He tells us what he learned from attending our last Forum earlier this year, why he thinks Reference Programs are growing in importance, and why Forrester is planning to start covering them as well as partner with Customer Reference Forum on this year’s program survey. Take it away Merv.

A sizable and increasing number of businesses in the technology industry are finding that their existing customer base remains one of their best sources for continuing growth. It’s well understood that it’s less costly to retain customers than it is to find new ones.  But many firms have also discovered that effective management of their Customer Reference (CR) management function – in some cases, simply the creation of a formal organization to manage these important assets – is on the critical path to both sustained business from the base and growth in new accounts. Sales uses references to nail deals down, Marketing develops reference stories for campaigns and events, and Analyst Relations uses them to support information requests from influencers.

That conclusion is no mystery to the firms that participated in the Customer Reference Forum event in February 2008 at California’s Claremont resort. And the list of attendees read like a who’s-who of the industry’s leaders. They have created, staffed, and begun to measure teams that manage their sourcing, development and distribution of customer references in a way that has begin to reap substantial benefits. They have improved their sourcing development of referenceable accounts, made better use of them for selling and marketing, reduced redundant and often conflicting programs, and grown a cadre of professionals who are learning to measure and mange the delivery of substantial value from their programs.

Forrester found the customer reference professionals at the event to be a highly motivated, increasingly well funded, and thoughtful group who were often seeking more visibility, support and resources despite their early successes. We were struck by the growth of an industry of products and services to support the CR professional: creative services, hosting, management tools and full consultative outsourcing were all in evidence.

The Customer Reference Forum event is a valuable gathering place for those involved in CR programs who seek to learn about best practices and share with their peers. It has also served as a focal point for an ongoing survey designed to document common practice in the industry, and the sponsors of the survey have several years of data tracking the emergence and growth of CR management as a discipline. They have learned that successful teams usually result from a Sales-Marketing partnership, with agreements forged to use references wisely, manage conflicts about ownership and overuse, and assure a steady stream of fresh stories to support corporate goals.

Forrester is excited to be partnering with the Forum team on this year’s survey, developing some new avenues of investigation, and sustaining the existing data elements, which document team size, reporting relationships, management styles, and more. We’ll be joining in the 2009 conference, delivering a keynote address that will include data from the survey as well as other ongoing Forrester research. Since our discussions of this important corporate function with our clients began following the 2008 event, we’ve had a steady stream of inquiries and discussions with them that will provide us with additional ideas to share. And our ongoing research onto the effective uses of social computing supplements and extends this work. We look forward to networking with the pioneers and the new arrivals alike – we hope to see you there!

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"We have a travel freeze in place and may not be able to attend the 2009 Customer Reference Forum.

"Our reference program budget may be cut."

"We're in danger of losing headcount."

Do any of these apply to you? In fact, your reference program and your continuing acquisition of best practices will - or should - merit an exception to these policies. I'm providing several compelling points you can make to demonstrate this to your decision maker.

10 TIPS FOR GETTING BUDGET $ TO ATTEND THE 2009 CUSTOMER REFERENCE  FORUM

(most of which can be used as is, or can be easily modified, to get other essential budget $ for your reference program)

1) In an economically challenging time, on-point references that are rapidly delivered to the field and to PR are even more critical. Cautious buyers need proof points now more than ever.

2) Doesn't our reference program need best practices from multiple outside sources more than ever, to help ensure maximum program-productivity in a tough sales climate?

3) Our competitors who do attend the 2009 Forum, will be able to "steal a march" on our reference program, while we fall behind on best practices if we don't participate.

4) Which part of our reference program are we willing to fall behind in: Acquiring new references? Integrating references more effectively in the sales process? Getting our references to reveal the ROI they achieve with our solutions? Integrating references into our Web 2.0 and customer

community programs?

5) Participating in the 2009 Forum fits within the exceptions of the travel freeze - which excepts travel related to acquiring new customers, and keeping them  happy. Having a robust, state-of-the-art reference program Is critical to bringing in new customers, as well as helping keep our most

prized customers happy.

6) There will likely be a lot of our customers represented in the room at the 2009 Forum - including ones that have been hard for us to get "on the record." This creates an opportunity for us to engage their reference teams, and gain their support in this important effort.

7) (Enlist your AR team for this point). Forrester Research is fielding a major survey on reference programs, and will present findings and analysis at the 2009 Forum. This will gain the attention of analysts around the world - and will provide critical information  on how to position  references to

impress analysts and get their approval. We need to be there to learn this.

8) There will likely be several of our technology partners in the room. Consider the joint-reference marketing possibilities with these partners when our people get together with theirs, live, over a two day period.

9) Will our reference team be performing at their highest potential - which we need now more than ever - if we're not making even a small investment to ensure that happens?

10) This isn't a travel or conference expense. It's a customer-acqusition and relationship-building investment.

Bonus Tip) Compare the value of 2 days exposure to 1) representatives from our best customers, 2) representatives from our partners, and 3) processes and best practices from the top reference programs in the world vs. just $2500 (approximate cost of hotel, transportation, conference fee).

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Community today reminds a lot of the Web from 10 years ago.  I was thrust into a position of running our Web team (and defining our Web strategy) in 1999.  Everyone knew "web" was very very important, but nobody really knew why, or what we should focus on.  For us, as a b-to-b business that sells fairly low-cost components and development tools for engineers at a very, very broad level (global presence, 25,000 customers, $700M in revenue) we settled on a couple key areas where we really used to web to drive our business strategy.  For a lot of things, the Web ended up reducing our costs and made us much more efficient.  

CONTEXT: WHAT WEB 1.0 HAD DONE FOR OUR BUSINESS

This isn't brain surgery, but we used the web to drive huge impact in the following areas: 

1. Reduced support costs (discussion forums, more/better technical info online, etc) 

2. More efficient/productive sales (product advisors/configurators to handle simple product discovery and compatibility, part numbers prices and basic info, e-commerce) - our goal was to make our Web handle the internal sales person role to allow them to serve our big accounts/orders 

3. Reduced marketing costs with the same/better reach (literature costs were slashed - our 700 page product catalog was completely eliminated last year, online events and webinars, banner ads instead of print ads) 

4. Intangibles (NI is "with it", they are a modern business that understands where we should be going, not where we've been, etc) 

All of these efforts are obvious now, but back then they weren't.  Also, because it was so important, we separated a lot of this activity into the Web team so we could fund it aggressively and move fast.  Today, a lot of this has been rolled back into the functional groups to become integrated with our business.   Our online event/webinar strategy is owned and executed by our Events team, who also run our physical events.  Again, makes sense, but it was an evolution. 

GOING FORWARD: WHAT WEB 2.0 CAN MEAN TO OUR BUSINESS

To me, the value of the community discussion is how do you tie it to important business objectives and how can we share best practices for using "community" to drive these different business objectives. Any discussion about "I'm rolling out a new community platform" or "what technology platform are you using" is totally irrelevant to me without some understanding of "what business objectives are you trying to drive with your community effort".  I agree that every company is a little bit different, but I heard a couple common themes this week that I think you can capture and start to build best practices around - I also think for each of these topics, you can have a parallel discussion about using open, broad-based community efforts or private, smaller communities): 

1. Influencing product roadmaps (the whole crowd-sourcing thing) - R&D and Product Management 
        - Ideamarket for broad-based 
        - advisory board for private, more intense engagement 

2. Increase your marketing footprint at a fraction of the cost - Marketing 
        - internally-driven bloggers 
        - highlighting/promoting customer bloggers 
        - getting involved in conversations away from your web site (facebook, etc) 
        - building non-branded community sites (the Dell "mobile computing" site idea, or the girl site about dealing with their changing bodies to influence them later to look at certain products) 

3. Closing larger deals/acquiring new customers (sales) 
        - Customer reference programs online 

4. In-house, low-cost primary research - business intelligence 
        - using your broad-based community to get a read on customer attitudes, loyalty, etc... 

5. Intangibles 
        - your company listens, acts on customer input, in general your company cares 

In addition to these business topics, I think there are plenty of orthogonal discussions that could be organized: 

1. Internal engagement - in addition to the obvious "how do I get executive support" question, there are more practical questions even when you do get support, like 
        - what does a moderator do?  where should they live?  what makes a good moderator?
        - what do we separate into a different department and what do you integrate into existing groups?
        - best blog policies for internal bloggers? 

2. Technology platform questions 

3.  Private vs broad-based communities 

Anyway, these are fairly obvious ideas, but I think too many business people (i.e. executives) might equate "community" with "facebook" and that immediately turns them off.  We need to start to equate "community" with "lowering costs", "expanding marketing reach and brand awareness" or "closing new accounts".    I look forward to continuing this discussion with the group of people you assembled this week.  Perhaps there is a good community platform we can all join to keep the discussions going.  

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Blogging from the 2008 Communities Exchange Summit. We've had incredible  presentations from major B2B customer community programs: Intel (Josh  Hilliker, Rhett LIvengood), Intuit (Scott Wilder), Oracle (Jake Kuramoto). Bill Johnston at ForumOne Networks gave results  from their most recent research . . .

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Just caught up with Kingsley Joseph, Senior Product Manager, salesforce.com, who created salesforce.com's IdeaExchange platform. It's being used not only by SFC but also Starbucks and Dell to attract large number of customers to their community sites, make sense of their input, de-dupe their feature requests, and prioritize them in remarkably innovative ways. IdeaExchange makes ample use of popular community tools such as Digg, Twitter, Linkedin and others.

