GROW YOUR CUSTOMER BASE

CUT YOUR CUSTOMER REFERENCE PROGRAM

TRANSFORMING B2B CUSTOMER REFERENCE PROGRAMS IN THE AGE OF ADVOCACY

MAY NOT BE DEAD YET BUT THEY’RE DYINGIt’s a bold statement…but the writing is on the wall.Buyers don’t trust the established reference process. It’s not objective. It’s completely self-serving.

You present a review of your choice from a customer you select to convince a lead or prospect to purchase something you’re steering them toward.

The entire process is artificial and rigged in your company’s favor. The worst part is: your buyers know it.

Think we’re exaggerating? Consider these scenarios:

You walk into an electronics store ready to purchase a TV that you’ve carefully researched for weeks. At this point, you’ve already had numerous conversations with your electronics junkie friend, read dozens of product reviews online and compared prices at a number of stores.

TRADITIONAL B2B CUSTOMER REFERENCE PROGRAMS

You approach a salesperson, ready to buy, but he directs you to a more expensive model and mentions how much a recent customer loved it. He then offers to connect you with that customer.

WOULD YOU TAKE HIM UP ON IT?

How about this: You’re seated in a restaurant and you’re ready to order a meal that comes highly recommended by a friend. The server comes by your table and recommends you order something from the daily specials menu.

To fully convince you, she shows you a single Yelp review and says she can put you in touch with that customer to answer your questions before you make a decision.

If these scenarios seem far-fetched, think objectively about how closely they match your prospective buyers’ experiences.

A potential customer gets in touch with your company. Your sales rep likely suggests they speak with a hand-picked customer who is sure to speak glowingly about your company and its products.

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It’s no wonder prospects take these references with a grain of salt. Why should a buyer trust someone who will only present a one-sided, biased perspective? Even when they take vendor-supplied references into consideration, savvy buyers have likely already narrowed down their list of potential vendors and solutions.

According to Forrester Research, B2B buyers tend to be as much as 75% through the buying process by the time they talk to a sales rep.

B2B enterprises with revenues under $10 billion spend an average of $250,000 on formal customer reference programs; those generating over $10 billion annually spend over $1 million.Source: inEvidence, Global Customer Reference Programme Survey

As prospects place less and less emphasis on vendor provided references, it means the thousands – and in some cases millions – of dollars companies spend on their reference programs is not delivering the expected ROI.

In today’s Yelpified world, self-empowered buyers don’t wait for a salesperson to introduce them to a reference. Instead, they sift through online reviews, ask questions in their online communities, and seek out opinions and experiences from their network of peers.

CUSTOMER REFERENCES ARE JUST A CHECKLIST ITEM.

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In bypassing the self-serving gatekeeper of old, buyers gather gen-uine information directly from trust-ed sources.

They can find what they’re looking for on a social network such as LinkedIn or Twitter, a vendor com-munity hosted on a Lithium or Jive-type platform, or in person.

“Harnessing the power of the customer’s voice has always been very important, but it is now more critical than ever thanks to the rise of social media and all of these very organic communities.”–Pascale Royal, Senior Program Manager, Strategic Customers in Customer Marketing at Citrix

In fact, the CMO Council reports that nearly half of the buyers they surveyed cite professional associations and online communities, as well as industry organizations and groups, as the most valuable in shaping their purchase decisions.

“Buyers are talking to each other and third-party organizations are also being formed to help them do this, such as G2Crowd, ITCentralStation, TrustRadius, GetApp and others.”–Bill Lee, President of the Summit on Customer Engagement and author of ‘The Hidden Wealth of Customers’

IT’S TIME TO FLOOD THE MARKETPLACE WITH ADVOCACYHow can your company adjust to this new reality and continue harnessing the power of satisfied customers? The answer is to focus on advocacy and social selling 2.0.

By this we don’t mean that your sales development reps and account executives should spend more time on social media channels than on the phone with potential customers.

Blasting out case studies and testimonials to their few dozen followers is a weak attempt at a one-way conversation. Plus, it’s no longer as effective as it has been to repurpose customer references into content – prospects can see your marketing department’s fingerprints all over it.

“We much prefer to have our customers talking about how they’re leveraging our tool on a community thread.”–Lisa Richardson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Dell KACE

Your company must find ways to engage prospective buyers in influential conversations throughout their buying process. You can do just that by tapping into your happiest, most enthusiastic customers.

As eager advocates, they can speak on your behalf via social media, Q&A sites, over the phone and in person.

“A reference shouldn’t be something that lives in a database.”–Jenn Steele, Head of Growth at RecruitLoop

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Often considered experts by their peers, these advocates can guide your buyers through the selection process by advising on questions to ask, the price they can expect to pay and more.

How can you ignore the opportunity to introduce such influence early into the buying process?

The most important influence on any B2B purchase decision made five years from now – more important than an analyst, pricing, salesperson, or anything else – will be another prospective buyer or customer.

The choice is yours: Continue with the status quo and be increasingly overlooked by prospective buyers. Or you can empower your advocates to engage in social selling, and boost the likelihood of making the short list of potential vendors.

