Request for Recent Research on References and Presentation Examples
Wondering if anyone has any recent research on impact of references? Or, a presentation they've used for company buy-in?
Wondering if anyone has any recent research on impact of references? Or, a presentation they've used for company buy-in?
this is about referrals but I used it to inspire an ROI calculation about reference calls More reference calls = higher win rate Example: if reference calls drive 10 more closed-won deals in a year with $30k ACV, that's $300k in revenue
Emily Smith might have something. Vera might, and Allison Hughes works for ReferenceEdge so they may have something.
Ann Crilley We asked about this in our 2024 customer story report. https://www.upliftcontent.com/blog/saas-marketing-case-studies/#customer_advocacy
I was coming to the community today to ask something similar. We've had some internal shifting since I went on maternity leave and now that I'm back I just learned I'll be taking on a customer reference program - aka building one from scratch. I've not done this before from nothing and am looking for any and all advice 😵💫 Specifically, if anyone would be comfortable sharing any planning docs, tracking software you use, programmatic features to start with, etc... TYIA!
Amanda Schulte I have a process of having a request form in our project management tool and I added a "reference program" checkbox to our customer contact records so I can pull a report of all of our reference customers. I will say that I highly recommend trying to get approval for a tool that can help with reference management; otherwise, it can a real challenge to deliver references to sales in a timely manner. I can share my research deck on some of the vendors out there. We were going to go with ReferenceEdge but found it is not flexible enough for us so we've been considering SlapFive, Deeto, Base, and Champion.
I recently chose Deeto and went live a couple weeks ago, happy to share more about our thinking here and how it's going so far
I am very much hoping to set it all up in Salesforce and be self-serve to the reps. As a team of one, I can't be a match maker. But, TBD on if that can actually happen.
Ann Crilley Leslie Barrett has a post about this on CMAsoulmate, you should check it out. cmasoulmate.substack.com
Amanda Schulte I run a pretty fast and high volume reference program that was built from scratch so I'm more than happy to jump on a call and walk through it with you if you'd like! When it comes to internal buy in, I'm typically using internal numbers and sharing that up with leadership. Close rate for deals w references, how many references our advocates have completed, the CMRR they contributed to by month/quarter/FY
Ann Crilley I specifically chose something that doesnt live in salesforce 😆 you might consider Orca which is SFDC native
Amanda Schulte I just launched my built-from-scratch reference program in January, and would be happy to chat through my process! I have less of a proven-value perspective, since it's still so new, but I can share how I went about building the program/who was involved/how we added users, etc.
Ann Crilley I use ReferenceEdge which is native to SFDC, and it's pretty much self-serve. I'm only a few months in but I really like it so far. All requests are sent to our account owners (customer experience team) for approval. The only time I step in is when a Sales rep can't find a match. But if you have enough references, then you should be good to go.
I'm doing the same thing (building from scratch) with a lot of customers so scale is an issue. I'd love to jump on a call with anyone willing to chat! ☺️
Thank you all, this is so helpful and I really appreciate it! I'll set up a call in the near future for those interested, it sounds like a few of us are in the same boat! I'd love to hear more Jennifer Eberhart and Emily Smith!
I’ve been a reference manager in a few of my jobs, happy to discuss pros and cons of platforms and how you decide to set up the reference program - a lot of it depends on your sales team / cycle / who you’re selling to. Christa Niering Amanda Schulte In my last role I also specifically chose a tool that exists outside of SFDC to piggyback on Perri Chaikof’s comments. I’ve surveyed the lot of the tools and am happy to share lessons learned, etc.