Kingsley will be speaking at the 2008 Communities Exchange Summit on October 15.

Q. Kingsley, if you would, tell us how you got involved with salesforce.com's online customer communities. Who were these people? Where have you taken the program?

A. I became involved with the salesforce.com community in early 2006 when I joined salesforce.com. Back then, we had about 50 pages of content, mainly developed by us. Over the last 2 years, we've created a system that has almost every product manager blogging about their product, as well as lively discussion and idea communities that now span 200k pages of content that attract 100k visitors a month. We're more engaged than ever with the pulse of our community, and have found innovative ways to incorporate it into the way we do business.

Q. What have you learned about engaging with your customers? What works? What doesn't?

A. The key lesson we've learned is that it is a two way street. If you want customers to engage, you have to engage first, and be willing to take the relationship to a new place. Passionate customers expect a responsive business in return.

Q. Let me see if I've got this straight. salesforce.com both engages with its own customer communities via the IdeaExchange, plus you provide a platform - Salesforce Ideas - that helps other companies engage with their communities, correct? How did IdeaExchange come to be?

A. We first created the IdeaExchange in October 2006. Our rapid growth had caught up with us, and we needed a new system for processing feature requests that could scale with our customer community. The key challenges in feature request systems are prioritization and de-duplication. I was looking for a good web 2.0 solution to these problems, when I realized that the social news site model pioneered by Digg would be a great way to solve them. I located a small startup providing an on-demand social news solution, and implemented the IdeaExchange using their product.

The success of the IdeaExchange brought calls from customers (incidentally, on the IdeaExchange) to provide them with the same capability. We acquired the startup that had provided the solution, and we've since re-written their solution on the Force.com cloud-computing platform. It's now available to customers as the Salesforce Ideas product.

Q. Who are some of your marquee customers, and how do they use Salesforce Ideas?

A. When Michael Dell came back to lead Dell, he wanted to have the company reconnect with their customers. During a chat with our CEO Marc Benioff, he showed Michael Dell the IdeaExchange, and before we knew it, Dell IdeaStorm had launched. Within the first week, Dell IdeaStorm had collected more than 500 ideas; by the first month it had collected 2,500 ideas. Soon, Dell deployed EmployeeStorm, a secure community that allows employees to post ideas regardless of where they sit within the company; in the first two weeks of launching it had gathered more than 700 ideas. EmployeeStorm breaks down the silos natural in corporate life and increases collaboration-allowing, for example, tech support employees in Asia to communicate and share ideas with sales reps in Round Rock, Texas.

Customer feedback on IdeaStorm led the company to build select consumer notebooks and desktops pre-installed with the Linux platform. Dell also decided to continue offering Windows XP as a pre-installed operating system option in response to customer requests.

MyStarbucksIdea is an important part of how CEO Howard Schultz isre-inventing Starbucks - to instill what he calls "a seeing culture." While it gives their customers unprecedented say in the business, MyStarbucksIdea is also an always-on focus group for Starbucks to test product concepts. 48 Starbucks Idea partners play the role of representing customer ideas internally, as well as providing responsive feedback to customers. Customers go to MyStarbucksIdea, not to complain, but instead to offer creative solutions.

Q. In soliciting ideas from a large community of customers, how do you a) cull out the bad ones, and b) make sense of the ones that are left?

A. The nice part about Salesforce Ideas and a healthy community is that they do a lot of the hard work of culling out the bad ideas for you. As long as you maintain a healthy community, the application makes sense of what the community wants. Ideas that the community does not like disappear very quickly, and the ones that are ignored by most community members slide slowly into purgatory.

The ones that survive can be ranked by the total amount of interest in the community. Tie this in with customer relationship management (CRM) data and you gain remarkable insight into questions like "what do your most valuable customers want, what does your fastest growing customer segment want?" etc. The power of community becomes many times more valuable for product planning when you can connect it with your customer data.

Q. By the way, why don't you bring us up to speed on what salesforce.com is doing these days.

A. We are in the middle of two very exciting transformations. The first transformation is that, from leading the software-as-a-service revolution, we're now making rapid progress towards becoming the trusted cloud computing platform of choice. The Force.com platform that was unveiled recently, puts the power of salesforce.com's dependable, multi-tenant infrastructure in the hands of developers everywhere. The second transformation is that we're expanding Salesforce CRM into exciting new frontiers like community, innovation management and content management. We're excited about both transformations and are working very hard to deliver more than what our customers expect from us.

As always, we have some very exciting announcements coming out at Dreamforce, our annual conference in early November, so I would hate to ruin the surprise!

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I recently had the chance to have a conversation with Bob Pearson, Vice President, Communities and Conversations, about how Dell is preparing for the future of digital media.

Bob will be speaking at the 2008 Communities Exchange Summit on October 15.

Q. Bob, Dell's impressive recovery from "Dell Hell" to regaining the top spot in customer sat scores through its online community programs has been well documented http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/03/technology/fortt_dell.fortune/. Rather than rest on your laurels, I thought I'd give you a chance to frighten us (and yourself!) and inspire us. Let's get the first one over with. What is it about digital media and the online community revolution that keeps you up at night?

A. Well, our goal is to ensure our customers are enjoying their technology experience and we're learning from each other in real time. So, with an average of 500,000 people going online for the first time in their lives every day and the fact that Dell is mentioned in 5-10,000 conversations per day, I would say it's fair to say we go to sleep every night with a full day of work ahead of us.

Q. Dell has a large Customer Community budget - for example, you've got 42 employees spending their days engaging with Facebook, Twitter, and other popular sites. How do you justify the budget to senior management? Are your increasing customer sat scores, along with your decreasing customer "negatives" scores, enough for them?

A. It's not about budget. It is about having conversations with our customers and becoming relevant members of their communities online. Dell has been direct since the first computer was sold by Michael in '84. We think of this new connected era as providing us with new ways to speak directly with customers, share ideas and, in many cases, empower our customers to help each other out. It's an approach that is part of our culture, which goes well beyond a single group at Dell.

Q. Using IdeaStorm to manage feature requests by your online communities led to creation of the new Latitude laptop. Exciting stuff. But how do you know that input from the "vocal few" accurately reflects the average buyer? How do you plan to address this issue?

A. I would look at it a different way. Since when has a focus group been the right place to make major decisions? Is it better to watch ten people behind smoked glass, feed them sandwiches and ask them leading questions? Or is it best to let the community tell you what they want, customers vote on their own ideas, they discuss their ideas with each other and then we get to ask questions and watch the debate of tens of thousands of people over a period of months? In the case of Latitude, our product team was able to look at over 130 ideas, which led to six features being higher priorities in our launch. The community should be our development partner. Their insights are, ultimately, the ones that truly matter.

Q. You're hiring specialty tracking firms like Radian6 to help you make sense of the volumes of information customers generate about Dell online. What do you see as the greatest potential for such information?

A. We can see a tag cloud showing what is important for a product or a topic, as we speak. We can hear what is being said around the world, so we are more aware of trends, pro or con, in real time. We can also outreach to anyone not having a good experience with their technology to help them far quicker than it was possible in the past. Eventually, it will be important for companies to understand conversations in the ten languages that reach 95% of the online world in real time. We're on our way to doing this.

Q. Rank the following for their business potential: using customer communities to improve innovation and grow revenues, engaging with communities to improve Dell's brand, or using them to supplant cost centers such as customer support?

A. None of the above, since they are all results of doing one thing really well. We want to be a trusted partner of our customers, whether it's to help them with a technology issue, allow them to teach us how to improve via an idea, or to unlock their value to each other by empowering them to share their knowledge with each other. If we do this well, it improves innovation, revenue, our Brand and our costs.

Q. Going forward, what are the top 3 most exciting and potentially rewarding opportunities for firms like Dell in the digital media space?

A. The opportunities for us to learn from our customers via IdeaStorm are endless. So, idea management is key. The second area is to continue empowering our customers to share their expertise with each other. We're really just getting started here. The third is the innovation waiting to explode out of countries, like China, India, Brazil, Russia and more. We like to think of where we are today as finishing chapter one. There is a long way to go in exploring the potential of digital media.

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Forrester Research, as you probably know, is one of the world's most respected technology and marketing research firms. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Merv Adrian, Sr. Vice President, and Laura Ramos, Vice President, Principal Analyst, on why Forrester is bullish on customer reference programs.

Merv and Laura will be keynoting the 2009 Customer Reference Forum on February 18. For more information about them, please see their bios just following the interview.

Q. Forrester is getting ready to publish articles and conduct research in the area of Customer Reference Programs - which will be presented at the 2009 Customer Reference Forum. What prompted your interest in this field?

A. Our clients: Marketing, Sales, and AR professionals - are all deeply interested in customer reference programs. Customer testimonials are deeply connected to how B2B firms market their products since the most popular source of information to inform and validate product or service purchases is peers and colleagues. B2B marketers must focus more on their installed base - leveraging customers they have is much more cost-effective than attempting to build on new names alone. Our research shows that many vendors are not leveraging higher value programs that can create loyalty retention and advocacy the way that effective CR programs can.

Q. So why DO you feel that the importance of Customer Reference programs is increasing?

A. As more and more firms realize that their practices in this area are redundant, overlapping, and ineffective - and often serve to inhibit customers from participating as advocates - the value of a formal program with clear goals and metrics, one supported by its key internal stakeholders and adequately resourced, becomes more and more clear. The Customer Reference Forum's research of the past few years has shown how this recognition has spread through the top tier firms, and we are both seeing growing interest in smaller firms as well as increased investment to make existing programs more extensive and effective.

