How to develop customer references
Business-to-business companies have a much harder time developing customer references vs. consumer companies. Here’s some of the feedback I hear all the time:“Corporate Communications and/or Legal (on the customer side) shuts us down every time.”
“Our customers consider their use of our product a proprietary advantage and don’t want to talk about it publicly.”
“We have a handful of customers and zero leverage at this stage getting them to be references.”
“They like us, but can’t endorse us.”
“Only a finite group are referenceable and they’ve been leveraged heavily by many different groups within our company, especially sales. PR isn’t often at the top of the list.”
While there certainly are instances where a given customer can’t be a reference, case closed, there are many proven techniques to engage others:
Think micro, not macro – The highest impact customer references are strategically targeted and proactively nurtured. They’re not random “dialing for dollars” occurrences. Analyze your customer base to target particular customers who provide a ‘great fit’ advantage for you, and them. Sort your customers by reference objective. Then go after them individually in a thoughtful way.
Leverage C-Level execs – Don’t approach critical potential customer references with junior people. Instead, elevate this outreach to the highest levels of your company. Engage your CEO, Chairman, Board members, CMO and strategic members of your PR firm to explore referenceability. Leverage any personal relationships that exist. This shifts conversational impact to a much higher – and more successful - level.
In-person works best – E-mail and phone communication are okay, but if you want to build a relationship with a very strategic customer, do this in-person. Meet them face-to-face and build rapport. Your personal touch will pay dividends down the road.
Think like your customer – The most helpful thing you can do is to get out of your company’s skin and look at the world through your customer’s eyes. Forget about getting them to do anything for you. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Invest the time to understand your customer’s culture, challenges and needs. Drill down to discover what might turn them on.
Start small – One of the biggest faux pas? Going into a customer conversation with a laundry list of requests: quotes for news releases; speaking opportunities; case studies; videos; podcasts, etc. Don’t do this. Instead, engage in a thoughtful discussion and discover what appeals to them the most. Then work hard to make it a success in the customer’s eyes. Once you establish credibility via results, you can hopefully move onto a second activity.
Find the maverick – Some people are out to make a name for themselves and build their career. Being interviewed, quoted and featured in high profile opportunities appeals to these individuals. They are risk takers, have power within their organizations and agree to take responsibility for their own actions.
Work with corporate PR – Instead of avoiding a customer’s Corporate PR department (or hoping they won’t discover your plot to get their maverick quoted), get them involved from the get-go. Engage in a thoughtful conversation and remember the principles previously discussed. Try to uncover one particular activity that might be green-lighted by Corporate PR.
Move PR up the food chain – While it’s critical to have customer references to close sales deals, it’s also important to have them validate your company with bloggers, important media and analysts. Lobby persuasively to move PR up the critical list.
Bake referenceability into contracts – Work with your sales and legal departments to create custom testimonial language for new customer contracts. Be willing to give something back to your customer in exchange for their involvement. Remember to craft language that is as specific as possible, e.g. “agree to be a reference” is not as effective as “agree to participate with one new customer win news release and one media exclusive.”
Small and involved beats big and uninvolved – Any customer reference is better than zero customer references. While a brand name is nearly always preferable, your communications program may still be well served by a smaller company eager for visibility.
Create incentives for customers – Some customers need a trigger event to get them involved. While their immediate reaction may be to shut the door on any idea, you might be able to gain traction by dangling a meaningful carrot. Instead of saying “would you give us a quote for our news release?” (myopic and self-serving) you say “If I could orchestrate an exclusive interview for you with this blogger or reporter, would you be interested?
Bake referenceability into contracts – Work with your sales and legal departments to create custom testimonial language for new customer contracts. Be willing to give something back to your customer in exchange for their involvement. Remember to craft language that is as specific as possible, e.g. “agree to be a reference” is not as effective as “agree to participate with one new customer win news release and one media exclusive.”Small and involved beats big and uninvolved – Any customer reference is better than zero customer references. While a brand name is nearly always preferable, your communications program may still be well served by a smaller company eager for visibility.
Create incentives for customers – Some customers need a trigger event to get them involved. While their immediate reaction may be to shut the door on any idea, you might be able to gain traction by dangling a meaningful carrot. Instead of saying “would you give us a quote for our news release?” (myopic and self-serving) you say “If I could orchestrate an exclusive interview for you with this blogger or reporter, would you be interested?