By now, hopefully you recognize that customer advocacy deserves your attention. If you aren’t sure where to begin, the rest of this eBook contains insight from eight customer success, marketing and sales thought leaders who are transforming the way their companies harness relationships with loyal customers.

Read on for inspiration and information on how to evolve your customer reference program so it taps into the power of advocacy!

FEATURING INSIGHT FROM:BILL LEE LIZ PEDRO PASCALE ROYAL

JEFF LINTON JENN STEELE RHETT LIVENGOOD

SABRINA COTE FRED BALS LISA RICHARDSON

Bill LeePresident of the Summit on Customer EngagementAuthor of ‘The Hidden Wealth of Customers’

I am almost ready to say that we need to just get rid of the term “customer reference.” Don’t call yourself a Customer Reference Manager -- that’s just one small part (and probably an increasingly small part) of what you need to be doing.

Right now, we’re only tapping maybe 5-10% of the tremendous capabilities of the greatest resource companies have: their customer advocates.

It’s up to customer reference professionals get creative, think expansively, join communities and attend events with peers, such as the Summit on Customer Engagement.

This is the only way to become knowledgeable on what that other 90% is going to look like and become an important key player in this new world of marketing.

The #1 thing you need to do is become familiar with your own company’s strategy and then develop a customer-focused program that aligns with that strategy.

You want to go to your senior management and start the conversation by saying, ‘Here are the areas we are most focused on as a company and here’s how I’m supporting this strategy.’

From there you can show them how you’re reaching buyers, starting conversations with them and leading them through their decision-making journey all the way up to a sale.These traditional approaches are becoming obsolete. Instead, customer advocacy – covering the entire “buyer’s decision journey,” not just the end where you’re closing the deal -- is where we need to be focusing our energy.

HOW TO EVOLVE:ALIGN WITH YOUR COMPANY’S CORPORATE STRATEGY

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Lisa RichardsonSenior Product Marketing Manager at Dell KACE

When we first started, we had something thatlooked a lot like a traditional customer referenceprogram: we were trying to maintain a databaseof customers, figure out who was happy with ourproduct in which verticals, and use thatinformation for case studies, peer references,etc.

As we’ve grown, we’ve started to use advocate marketing to do two things:

1. Engage with our customers to make them happier.

2. Mobilize them to participate in conversations with prospects earlier in the sales cycle, such as the discovery stage.

Our advocate marketing program helps us streamline the process of facilitating genuine, high-quality conversations between advocates and potential customers. It’s no longer just Dell KACE presenting the business perspective.

If your company is already on your prospects’ short list, it’s happening because of your advocates. That’s why a reference program isn’t even really a reference program anymore.

It’s about customer engagement and satisfaction.

Happy customers are going to talk about your product whether you’re asking them to or not. CRM and advocacy should be part of your overall marketing program.

HOW TO EVOLVE:FOCUS ON CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND SATISFACTION

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Jenn SteeleHead of Growth at RecruitLoop

We want our customers to love us so much thatthey aren’t passive references – they should beactive. A truly referenceable customer issomeone who is yelling from the rooftops abouthow amazing we are and bringing newcustomers directly to us.

Aside from building an excellent customer experience, this process isn’t something we canexert a lot of control over.

At RecruitLoop, our goal is that our customers love us so much that they’ll tell their friends about us, volunteer for case studies, offer to take us out for drinks and even buy our swag for themselves.

IMPLEMENT LEAN, AGILE AND HOLISTIC PROCESSES.

I’ve always considered a traditional reference program to be a step back. It should be more of a lean, agile and holistic process that reaches potential customers earlier on, such as through social selling.

The key to social selling, then, is social listening. We watch our favorite companies on socialmedia to see where there might be opportunities for us – or our customers – to engage with them.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

Liz PedroDirector of Customer Success Marketing at Mitel

Customer referencing is about finding andpromoting customer success, and customeradvocacy plays a huge role in that. I don’t everwant a reference who just likes the products – I want an advocate.

That being said, references are just one part of Mitel’s new global customer success marketing program, which includes a new awards program, leverages social media, trains sales to promote customer success and more.

Every Friday, I send a customer success update which includes sample posts for Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook so they can help us get the word out about customer success. Our CMO has even started sending out primers on social selling.

UNCOVER YOUR BEST ADVOCATES

You can find advocates in many places, including user groups, your sales teams, customer surveys, online communities, and other departments that work with customers.

Once you find advocates your job will become a lot easier. After joining Mitel at the end of 2013, one of the first things I did was look for customer advocates in our user group. Now I’m recruiting them from our social communities.

Many customer advocates are willing to do press, sales references, speak with analysts, dosuccess stories and videos, etc., but they are never asked. Find them, ask them, leverage them and repeat.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

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Fred BalsManager, Customer Advocacy and Media Relations

Programs at Ektron

The need for references won’t disappearaltogether, but I think they’re evolving into pre-references, for lack of a better term.

There is now a tendency for people to start researching companies before they engage with sales and some even look for references before they talk to the company at all.