Q. Right now you're planning a research project jointly with us and Point of Reference. We've been surveying reference programs now for several years. Forrester is going to add a lot to that effort. Can you give us an overview of what we can look forward to from the information you help us develop?

A. Forrester is excited about partnering to take this research to the next level. The work to date has documented the state of current practice, proved and catalyzed the growth of professional standards and internal recognition. We plan to take a deeper look at ways to ensure and visibly demonstrate the value of customer reference programs to the rest of the business. And how customer reference programs help to extend marketing's focus beyond demand generation and the front of the sales pipeline.

Q. A lot of Reference Managers think that the rise of Web 2.0 -- social media, online communities, customers controlling conversations about companies - will completely change the nature of Reference Programs. I know this is one of the things we'll be researching, but what are your early thoughts on that?

A. We don't believe it will "completely change the nature" of the programs - but it will expand the ways customers can meaningfully participate. Not enough customers are engaged in these efforts - many hate participation in programs that chew up their time. Social media gives vendors other avenues to make participation easier- like creating a blog post on the vendor's behalf, but expressing the customer's unique perspective done at his/her convenience. Or customers could participate in a podcast conducted over the phone from their office, contribute to a wiki or other threaded discussions, participate in online surveys - all these take less time and effort than conventional reference tactics. Web 2.0 technologies enable these and other avenues - and they can be tracked, measured and managed much more precisely with the emerging technologies.

Q. Forrester is, of course, one of the leading technology analyst firms in the world. What are the three most important things a Reference Manager should know about working with analysts?

A. Customer references are used a lot in analyst programs, of course. And the same guidance applies in other uses:
1.) Ensure freshness - an old, untested reference may not be a good one. CR Managers should always know the sate of a customer before using them.
2.) Manage appropriateness, defined as fit to need. Most analysts are looking for references for a specific reason - just like sales prospects or press are. Get the fit right - know why it's needed.
3.) Follow up. How good was the reference? And how did the analyst, or press, or prospect talking to them find the interaction? Was it useful? Measure results, not activity. And as long as you're following up, give the reference a stroke - check in with them, ask them the same questions, uncover any current or outstanding issues, and thank them.

About Merv and Laura Merv Adrian does research designed to serve information technology marketers and strategists. He introduced Forrester's research for the Analyst Relations role, and continues to contribute to that body of work. He has also been publishing research about ISV partner programs and the Business Intelligence market. He is responsible for Forrester's large primary research effort into software demand for 2009 which surveys decision makers in NA and Europe about their plans for spending and technology initiatives.

Laura Ramos primarily conducts research for Forrester's clients who are business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Her research covers a broad spectrum of B2B marketing issues including the integration of traditional and digital B2B marketing tactics, emerging B2B social media use, best practices in interactive demand generation, B2B marketing measurement, and the use of technology to enrich the online B2B customer experience. Laura's work also focuses on effective lead management, lead nurturing, sales and marketing integration, installed base marketing, and the use of digital media and the Web to create customer engagement, loyalty, and advocacy.

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OK, having come out in favor of negative ads -- provided they're more artfully done than the typical hack job -- I thought I'd offer a suggestion for each of the campaigns. They are in keeping with the high road of negative campaigning carved out in the business world by Apple, in its Mac vs. PC ads!

Note to Obama and McCain campaigns: I could crank out lots more of these, for a reasonable fee:) Have your people call my people!

OBAMA NEGATIVE AD

Scene opens to an older, white haired gentleman, "M," slowly sweeping up some trash with a a rather small, tired looking broom. In walks "O," a tall, nice looking, young African American fellow with a dynamic looking team of 3 or 4 others, wearing platic hard hats, carrying laptops and blueprints.

O: Hey M, what are you up to?

M: Well as anyone can see O, I'm cleaning up the mess in Washington and changing the way it works.

O: Wall that's great M. So . . . how long have you been at it?

M: I've been doing this for 25 years. I have experience at this sort of thing!

O and M both look at the huge, untouched mess. Then M turns to O and angrily points his broom at him.

M: Now just a second, O!

O (sympathetically): I'm just thinking M . . .

O: . . . maybe it's time to bring in another team

MCCAIN NEGATIVE AD

Scene opens in a generic convenience store, where a very (very) young African American fellow is adjusting one of the sign displays on a shelf. In walks a distinguished white haired gentleman.

M: Oh, hi O. What's going on?

O: Well, I've just completely reinvented this whole place.

M (gently skeptical): Ohhh? How so?

O: Well just take a look! See these signs here? Well, I just moved them; they were way over there. And see these shelves here? See how they're going this way? I just re-arranged them! They were going that way.

M: Hmm, OK. Well, good job! So what are you going to do next?

At this point, a customer walks into the background and begins searching for something. He looks confused.

O: Well, next I'm going to be Chief Executive of the federal government, Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces and Leader of the Free World. I'm going to fix the way things work in Washington, end global warming, defeat terrorism with soaring rhetoric, solve the energy crisis, and make everyone else in the world love us.

M looks at O with his mouth slightly open. He's speechless.

O: And that's just for starters!

At this point the customer in the bg turns to O.

CUSTOMER: Hey, where the heck did you put the burpee machine?

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It's the season of presidential politics, so I thought I'd jump in. It's become conventional wisdom to decry negative campaigning -- it's right up there with excessive CEO pay and declining public schools. Yesterday's Seth Godin: "The reliance on negative stories in politics makes me sick. I think we should be above that."

Not me! Without negative campaigning (or "differentiation campaigning":) we're left to gain our understanding about our next president from the candidates own spin doctors. That's like buying an important and expensive service only by reading the in-house marketing copy. Nothing we do as a people is as important as picking a president. It's essential for voters to exercise critical thinking. Well placed negative messaging helps us do that.

Best negative campaign out there? The political ones that I've seen are a pretty sorry lot. The best is from business: the PC vs. Mac ads. Sly, humorous, and here's the key for me: they don't demonize PC - like a political ad would. Instead, they convey a sense of affection for poor, bumbling PC. When he does something dumb or off putting, sympathetic Mac looks . . . disappointed. Very effective.

Note to Obama and MsCain negative ad-meisters (and yes, Obama will be going negative soon with his recent drop in the polls) (Update: the man moves fast!): why not take the same tone in your negative ads? Don't demonize the other guy. Point out his shortcomings in a gently humorous way . . and then sympathize with him! "Hey, we're all human! The other guy's just gotten off track a bit. He's not such a bad guy, but I can do a better job for you." I think they'd be more effective. They'd definitely go down easier with viewers.

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CAB EXCHANGE Summit
July 21-23
San Jose, CA
http://www.cabexchange.com/event/
For professionals who run Customer Advisory Boards, Executive Summits or similar structured customer collaboration meetings. You'll hear presentations from CAB programs at Wells Fargo, Intel, Interwoven, Cisco, Adobe, SAS, iCrossing, and other respected firms, get results from the first comprehensive survey of CAB programs, get a panel of executives' views on why they value CABs, and much more.

(new!) COMMUNITIES EXCHANGE Summit
October 13-15
San Jose, CA
http://www.communitiesexchange.com/event/
For professionals who engage with and build B2B customer communities - the only conference that addresses their unique issues. Includes a marquee group of presenters from respected Customer Community programs such as Oracle, Intuit, salesforce.com, Dell, Intel, HEUG (the 16,000 member Higher Education User Group), Citrix Systems, Riverbed Technology, and more. Early registration now open.

CUSTOMER REFERENCE FORUM
February 17-19, 2009
Berkeley, CA
(event website will be up in July)
For professionals who build and run customer reference programs. Keynote: Customer Reference Programs: Why Their Importance is Increasing, How Social Media will Radically Transform Them, by Merv Adrian, Sr. Vice President of Forrester Research. Merv will describe why he views references as increasingly important not only in analyst relations to firms like Forrester, but in marketing efforts in general. He'll also present research from Forrester on how social media is and will continue to dramatically change the field.

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One key to winning the cooperation of sales in running your Customer Reference Program is to provide real value. And doing that requires knowing what sales needs. To keep on top of this, regular surveys should be a part of your process.

Here are some tips for productively surveying sales, gathered from Rhett Livengood's President's Award winning presentation at our last Customer Reference Forum earlier this year. Rhett is Chief Reference Officer and Director of Enterprise Customer Programs at Intel:

- Surveys should assess the value of all sales tools and collateral, not just references.
- Have a sales executive send out or sponsor the survey, to ensure good response rates.
- Ask a combination of closed and open-ended questions.
- Use the compiled survey responses to identify key action items -- and communicate those to the field, along with your plans for working on them.
- Make survey results available to product and services marketing teams.
- In addition to surveys, meet with field sales people to gather direct feedback and build support for references from sales.

Rhett's teams conduct sales surveys twice a year. As a result of a recent one, Intel stopped producing expensive customer videos because they were not garnering much awareness from sales. Now they are using much less expensive YouTube-style videos, which are far easier and less expensive to create, and ironically, have a bigger impact because they seem authentic.

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Mike is the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) Practice leader at KickStart Alliance, author of Marketing Campaign Development a consultant to senior marketing executives, and an expert on meeting facilitation, having facilitated hundreds of CAB and other executive sessions over the last 20 years. Mike will be leading the Peer Exchange workshops at the upcoming CAB Exchange Summit in San Jose.