Build Best Practices programs – Create a “pull” program by organizing a contest for your customers that rewards outstanding product usage and innovative applications. Best Practices programs are very effective because they offer public recognition and prizes that appeal to a customer’s ego, pride and perceived leadership.
Create incentives for your sales force and channels – Let’s face it, sales professionals care about one thing (as they should): closing deals. Getting customers to play ball as a PR reference isn’t high on their list. Get them involved by developing an appealing ‘bounty program’ that gives sales/channels a reason to invest their limited time. Cash rewards are a good place to start.
Talk trends and issues when road-blocked - If a customer is interested in media interviews but can’t overtly plug your company’s product or service then explore trends, issues and thought leadership topics instead. For example if they can’t endorse your security software product outright, they may be interested in discussing current issues revolving around security. This approach builds trust and rapport over time and may eventually open the door.
Create incentives for your sales force and channels – Let’s face it, sales professionals care about one thing (as they should): closing deals. Getting customers to play ball as a PR reference isn’t high on their list. Get them involved by developing an appealing ‘bounty program’ that gives sales/channels a reason to invest their limited time. Cash rewards are a good place to start.
Talk trends and issues when road-blocked - If a customer is interested in media interviews but can’t overtly plug your company’s product or service then explore trends, issues and thought leadership topics instead. For example if they can’t endorse your security software product outright, they may be interested in discussing current issues revolving around security. This approach builds trust and rapport over time and may eventually open the door.
Leverage prospects – If you don’t have any customers, or don’t have customers who can be references, cultivate prospects instead. Ponder the prospects your company met over the past year and identify those who were highly supportive of your product/service capability and “got it.” If you tee-up a media opportunity that gives them and their company positive visibility, this will nurture the relationship.
to building a customer reference program for marketing
purposes.
Think micro, not macro
- One dimension I'd add here is time. Intel, for instance, thinks about a customer reference relationship in terms of years vs. weeks or months. Granted, they have a bigger name with perhaps more options to offer in terms of reference activities, co-marketing events, etc., but the lesson to be learned is that great customer references come from relationships that evolve over time. Intel builds a 5-year customer marketing plan that could be as simple as webinar series participation to the more elaborate (and higher commitment), television commercials shown during the super bowl. It's a collaborative and partnership-oriented approach that works.
Build Best Practices programs
- One of our clients had the brilliant idea of offering to author an award submission for a Gartner award to a handful of hard-to-reach customers. To the point of "Find the maverick," the same people that wouldn't previously respond to email and voicemail were suddenly engaged and happy to submit to an interview in order to get the award submission done quickly. It gave our client a door opener to the larger customer reference discussion.
Create incentives for your sales force and channels
- We haven't seen this work very often. The prize has to be pretty substantial to show up on the sales team's radar. They’re generally well-compensated and are quota-focused. However, there are a lot of dynamics that determine success with this approach including the sales force culture, the relationship between sales and marketing, management support of the contest, etc. High profile recognition (a CEO mention at a company-wide event) seems to have as much impact and may be a better option if there isn’t a sizable budget for the prize.
Talk trends and issues when road-blocked
- There was a good presentation at last year’s Customer Reference Forum event regarding how to get government references. The speaker from SAS said they're happy to have the customer tell THEIR story about THEIR problem and solution, without ever mentioning a SAS product if that’s what it takes. That gets around anti-endorsement policies, and in many ways, carries more credibility. It's working for them.
- I manage all references throughout the U.S. so meeting a lot of the customers face to face isn't an option. What I like to do is to remember little things when I'm talking to them such as their child's birthday, their anniversary. Little things that remind me and them that they are human and not just a customer.
- It's funny that you mention network security, because that's the market I work in. It's general very difficult to get large customers to do a press release with us, but there are so many more options to make it public that company X is a customer...blog posting, logo usage, quote in a press release, quote on the Website, name on the Website.
- I have also found that giving incentives to sales works. Yes, they always want more money, but the little SPIFFS that I give them work. SPIFFS like money and sending them baked goods! I alsocan't agree with you more that public recognition of what they have done is huge. When a case study, press release or video testimonial is completed, I send an email out to the entire sales team letting them know of the new collateral and thanking the specific sales person. Who doesn't like public recognition?!
- The only thing that I don't agree with is the baking the reference into the contract. I've never seen it work well but maybe it's just the industry I'm in.
Thanks for the post.