That’s where customer advocacy comes in. We hear from our customers all the time that prospects are contacting them out of the blue to get the scoop on us.

While these prospects are still researching their options – we don’t even know about them yet – they see our advocates talking us up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or being featured in a case study on our website. I think that’s going to happen more and more often.

BUILD A COMMUNITY FOR YOUR BEST ADVOCATES

Increasingly, the responsibility of people like me will be to create vibrant communities around our best advocates.

That way, we can acknowledge their efforts and give them the resources they need to continue spreading the word about our companies, whether there is a formal request for a reference or not.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

Pascale RoyalSenior Program Manager, Strategic Customers,

Customer Marketing at Citrix

People can now share their opinion on anything instantly. Whether they just had a good experience with something or a terrible experience, they can immediately share it with the world.

B2B companies are coming around to the fact that this is an area that needs investmentbecause peer-to-peer referencing is growing.

I can see how the customers in our program, especially at the strategic level, interact with each other. It is so important for them to network and stay in contact with each other.

This year, we’re planning to explore customer advocacy more deeply and decide how we’re going to measure it.

COMPROMISE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Meet your customers where they’re most comfortable advocating for you.

When we’re working with executives from large financial institutions or the healthcare industry, for example – verticals where they’re just not heavy users of social media or have significant restrictions on how they can use it – we have to be cognizant of that and find a happy medium.

Oftentimes, they tell us they’re only comfortable with one-to-one communication, LinkedIn or being featured in major industry publications, for example.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

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Sabrina CoteSocial Media Marketing Manager at Brainshark

Prior to using an advocate marketing program asour go-to system for identifying references forour sales team, reps would email a few folkswithin our customer community team who hadthe most direct and recent interactions withcustomers.

They’d ask for help identifying a customer in a certain industry who used Brainshark for a specific function to serve as a reference.

Unfortunately, this often resulted in very last minute requests and a lot of extra work for our community team.

Now, we issue a challenge to our customer advocates asking them to raise their hands to be references. We can even reach out to employees this way to ask them to recommend a particularly active customer to be a reference (pending the customer’s agreement of course).In the past it could take as long as a week. Now we can often have a reference within the day that the request comes in.

INTEGRATE CUSTOMER REFERENCES WITH OTHER SYSTEMS

In addition to collecting willing references, we can also gather qualifying information, such as industry and function, so that we can best match relevant customers to reference requests from sales. All of this information is catalogued in our advocate marketing platform, and thanks to its integration with Salesforce, we can easily access more information about specific advocates as needed.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

Rhett LivengoodDirector, Worldwide Business Development

at Intel Corporation, Business Client Platform Division

When two-thirds of a buying decision happensbefore a potential customer ever talks to asalesperson, the ‘learn’ stage is a key part of thebuyer’s journey.

That’s why the ability to create high-qualitycustomer stories for buyers to find early on in the buying process will never go out of vogue. The big movement we’ve seen is that sales conversations and sales enablement content is moving online.

Rather than keeping new customer references internal until they’re needed, we tweet all of the new content we’ve created about our customers so anyone – including buyers and our sales reps – can find it when they need it.

When they’re in that ‘learn’ stage, buyers can discover what our customers have done on their own.

HOW TO EVOLVE:PERSONALIZE EVERYTHING

Personalization is the future of the customer reference program. We’re going to know so much about a customer and what they’re doing in the sales process, that we can get the right information where they need it when they need it rather than taking a more generic approach.

How we deliver those videos, case studies and whitepapers will get smarter as we personalize the buying process. It’s like moving from a Wal-Mart model to a Nordstrom’s experience.

Jeff LintonNational Channel Sales Manager – Agency

at Act-On Software

Experienced buyers are looking for nuancedopinions. They probably heard about you fromsomeone they know and want your help, as astrategic partner, to achieve their goals. They might even be coming from a competitorfeelings desperate, cheated or burned.

So, if a sales rep is their first contact with your company, that sales rep needs to be connected within your customer community and trusted by that community.

This is why true social selling goes beyond just posting content on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Modern sales reps need to extent themselves and their company’s services into the social realm by engaging in conversations and sharing their expertise in your space. Even more important, they need to know when to direct a customer into those conversations. Social selling, customer references and advocacy have merged, and sales and marketing will have to work together to get the best possible results.

BUILD UP THE PERSONAL BRANDS OF YOUR SALES REPS

How sales reps manage their reputations and personal brands can have a large impact on their credibility. Providing a reference to validate what they’ve said is no longer good enough. Sales reps should be given the tools and training they need to build their personal brand and connect with customers in every way, shape and form to increase credibility.

HOW TO EVOLVE:

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YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOU

HELP THEM SHAREIT WITH THE WORLD

Influitive’s AdvocateHub is a complete advocate management platform that helps B2B marketers capture customer enthusiasm, and use it to turbocharge marketing and sales efforts.

With AdvocateHub, B2B marketers build advocate communities where customers, fans and evangelists can complete high-impact activities, such as referrals, reference calls, product reviews or social sharing.

Visit influitive.com to learn more.

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