Q. Mike, the Peer Exchange Workshops are one of the primary tools we use at the CAB Exchange Summit to allow CAB practitioners to exchange ideas and best practices directly with each other. Can you give us an overview of how these sessions will work?

A. The Peer Exchange Workshop is an interactive session where CAB managers have a chance to share their experiences and best practices with their peers who may not be as experienced. The objective is to tap the vast expertise of these CAB managers and invite a structured dialog to explore and prioritize best practices, traps to avoid, and proven techniques to everyone's benefit.

Specifically, the Peer Exchange Workshop exercise has two parts. Part 1 will identify the topic areas that CAB managers would like most to discuss. For each topic area, we'll ask those CAB managers who have proven success and experience to group together to answer a few questions and then report their recommendations to the larger group.

Part 2 is an open discussion where all participants can ask questions and dialog further about these recommendations. The final output being a set of recommended tips and action items that can be immediately implemented.

Q. We'll identify specific issues to address at the workshops in a pre-event survey. In your experience working with CAB programs, what are some of the issues you expect that attendees will want to address?

A. Some of the most popular issues CAB managers wrestle with include:

How to best architect the CAB program so that it fits within the larger Voice-of-the-Customer initiative, and isn't viewed as an isolated stand-alone event, Examples of criteria used to select the proper customers to join the CAB, Tips for designing effective agendas that will engage customers properly and generate the insights you want, Knowing how to facilitate a CAB meeting yourself and when to engage a professional CAB manager/facilitator to ensure optimum results, and Best practices for sharing CAB insights with the rest of the organization.

Q. As an experienced facilitator, what's the key to keeping these sessions on track and productive?

A. The key is having a plan that will drive us to a specific outcome, in this case, the outcome is a set of actionable recommendations for each topic area we'll explore. Before we break the group into small teams, we'll agree upon the topic areas the CAB managers would like to explore. My colleagues and I will each facilitate a specific team, guiding the questions to be discussed per each topic. We'll also capture notes and feedback on a flip chart. By the end of the break out session, we'll ask one team representative to share the findings with the larger group for further discussion. We'll conclude by having an interactive discussion with the larger team.

Q. What were some of the more useful, surprising, or interesting results from the Peer Exchange Workshops at last year's Summit?

A. What impressed me most about last year's Peer Exchange Workshop was the breadth and depth of customer knowledge the CAB managers had. The cross pollinization of ideas, best practices, and knowledge was extensive. Real-time learning between customers, sponsors, and presenters was non-stop and the Peer Exchange Workshop continues to be a dynamic tool for aiding these discussions. There's no question that sessions like the Peer Exchange Workshop provide not only a platform for discussion, but a networking opportunity that will continue to benefit attendees long after the Summit concludes.

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Sean Geehan, Founder of Geehan Advisory Boards, will be leading a panel at this year's CAB Exchange Summit. Sean is an important thought leader with Customer Advisory Boards (CABs), particularly with senior marketing executives. He has presented to the CMO Council, The Conference Board, the American Marketing Association and other important groups.

Q. Sean, you work with executives a great deal and have also presented to senior executives at forums like The Conference Board. Can you tell us a bit about these?

A. My observation is that there is an increasingly amount of pressure for firms to be more in tune with the market - so every marketing dollar has the highest impact possible, and expenditures for product development, services and innovation hit the mark the first time. In today's market, companies and executives don't have options to spend on areas that are not aligned with market expectations (customer centric, focused, etc) or innovative. They are going to these events with hopes to learn how to translate these important concepts into meaningful tangible plans and results. Marketing leaders have a real opportunity to benefit from the convergence of these two concepts.

Q. From your observations and experience, what is the major disconnect between how CAB managers view their programs and how senior executives view their programs? Do CAB mangers sometimes miss "the big picture"?

A. I'm not sure they miss the big picture as much as they are challenged or politically unable to get to the business leaders that sponsor the program engaged up front. The initiative must be centered around your executive's priorities, the general response is that "our executives are too busy." All executives are busy, but the market pressures are now aligned with marketing and those leading customer programs, especially high level customer programs.

Think about the most important issues discussed at the Executive Forums I mentioned above (Customer centricity and innovation). Getting executives involved in a high-impact, light lifting manner will catapult your CABs real impact on the firm. CAB leaders need to be bold and make the ask!! I will say, much misalignment comes from how much people within organizations believe their executives know. CAB owners often tell us our Executives "already get that", "don't need this", "would never do that", they need to be bold enough here to ask as well. That in turn will fill-in the blanks to "the Big Picture" every executive needs to confidently and clearly set the organizational direction.

Q. Let's look at the value that executives place on CAB programs. How much of it is objective, quantifiable metrics? How much of it is subjective or intuitive?

A. Typically a BU president or CEO views these more subjectively. They are looking for direction, validation, strategic guidance, and acquisition opportunities. Most CEOs want "direct business level market input" to provide them the confidence and clarity to lead their firm. Their direct reports are looking for more tangible evidence of the ROI. This will justify the spend, commitment and sponsorship across the organization. I strongly suggest a CAB scorecard, which I will provide and review at the CAB Exchange Summit in July.

Q. What does it take to get an executive involved in a CAB program? Have you ever seen a case where an executive who believed that CAB programs aren't worth the investment of time and money they require, had their mind changed because someone put together a business case for the CAB program?

A. Getting executive buy-in is simple (but not always easy). You must prove unquestionable strategic value as the people on the board must be those which the Executive respects their perspective, and the dialog needs to be aligned to the priorities the Executive has laid out to the firm. Bottom line, ask yourself: "How relevant is this CABs mission to this executive's goals and objectives?" The greater the alignment, the better your chances of support, engagement and continuous involvement. I've seen a number of situations where the executives have abandoned the program because there was not enough strategic value in the program - but once we've been able to get the right people in the room and deliver an insightful agenda rich in dialogue, the executives become strong advocates for the program.

Q. What does it take to keep executives active and involved in a CAB program?

A. Relevancy!!! Are the discussions and level of perspective relevant to the executive's and firm's success? It's the only thing that matters.

Q. When it's all said and done, where do executives find true value in a CAB program?

A. If they are gaining greater peace of mind with the key decisions they are making due to the input the CAB program provides. If a marketing leader (or CAB leader) provides that to the executive team, not only will the executive continue to support the CAB, the marketing professional will also become a "GO TO" person for them!

If you have any additional questions for Sean, he can be reached at sean@geehanadvisoryboards.com.

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Just got back from an intense 2+ days at our Spring 2007 Forum in Berkeley (with a bit of a detour to southern CA for a little beach time).

Below are some of my more optimistic takeaways from the Forum. Also, here are Jeremiah’s. And here are Steve Ellis’s (on our keynoter Ben McConnell, his red shoes, and "scary" Jeremiah) – three of the most perceptive people I know in and around this space. Jeremiah's presentation on social media and customer references was both scary, as Steve notes, but also filled with opportunities.

1. An strong spirit of collaboration.
We had directors and mangers from HP, Dell and IBM, EMC and Network Appliance, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP – presenting, collaborating in small group discussions and sharing information. Obviously a line has to be drawn – presenters were careful not to disclose proprietary or strategic information. But very few attendees, as far as I can tell, refuse to disclose anything because competitors are in the room. Software engineers form communities to collaborate and exchange ideas. CIOs do it. Doctors from competing hospitals do it. So do lawyers, accountants and other professions. And so, it now seems, do customer reference professionals. It will be good for the profession, and good for the companies who send these professionals.

2. A strong sense of strategy and business results
I observed very few people who are mired in the nitty gritty of tactical activities. They understand how what they do ties to strategic goals and business results. HP’s Billie Abrams is not in the business of churning out x number of case studies. She focuses instead on how to put reference information into a format that prospects will read and respond to when it’s time to buy. Amdocs’ Stef Porter doesn’t present references with a laundry list of activities to check off, or not. She and her team have become expert at building long-term relationships based on providing value. That helps customer loyalty. NetApp’s Holley Garmany is developing a “closed-loop” system to ensure that valuable and often unexpected customer intelligence – which reference managers are in a unique position to gather – is fed back into NetApp sales and marketing, resulting in upsales and cross sales. EMC’s Terri McClure and a workshop full of other practitioners are figuring out how to segment customer references strategically, so that they can marshal their resources and efforts where they will have the biggest businesses impact. And on it went for two days in Berkeley.

3. Steady growth of the profession.
We had about 125 reference professionals in one place for two full days this week. The most we’d had before was about 110.

Of those, 95 were practitioners (the rest were sponsors and vendors). The most practitioners we’d ever had before were 76.

Among the firms who have sent numerous attendees numerous times, you can count most of the major global technology firms, including HP, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Dell, IBM, EMC, SAS, Sun Microsystems, EDS and many others.

We also attracted substantial newcomers. Among the companies who sent reference managers to our event for the first time, we had A&R Edelman, ADP, BEA, BMC Software, Callidus Software, Entrust, Extreme Networks, Infor, Juniper Networks, Nortel, Open Text Corp., Postini, Inc., Rackspace Managed Hosting, Riverbed Technology, Siemens (first event in the US), Teradata and Tripwire.

This profession thus appears to be growing not spectacularly (word-of-mouth and social media events are growing far more rapidly), but steadily. The profession of reference management, as an integral part of customer programs, has the feel of steady, unspectacular-but-strong long-term growth.

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Stephanie Porter is the Director, Customer Programs at Amdocs. What's interesting about Stef is that she has a considerable background in sales and sales management, as do the members of her team. She brings that sensibility -- consultative sales -- to her reference program, and it makes a big difference in Amdoc's ability to recruit customer references. I'm happy to say that Stef will be presenting at our upcoming Spring 2007 Customer Reference Forum. Here, she shares some thoughts on how to acquire and keep references.

Q. Why do you suppose so many reference programs have trouble convincing customers to join?

A. In most cases, there’s not enough in it to be worth the customer’s effort. Having a strong value proposition is critical. Sometimes there’s an issue with joining an official program with rules and commitments – so don’t make it complex.

Q. How has your -- and your team's - background in sales, helped you with
customer reference recruitment?

A. In sales, the goal is to find a win/win situation, and it’s still all about relationships. We take that philosophy into recruiting references. We identify who we want to go after and understand their needs, put a proposal together that meets those needs – and ours – and off we go. We don’t try to fit our reference partners into a mass-market program.

Q. The big push today is to sign up "top-tier" customer references (typically, Fortune 100 firms with global brands who are traditionally reluctant to reference). How are you making headway in this area?

A. With a few exceptions, all the clients in our program would be considered “top tier”. While these may be harder to get at first, they are also worth the additional effort for many reasons. Again, the key is determining the right value proposition for them, both on an individual and corporate level. I’ll explain more on this at the conference.

Q. Some reference managers would blanch at the thought of taking a more sales-oriented approach to reference recruitment. Is it true that selling means cold calls, applying pressure, and engaging in constant spin?:) Or is that just Hollywood's version (Glengarry Glen Ross, for example) of what
sales is all about?

A. While selling can mean cold calls and such, references are customers – people we know. If we, or the account team, don’t know them, they shouldn’t be targeted as a reference until we do. It still requires basic sales 101:

- Do your homework to determine who you want to target.
- Learn what is important to them and understand their needs in this area.
- Get an understanding of what they can and cannot do.
- Develop a value proposition unique to their specific needs and discuss it with them.
- Confirm that it meets their needs and adjust as needed.

It is certainly more work than simply saying “here’s our program, do you want to join it”, but the rewards we get from our high-impact references are worth every bit of effort we put into this. Applying pressure and engaging in constant spin? Absolutely not. A client backed into a corner isn’t going to give a good reference so why go there? Further, we want our reference partners to understand what is involved since the overall reference experience depends on setting expectations and, ideally, exceeding them. We cannot afford to recruit clients into the program who are “oversold”. It would kill the credibility and trust that we work so hard to build.

Q. A couple of years ago, CIO magazine ran a story -- that is still widely
cited -- which was critical of rewarding customers for participating in reference programs. How do you feel about rewarding customers? Where do you draw the line between appropriate rewards and inappropriate?

A. First and foremost, never include product or services discounts – to me, those seems like a bribe. We also don’t get the account teams involved with making requests (once we’ve earned the right to manage the reference relationship ourselves), as that is when inappropriate and quid pro quo requests often occur. We never use the term “reward” – we show appreciation instead. Yes, it’s a euphemism to a degree, but there is a difference between the two. We try to focus on things that are of value to the reference partner that they could not otherwise get. This is unique for each of our high-impact references and might include involvement in an advisory board or focus group, networking events that are social and/or project-related, employee recognition assistance, personal exposure, marketing their projects internally, the helping to reach additional areas with their corporate messaging. We shy away from gifts or anything that might conflict with a company’s ethical guidelines, and we would never want a customer to be less than truthful.

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Since 2001, Ben McConnell has been researching the effects of word of mouth on customer loyalty. Forbes calls his work (along with partner Jackie Huba) in this field "the word of mouth gospel." In his newest book, Citizen Marketers, Ben and Jackie examine the social media explosion: the ever-growing communities of enthusiasts and evangelists using videos, photos, and animations, as well as the "user-generated media" of blogs, online bulletin boards, and podcasts.

And I'm happy to say that Ben will be keynoting at our Spring 2007 Customer Reference Forum on April 24. Here, he takes a few minutes to talk about the implications of citizen marketing for customer reference managers.

Q: The phenomenon of Citizen Marketers has sparked a number of great stories in the consumer and small business world -- as the little guy takes on and sometimes wins against the giant corporation. Where do you see the trend going in the stodgier world of B2B business?

A: The examples in the B2C world often involve customers taking the reins of participation and leading the way for others like themselves to get involved with a company or its products. They create pathways for conversations, which lead to alleys of influence and ultimately, the doorbells of
referrals. For people in the B2B world, the burgeoning world of social media -- participatory media -- can be a rich source of conversations between customer and company, customer and other customers, and customer and prospects. Social media also expose companies to the influence of customers'
opinions. Then it's a two-way street. Better be prepared for the traffic.

Q: If you're a marketing manager in a high tech firm, how would you map out
a strategy to find and engage the citizen marketers relevant to your firm?

A: First, build a listening strategy. That may be a big step for companies used to dictating the rules. Understand what's being said on blogs, forums and social media sites and by whom. Rank the opinion leaders and their ability to lead conversations. After that, decide whether your engagement strategy will be out in the open or more reserved like shuttle diplomacy. The answer probably depends on the size of the company, the number of prospects involved and the company's culture. About the only rule to engaging the citizen marketers is: Each one is different. Treat them like
guests in your home.

Q: If you're a customer reference manager (our group), should you try to
encourage your most enthusiastic references -- what Fred Reichheld calls
"promoters" -- to engage in some citizen marketing on your behalf?

A: Yes, but it's important to observe what's already being created in the marketplace by everyday citizens about your company, product or sector and build on top of that. By keeping close tabs on existing "creation trends" within your sector, you'll avoid the mistake of trying to push citizen
marketers down a contrived path that's unfamiliar to them.

Q: How do we marketers avoid the tendency we all have -- to control the
conversation?

A: By now, every marketer in the world has probably heard the admonition to
"give up control!" It's a scold, and it creates a natural resistance. I think the better frame to use is: "Create more ownership." Give the early adopters and the content creators -- the one percenters -- the keys and
tools to take ownership of your company, product or brand. The nature of their emotional investment increases their long-term commitment. A housing analogy works pretty well here: In your neighborhood, would you rather have your neighbors be renters or owners?

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Marketing evangelist Mariio Sundar publishes a popular blog called Marketing Nirvana and like Jeremiah (below), he is helping raise the profile of refeence programs. Mario works with a Bay Area marketing agency and is on the board of the American Marketing Association's Silicon Valley Chapter. Recenly he posed 5 questions to me about reference programs and social media.

Q1. This year’s CRF event seems to be focused on topics such as citizen marketers, customer communities, social media, etc… In your opinion, how has social networking impacted customer references within Corporate America? Is 2007 the year, social media will reach a tipping point among the customer reference community?

A: We’re going to cover a broad array of topics at the CRF, but yes, we are definitely going to explore social media and its implications on reference programs. I think social media will indeed reach a tipping point among all marketers, in terms of awareness. Corporate marketers of all types are very concerned that they are losing control of the conversation about their firms’ products and brands. But among all marketers, I think reference professionals — many of whom have spent years building close relationships with customers — are in a great position. With social media, they’ll simply take these relationships to new places using new forms.

Q2. How are enterprise customers adapting to the newly evolving paradigm of social media?

A: So far the lone users and bloggers who can send shockwaves through a major corporation seem to be getting a lot of the attention. In comparison, I think enterprise customers are going to find lower-key, but more systematic — and very effective — ways to use social media and other community tools to exchange information about vendors. If I’m a CIO contemplating a major technology implementation, for example, why should I limit myself to talking to the references provided by the buyer? When you’re talking about 6, 7 or even 8-figure implementations, I’d like to be part of a community of other CIOs who regularly exchange information in a sophisticated, systematic way about vendors

Q3. A few examples of evolutionary/revolutionary customer reference programs (maybe using social media) that you have been impressed with lately?

A: One of the best models for a reference program is SAP’s. In the last couple of years, Coleen Kaiser built it into a sophisticated global operation. Among other things, the SAP reference program has incorporated Fred Reicheld’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) into its operations, developed a reference program with its partners that created roughly a thousand new references in a matter of months, and is at the forefront of establishing the connection between references and revenue. The SAP program even trains sales on how to use references! As for reference programs making the best use of social media, stay tuned for our upcoming forum in Berkeley on April 23!

Q4. I’d recently written a post on the 5 New Rules of customer references, in which I spoke about the level of control that users of a community should have? Do you think there should be a difference in the level of control provided to B2C users vs. B2B users?

A: Both your post and the Creating Passionate Users post you refer to provide some valuable perspective. The rise of social media does not mean users will take total control. They don’t want total control. But they do want more information and more transparency than they’ve been getting, and I think they see social media and other community forums as a way to get these. That means that marketers are going to have to get used to giving up some control — a very scary thing for us! But the ones who don’t panic and find the opportunities to get their message out in this new world are going to thrive.

Q5. In the years past, there has been a perception that customer references “especially in the realm of big enterprise software projects like ERP and CRM—have ceased to have much real meaning” (Source: CIO Magazine). How do you think that has changed since the article came out in 4/2002?

A: I linked to that article shortly after we started our newsletter. It was a clarion call, in my view, to avoid the tendency we have to sugar coat everything that is said about our products and services — even to the extent of rewarding a customer in exchange for acting as a reference! That, of course, destroys their credibility. In the years since, I’ve sensed a growing movement — particularly among the leading programs — to move away from rewards, points programs, free consulting, etc, in exchange for acting as a reference. It’s OK to provide a reasonable “thank you” gift to a customer who’s spent a day presenting at your industry conference. It’s not OK to provide a quid pro quo.

Thanks for your candid responses, Bill. So what do you think will be the greatest takeaway for corporate marketers from Customer Reference Forum — Spring 07?

A: The greatest takeaway will be the relationships participants establish and build with their peers. With respect to social media, the great takeaway will be that this phenomenon, scary as it may seem, will present tremendous opportunities to reference programs and the professionals who run them."

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In addition to having substantial experience with Hitachi Data Systems' customer reference program, Jeremiah Owyang is a rapidly rising star in the world of social media. His own blog is in the top 1% according to Technorati. In his video show for the Pod network he has interviewed luminaries such as Michael Dell, Craig Newmark (craigslist founder) and Marc Canter, founder of Macromedia (now Adobe). He has been involved with or managed four Corporate Enterprise Intranets, and two extranets ranging from enterprises such as Exodus Communications, Cable and Wireless, World Savings, and most recently Hitachi Data Systems. He is also the Director of Corporate Media Strategy at PodTech Networks in Palo Alto, a company focused on Video Blogging, Podcasting and Blogging. And I'm happy to say he'll be presenting at our next Customer Reference Forum on April 24. To learn more about Jeremiah, check out his blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah.

Today he's sharing thoughts on the rise of social media and its coming impact on reference programs.

Q: First off, what is Social Media? What is Social Networking? How are they different?

A: In the taxonomy of the Internet, "Social Media" is the larger family and "Social Networks" are a sub- class within that family. One analogy could be Social Media = all paper publications, and Social Networks are paper magazines, just one subset.

Social Media is the superset and encompasses many tools such as Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, forums, tagging software, videoblogs, mashups, as well as social networks.

When I think of "Social Networks", I think of MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Xanga, CyWord, and Club Penguin. Most of these websites require users to register, provide some profile information, and often (but not always) limit the community to participate within the confines of its domain.

Q: Will social media make marketing obsolete?

A: No, it makes savvy Marketers more relevant.

Marketers are traditional one-way message creators. With Social Media, this forces Marketers to join these conversations of communities that are forming (even if corporations don't participate) and be part of a two-way dialogue that matters.

Customers will be telling marketers exactly how they want their products, information, and services, and that is an opportunity to become better and more accurate marketers.

Q: Suppose a group of buyers start comparing notes on vendors, perhaps like a CIO user group. What should a customer reference program do about it?

A: For private user groups, this is a challenge. I would recommend creating open feedback mechanisms using social media forums or blogs to encourage members of these private user groups to offer their opinion or group findings. It's in their best interest to tell vendors what they think of them, so vendors can improve their offerings over time.

Savvy companies will try to join conversations that exist in public spaces or build tools that let customers and user groups voice their feedback directly to corporations. Intuit's QuickBooks online community is documented as an excellent online community. Recently, Dell launched IdeaStorm, which gives customers and prospects the opportunity to tell Dell exactly what products they want by a submission and voting process. It's still too early to label IdeaStorm as a success or failure yet.

If it's a public space, like blogs, social networks, or public forums, there's opportunity for customer reference programs to get involved. I'll be going into detail at the Customer Reference forum on some methods to do this.

Q: How is Social Media different in the B2B space vs. the consumer space?

A: Without having seen any formal reports on this, I'm going to suggest there is little difference.

Based upon my experience deploying a B2B Social Media program at a Global Fortune 1000 tech company (Hitachi Data Systems), customers would use social media to tell their experiences with the products and services of the company just like I've seen consumers do.

If there was a difference, perhaps the longer decision/buying cycle common to B2B marketing could require a corporate Social Media program to extend along that cycle.

Q: The premise of marketing is that corporations need to communicate to customers and prospects. The premise of customer reference programs is to gain credibility by using customers to speak on the corporation's behalf. Now with social media, customers are talking to each other, unimpeded. Isn't that dangerous for the corporation? Isn't it dangerous to reference managers' careers?

A: There are definite threatening disruptions for corporations and customer reference managers due to Social Media. My post provides some practical suggestions on how to make the Customer Reference Program MORE relevant.

Instead of just harvesting positive references, by extending the Customer Reference program into the Social Media programs, managers can also help build loyalty, join customers in creating the brand together, improve product innovation and feedback, better understand their customers and learn about other market forces, such as competition.

Most importantly, in addition to the Customer Reference program, the savvy manager will harness the word of mouth of existing customers and get them to sing the praises on behalf of the corporation.

Q: What B2B companies have been notably successful in fostering online customer communities?

A: To start off with, Hitachi had a successful "Community Marketing" program that brought customers closer, connected product managers with customers, extended executive thought leadership, tied together an industry, and leveraged the word of mouth of customers. I'm biased of course, as I lead this program!

Microsoft, Sun, IBM, HP, Wells Fargo, Intuit, every music artist, most TV shows are using online communities for success. There are many case studies and examples that are developing right now.

Q: If I'm running a reference program, what's the first thing I should do to capitalize on the Social Media phenomenon?

A: Step One: Understand Social Media. Get educated: Grab some books like Naked Conversations, or ClueTrain Manifesto, and consider attending some conferences. I first learned about social media at the Blog Business Summit . I'm also a fan of the Social Media Club. Both organizations are run by my respected industry peers.

Q: What's the best use of Social Media you've seen that's relevant to a reference manager (by a B2B company, if possible)?

A: Hitachi's CTO is a blogger, and on one key post he asked for feedback on products. A few vocal customers responded in detail about their experiences with Hitachi products (both positive and negative). We then involved the product teams in responding and learning from this free 'focus group' information.

Our CTO then referred to these posts from his own blog. It was an authentic Customer Reference initiative that was not influenced by Hitachi to be positive. One would only expect a prospect reading such dialogue to have a higher degree of trust in Hitachi.

There are many other examples. Former Microsoft Blogger Robert Scoble (now my colleague at PodTech) would highlight customer opinions and experiences with products. He pointed both to the positive and negative ones, which resulted in Robert becoming a trusted source of information about Microsoft -- despite being their employee.

Q: What's the worst Social Media screw-up you've seen?

A: It's hard to tell if it was a screw-up or not -- perhaps there were some intended objectives that I don't know of -- but many have suggested that WalMart's efforts to create a social networking MySpace clone was a big mistake. It's hard to imagine why children would use such a network when they're already in existing networks. I would suggest to corporate web strategists that they consider joining communities rather than creating ones -- especially if the community you envision already exists.

Just a few months later, WalMart and Edelman were found out to have created and produced a fake blog that promoted WalMart which is now cynically dubbed "Edelmart." One PR professional verbally compared it to "finding out your favorite athlete who you idolize just got caught using drugs or steroids."

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Early registration is underway for the Spring 2007 Customer Reference Forum. It will be held in Berkeley, CA at the fabulous Claremont Resort (attendees who register early can stay for $200 a night -- a great deal). We plan terrific presentations on: customer communities; developing effective reference deliverables; getting beyond "avoiding reference burnout" to "instilling reference delight" -- plus a keynote by Ben McConnell, co-author of Citizen Marketers, and much more.

For more information about the event and to register, please click here.

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Barb Krasner chairs our Special Interest Group (SIG) on Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of a Reference Program. Its goal is to develop best practices in this critical area, and it's been up and running now for six months with a talented and diverse group of reference pros. I touched base with Barb recently to find out how the SIG is doing and get answers to such questions as what are the most critical areas of reference management to measure and why.

Btw, Barb's day job is Director of Customer Advocacy Marketing at Lucent Technologies, where she started that firm's (ITSMA) award-winning Client Reference Program in 2004.

Question 1: The big rap against marketing is that marketers can’t establish the business value of their programs. How close do you think reference professionals are to this holy grail? How much closer do you think they can get?

Answer: I think we're probably closer than most marketing programs, because the goal of reference fulfillment is revenue. Some companies track the relationship between the two systematically, through Siebel, for instance, and others track it manually by opportunity, using whatever means they have available to them. Data collection remains a challenge, particularly systematic data collection, and the SIG has two members who will be developing a best practice approach to that later this year.

Question 2: Who’s been participating in the Metrics SIG? How do you define your mission?

Answer: Participating companies include: Oracle, SAP, PTC, Epicor, Qwest, EMC, Intel, TomorrowNow, and ProjectLine Services. The SIG's goals are to: (1) develop a scorecard with a finite set of reference program metrics for executives, sales, marketing, and operations efficiency that represents best class practices; and longer term, (2) develop an industry standard through benchmarking for each of these metrics (for example, what constitutes a "good" result?).

Question 3: In what areas should reference programs measure results and what are the key metrics in each? And why are they key?

Answer: The SIG has identified a single most important metric in each of these four categories: executive, sales, marketing and operational efficiency. We call these the reference landscape. For executives, the most important metric is the same as the most important metric overall for a reference program: impact on sales. Same goes for sales. For marketing, it's customer recruitment to fulfill marketing requests and/or sufficient collateral by industry, region, product/service/solution, segment, etc. Finally, for operations efficiency, the most important metric is conversion of leads to references.

Question 4: What are some other valuable metrics in these four areas?

Answer: The audit we presented at the Customer Reference Forum in November in Dallas covers the gamut of possibilities. Some hard-hitting metrics in each area include:
(1) Executives focus on financial and business objectives--in particular, revenue impact.
(2) Sales focus on incremental impact--revenue impact; reference consideration (percentage of bid responses that include references); sales cycle impact (e.g., decreasing the sales interval); and, key customer coverage.
(3) Marketing focuses on inputs to deliverables-- such as reference coverage by key account/geo/product/ solution; conversion of new wins and "go lives" to references; and collateral usage.
(4) Operations Efficiency focuses on program expenses-- including reference request fulfillment and self-help fulfillment.

Question 5: In your opinion, what are the critical success factors for creating a successful reference program?

Answer: I love this question, because certain conditions must be present for success:
(1) Know your stakeholders and their needs--what results they're looking for (in other words, how they define success) so you can set appropriate measurable targets that are meaningful to them and gaining alignment around targets and metrics.
(2) Senior executive sponsorship--we cannot emphasize this enough--it's critical to have advocacy for your program at the CMO level or some other key exec level (even at the Board level in some companies). This can make or break the program.
(3) Clear focus on results and results reporting.
(4) Communicating the value proposition for the program and putting in place a feedback loop from the "voice of the customer" back to those internal stakeholders who build the company (product/service/solution) value prop.
(5) Strong communications plan--keep the program in the forefront by announcing big reference "wins", for instance, posts to your internal web site of success stories, etc.
(6) Recalibrating the program at least annually-- keep your program relevant by ensuring it is in lock-step with your company's business priorities and any shifts in those priorities.
(7) Tools!--make sure you have processes, workflows, etc. to drive recruitment and productivity.

Question 6: In measuring the most important metric (impact on sales), do you basically just ask the sales person “how important was the reference(s) to closing the deal”? And is that not fraught with the risk of, um, bias:)

Answer: It all comes down to tracking sales opportunities and deals. Companies with systematic metric methodologies can retrieve the information from Siebel, for instance, without relying on word of mouth. If you know references were used in the sales process, you can track that opportunity through to the close of the deal either manually or through a system like Siebel. Asking about a reference's importance in the process is a different question and would most likely be anecdotal. The best scenario is asking the newly won customer how important references were in making the purchase decision.

Question 7: The measures you list seem pretty quantitative. But can quantitative measures -- as important as they are -- fully capture a CRP’s importance? What about qualitative measures such as improved relationships, improved understanding by customers of your firm, or improved understanding by your firm of customers?

Answer: Frankly, executives want to see hard impact on the bottom line. Even improved relationships could be quantifiably presented through customer sat results or incremental revenue by account. The SIG's goal is to focus on a simple but effective scorecard that clearly demonstrates the value of a reference program.

Question 8: Do you plan to look at the effectiveness of customer communities, or is that beyond your scope or too early in their development to address?

Answer: That is indeed beyond our scope at the moment and yes, it's a bit too early to measure.

Question 9: Does the SIG plan to address Net Promoters and the potential connections between CRPs and NPS? SAP could definitely help with that.

Answer: No, we have no plans to address NPS. It hasn't come up in any conversation.

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David Held at Microsoft needs a sales tool template and is asking for help on this from the community. Please see below for more information.

Project Knowledge Exchange is a collaboration between customer reference professionals. You can ask for advice from your peers, provide such advice, exchange forms and templates, develop best practices, advertise job openings or let us know that you're looking for a position. If you'd like to be removed from the Project Knowledge Exchange list, please reply to this email with "remove" in the subject line.

“Bill,
I am seeking a template to use as an example/guide for creating a variety of sales tools for our field/partners. I am seeking a one-page template that focuses on customers in a particular industry. I conceptualize it having very little product related content and what content is there would relate to the focus industry of the document. There would be a number of customers featured (4-5) with a logo/name and maybe a short statement or quote from a spokesperson.

Essentially this would be used as a leave behind tool when a prospect as for a personal customer reference and would fill the gap until one is secured.

In addition, a second request around this would be then any tips on the value proposition that others have used to get enterprise level customers to agree to be used on these types of sales tools. Thanks again for your help. David”

To respond to this request, please comment below. If you'd prefer to respond privately, please email me and I'll pass your information along.

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his may seem like the wrong topic for a blog post so early in the year, since you're probably still digging out from the holiday season and have a 2-page task list plus 200 emails to get through. But I'd suggest you step back every now and then - particularly when you're busy - and look at the big picture. In particular, look at how your reference program fits together with the myriad of ways, many of them new and exciting, that your firm is engaging its customers.

Doing so will help you:

- Focus your efforts on what's important.
Reference managers have too much to do. Understanding where your program fits into your firm's big picture will help you set priorities.

- Accelerate your career growth.
And there is much reason to believe that the broader emerging field of "Customer Programs" will become a major new area in marketing (see the discussion under "A Prediction," here.),

- Enhance your reputation with senior management as someone who thinks strategically.

For example, take new product development (NPD). The “Voice of the Customer” – which includes the voice in particular of your customer references – is critical to NPD. Indeed, over the last couple of decades, our understanding of exactly how customer input can help NPD succeed has grown increasingly sophisticated. And it turns out that reference managers, without doing much of anything new, are in an excellent position to contribute to NPD.

How References Can Contribute to NPD

We now know that it doesn't always work to ask customers what new features they want or how they would improve the products/ services they're using. A better approach is to understand what "job" they're trying to get done (see Anthony Ulwick's excellent article on this, particularly pages 6-7). Once you know this, you then turn your engineers/ designers loose to develop ways to make the customer's job easier. For example, Intuit's QuickBooks gained rapid market share and eventually market dominance with a product that couldn't match - and didn't try to match - the sophisticated, report generating capacity of rival programs, which were developed by accountants. Rather, QuickBooks product developers talked to and watched business owners use their accounting software and found they weren't interested in the fancy reports. They just wanted a program that would make sure they didn't run out of cash. That's precisely what Intuit gave them.

What does this mean to you as a reference manager? Your writers are developing success stories and case studies. In their interviews, have them focus less on the whiz bang features, functionalities and capabilities that your engineers and product developers are touting. These things don't sell in any case. Have them focus more on what "job" customers are trying to get done with your product or service; what their desired outcomes are; and, how your current products are helping them achieve these outcomes. The answers, of course, will help sell more products. But if the customer's answers are different from what product developers think customers are doing, that information will also help NPD. And if you have your writers also ask customers about any constraints that prevent them from achieving optimal outcomes, that information will also be highly valuable to NPD. By sharing such information - most of which you're already gathering - with NPD, you become part of the bigger picture.

****
The Spring 2007 Customer Reference Forum will be held the week of April 23 or the week of April 30, for those of you wanting to plan. We'll finalize with the hotel in the next week or so, and I'll provide the exact dates and location as soon as I have them.

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It's been a busy 2006 for yours truly. I was in London in October for our first Customer Reference Forum Europe, then back in Dallas just two weeks later for our Fall US Customer Reference Forum. Whew! After intense face time with top reference professionals on both sides of the pond, here are a few of my takeaways on the state of the profession as we close out the year, plus a question and a prediction for you to chew on as we approach the New Year -- along with links to pics to have a look at.

But first a quick heads up. Our next US event will be next Spring in late April or early May on the West coast. I'll have more details for you after the 1st.

London

-- Reference professionals in Europe have it tougher than we do in the US. Language and translation issues. Cultural issues. Smaller budgets. Less headcount. They are, by necessity, a resourceful group.

-- My sense before London was that European reference professionals would tend to be more tactical and less strategic than their American counterparts, because many of the companies represented in London are headquartered here, such as HP, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, EMC and the like. But one participant in London plans to go with her boss to her US-based CEO and argue for more funding. You can bet her case won't be based on tactical reasons. Another participant plans to approach her firm's VP of Sales to argue that sales people should have written MBOs related to supporting her reference program. These folks see the big picture and are working to influence it.

-- We Americans can definitely learn something from our European counterparts about how to party -- I mean, engage in after-hours, off-site networking!

Check out results and pics from our London event,
here.

Dallas

-- This was our fourth US event and I'm still amazed at the sheer passion of our community for their work, and for interacting with each other. Here's an example. After more than an hour of intensive, interactive "Master Mind" sessions led by the terrific Libby Gill, I suggested everyone take a break. I was roundly ignored as people kept right on talking and exchanging ideas. After another 30 or 40 minutes, I then tried to tempt them with refreshments and goodies out in the foyer. No thanks! They kept right on talking. The Master Mind sessions lasted some three hours during which very few people ever left the room. We'll have results from the Master Mind sessions in pdf format after the first of the year. Drop me an email if you'd like for me to let you know when the report is ready.

-- Our newly formed Special Interest Group on Metrics, which focuses on how to establish the business value of a reference program, was a big hit. Led by Lucent's always thoughtful Barb Krasner, with support from Oracle's Gayle McClary and PTC's Rhonda Morgan, they promptly recruited several new members and supporters. Their goal: develop true best practices for this critical area of reference management. This is just the first of several SIGs we plan to get up and running.

Check out some pics of Dallas,
here.

What's Missing?

-- In both groups, there is still a considerable lack of awareness about Net Promoters. If you're serious about your program, about this profession, and about your career development, you need to get up to speed on this topic. It is the subject of spirited inquiry and debate at the most senior level of the executive suite and board. At forward thinking firms like SAP, Net Promoters (aka "enthusiastic references") provides the strategic underpinning for references. Plain and simple, you need to learn it. This will get you started.

A Question

-- Would it not make sense to locate reference programs in the sales organization, as opposed to marketing? Reasons: 1) Gaining cooperation of sales is an ongoing, often unresolved issue; 2) The most critical success factor for a reference program is impact on sales; and, 3) At least one advanced, highly respected reference program -- SAP's -- is now training sales on how to use references.

A Prediction

-- (Thanks to Point of Reference's David Sroka for this) The day is not far away when greatly expanded "customer programs" will be the domain of VPs or even Chief Customer Officers. Past Customer Reference Forum attendee lists have included only two VPs solely responsible for their reference programs: SAP's Coleen Kaiser and Unisys' Janice Burg-Levi. There are a number of reasons today's programs will ultimately gain representation on the executive team: 1) the current crop of reference managers are beginning to produce metrics that demonstrate top line impact, 2) program managers are being asked to take on a raft of customer projects that are becoming more visible to executives, and 3) companies are recognizing that broader and more strategic responsibilities warrant executive leadership and a place at "the table." The acceleration in sophistication and professionalism of customer reference programs is largely a result of a better-connected community and continuous knowledge sharing. What an exciting time to be in this space!

That's it for now. I want to wish you the happiest of holidays and a wonderful 2007.

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Todd Berger from Autodesk is seeking information on how to leverage customer references acquired by resellers/ partners

Hi Bill --

The majority of our sales are closed through resellers who are reluctant to pass on their customers for reference activities. Or at least until they feel that they’ve leveraged them to the fullest. By then, they’re either burnt out or the story has been told so much it’s really no longer buzz worthy. Curious to know if any other companies have a similar situation, and if so, what steps they took to work through it? As a customer reference manager, I wonder if my main customer is the reseller and not necessarily the user of our software. We both want the same thing, a customer that speaks highly of the product and would refer us.

Todd Berger, Autodesk

To respond to this request, please comment below.

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Kim Nelson from Quantum is looking for Sales Survey Templates people have used to determine what sales needs from a reference program. Here are the specifics.

Hi Bill:

I am looking for surveys or questionnaires that customer reference managers have sent to their sales teams in order to assess what they would want/need from a customer reference program. Also, if there were surveys sent after the program had launched to measure its success, those would also be helpful. Can you send a request out to the forum to see if anyone is willing to share these materials with me? Many thanks!

Best Regards,

Kim Nelson
Public Relations Manager
Quantum

To respond to this request, please comment below.

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We just finished our first Customer Reference Forum Europe, in London on October 23-24. What an engaged, passionate group! As in the states, several of the world's top technology firms sent representatives -- including SAP, Hewlett-Packard, EMC, IBM, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Business Objects, Lucent Technologies, SAS, Hyperion and other major firms -- thus confirming the growing importance of references to sales and marketing efforts in EMEA.

Takeaways? People left with a lot of specific ideas to implement. I saw pads of paper filled with lists of strategies for tackling tough issues.

Here's what my newest UK buddy and Metia CEO Steve Ellis took from the event.

Here are some highlights and pics.

Here's my take. For comments by participants, please stay tuned and see below.

Get validation.
That sounds like something you’d find on Oprah (and let’s not pooh-pooh the psychological boost one gets from knowing we're not alone in our struggles). But validation is also a powerful tool in getting what you need from senior management. One participant is going to ask her head of sales to require sales people to support the reference program, complete with clear objectives that get reviewed and enforced. And she’ll have more than the usual arguments for this. Now she’ll be able to show that top firms like SAP are doing it. That gives credibility. I can vouch for that, because I know of other reference managers who’ve gotten action after one of our events by telling senior execs that "we should do X" because 1) it makes sense and 2) SAP or HP or Intel or EMC or other respected companies are doing it.

Consider a reference book.
Why not just pick out your leading, most strategic references – based on solid input from sales – and publish it in a book? SAP did it and it became the most popular downloaded item on its entire website.

Engage Net Promoters
If you don't know what Net Promoter Score (NPS) is, learn. NPS is the strategic underpinning for your program. It says, in effect, that the company with the highest percentage of enthusiastic references wins. Your senior executives are likely reading Fred Reichheld's best-selling book on the subject. Research from the London School of Economics verifies Reichheld's thesis in the UK, as Metia's visionary Steve Ellis pointed out. Perhaps the most advanced reference program out there, SAP's, is implementing NPS through its reference program. Learn what NPS is about. Educate your senior executives if they don't already know. Start proposing ways in which your reference program can leverage this concept. You'll be glad you did.

No more throwing it up on a wall and seeing what sticks.
Effective reference programs are well beyond the phase of going for quantity in the number of references they can land and success stories they can write. That’s too expensive and often a waste. The clear emphasis is on quality and getting engaged in the sales process. Which means:

When she came to the San Francisco Customer Reference Forum last March, Carol Blumberg was just getting ready to launch Epicor Software’s new, formalized customer reference program. “We had just completed setting up our database infrastructure with IT, as well as the "EPICvalue" Survey that profiles customers joining the reference program. I was at the point of rolling out the program to the Sales Field." But she had several issues that were concerning her and that she didn’t have clear answers to.

“I knew we were going to get some resistance from sales by mandating their accountability of a more formal process around references,” says Carol. "Another part of this resistance was their sharing with me their good references. Because Sales had kept their good references close to the vest and were not sharing, I knew that I needed to gain their trust. I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with that. I also wasn’t clear on how to measure the effectiveness of our program or how to report on it.”

At San Francisco, Carol picked up several ideas that helped her solve these issues.

Find the Right Champion

“One of the presenters talked about the importance of finding a champion at an Executive level, a decision maker. That made a lot of sense. The impetus for our program came from both the Executive VP of Worldwide Marketing as well as the EVP of Worldwide Sales. I went right back to them and told them of what I’d learned from other programs in San Francisco, and that for the program to succeed they would need to stay directly involved in supporting it. By understanding the importance of a strong and formal reference program and the potential of greater sales "wins", they immediately supported my proposal and have been strong supporters ever since. Telling them about the experiences of other programs gave credibility and weight to what I told them”

Focus on Impact on Sales

A light bulb turned on in San Francisco on the reporting and measurement issue as well. “The key with programs like SAP and Lucent is to focus on a program's impact on sales,” says Carol, which she proceeded to do. “Each quarter, senior management issues a win/loss report. I take the report and, using our database, analyze how many of the wins used some sort of reference activity, such as a sales call or a site visit. When we started out, 16% of wins included reference activity. Now, that figure has more than doubled to 33% and rising. Sales people are increasingly using our references to close deals. That gets attention.”

Assume Everyone is a Stakeholder

A third critical insight was to assume that everyone in the company is a stakeholder in the reference program, and to organize stakeholders into a community of interest. “That’s just what I did,” says Carol, who built bridges to other groups at Epicor such as consulting, tech support and product development. “Consulting, for example, had never been involved with references, but now I’m included in their meetings because they know if they recommend a customer where things are going well, I’ll pursue the lead and get the reference. In addition, they’ll refer to our reference database to see whether a customer they’re working with is in the program and make sure to treat them accordingly. It’s a clear win. I get invited to the meetings of these groups and get a steady supply of fresh leads, and then I get recognition for bringing new references into the fold.” A similar story can be told of Carol's "Alert System." "For each customer who joins the Reference program, I add a note to each of the CRM Database records to alert everyone in the company who accesses the database that this company is part of the Reference program. When Tech Support sees these alerts, for example, they know to escalate their issues even quicker!"

Carol is excited, too, about how the Executive Vice President relies on her to give him the most credible customers to be briefed by Analysts such as Gartner and Forrester. "I love it when the EVP calls me monthly to advise him who I believe our best customers are to do an Analyst Briefing! Very exciting to be closer to the pulse of the company...and the EPIC value reference program has done just that."

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"I am looking to see if anyone can supply a generic template release form that a start-up could use for their customer reference program. The generic form could be used as a standard release for the customer to participate in a case study/success story program. They have a very limited legal budget and hope that they won't be forced to reinvent the wheel. Thanks for any help or insights the collective group can provide."

Marisa Brown
The TDA Group
marisa@tdagroup.com
650.948.3140 x104

To respond to this request, please comment below.

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Boulder Logic has created an integration between Salesforce.com and our hosted application for customer reference management. We are looking for 4-5 individuals using SFDC for their CRM that would be willing provide some feedback on our integration points. It is very easy and will take about an hour. And you'll be paid $50 for your time.

To respond to this request, please reply to Beth Mastre at beta@boulderlogic.com

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The customer reference group at SAS is analyzing how to work better with other internal departments (sales, consulting, marketing, etc) to more effectively identify and develop customer reference opportunities. Our ultimate goal is to decrease the time it takes to surface an appropriate
reference deliverable at different stages of the customer's lifecycle.

We would like information about best practices associated with interfacing between customer reference groups, sales, marketing & consulting to identify reference opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle (pre-sales, new customer, implementation, long term customer relationships).

Any documentation including white papers, process graphics or informal feedback would be welcome!

Christine Carmichael, SAS

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“Hi Everyone: Curious to see if anyone out there can share any best practices with working with internal stakeholders on the corporate side when filling references and developing reference strategies. We currently encounter a lot of "silo" projects and wondering if anyone can share ideas as to how to best leverage a good story for multiple opportunities and agendas.”

Debbie Ng, Cognos

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