Best Data Points and Questions for Seller Reference Call Requests in SFDC Opportunities

Wynn Tanner · 2026-08-20T15:36:47.871Z

👋 Hi all - new to this channel as I'm supporting the CX team as they build out a more formal reference management system through SFDC. Can anyone share the optimal data points / questions asked of sellers when they put in a reference call request? This would be connected to the SFDC opportunity so we'd have that to pull in, but want to make sure we're not asking too much or too little to match the request. Appreciate your help!

Best Data Points and Questions for Seller Reference Call Requests in SFDC Opportunities | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

10 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Abigail Benson
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(edited)·
Hey Wynn! I'm happy to get on a zoom with you to walk you through my setup in SFDC
Alexie Glover
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Basics, beyond product requirements, are usually:
Region
Industry
Persona
Some companies need to be more granular with things like use case, product maturity, company size/deployment size I actually recommend you ask your sellers what are important to them when identifying a reference versus looking at Customer Marketing/Advocacy standards, because selling motions are often bespoke to a given company anyway.
➕2
Wynn Tanner
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That's helpful Alexie Glover! We have some data of the requests CSMs (and sometimes I) get from sellers that we'll use to shape it. And thanks for the offer to help Abigail Benson! Let me discuss with my CX partner to see if we see eye to eye. Figure there's always a v1 and then we can adjust.
👍1
Sarah McCoy
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More to consider - some of these may or may not be easy to achieve depending on how your Accounts are set up - but these are the ones I get asked for regularly:
Edition of product
Modules (if applicable)
Industry-specific use cases
Business segment
Annual Revenue
Number of employees
Description of what the customer does / About
System Replaced / Incumbent vendor
Competitor (who the ref customer included in their eval and maybe even trialed)
Gov certs / Industry Certs or recognition
Fortune 500, 100, etc.
Purchase date & Go-live date
Region, State, etc.
Sarah McCoy
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·
I got really good at crawling win notes, Sales Engineering notes, etc on closed won opps to get all of this info which we were lucky to have in SFDC one previous role
Sarah McCoy
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And probably even easier nowadays w/ AI depending on what you have AI connected to 🙂
Wynn Tanner
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Thanks Sarah McCoy - so these would be more the info you had on the customers themselves, right? Not the information needed to put in the reference request form for the sellers?
Sarah McCoy
·
(edited)·
Oh whooops, sorry I didn't realize you were just asking for help w/ the form! My form is pretty straightforward:
Opp #
request summary
Suggested customers (i.e. in case they have a specific customer in mind for the request)
Primary contact and title for the call (to make sure we get the right persona on the call)
Estimated Close Date
Sarah McCoy
·
·
I use Smartsheets for our form which I love because it makes a tracking sheet (and reporting) for me and I can have a bunch of fields that are not visible to the field and it also has if-then logic. We use Deeto but for all requests where sellers weren't able to find what they needed in Deeto or needed some help, the form is awesome. Apologies if this wasn't the info you were looking for.
Wynn Tanner
·
·
no worries! I appreciate the help! If-then logic is great - harder to do in SFDC, that's for sure!
💯1

Abigail Benson
·
(edited)·
Hey Wynn! I'm happy to get on a zoom with you to walk you through my setup in SFDC
Alexie Glover
·
·
Basics, beyond product requirements, are usually:
Region
Industry
Persona
Some companies need to be more granular with things like use case, product maturity, company size/deployment size I actually recommend you ask your sellers what are important to them when identifying a reference versus looking at Customer Marketing/Advocacy standards, because selling motions are often bespoke to a given company anyway.
➕2
Wynn Tanner
·
·
That's helpful Alexie Glover! We have some data of the requests CSMs (and sometimes I) get from sellers that we'll use to shape it. And thanks for the offer to help Abigail Benson! Let me discuss with my CX partner to see if we see eye to eye. Figure there's always a v1 and then we can adjust.
👍1
Sarah McCoy
·
·
More to consider - some of these may or may not be easy to achieve depending on how your Accounts are set up - but these are the ones I get asked for regularly:
Edition of product
Modules (if applicable)
Industry-specific use cases
Business segment
Annual Revenue
Number of employees
Description of what the customer does / About
System Replaced / Incumbent vendor
Competitor (who the ref customer included in their eval and maybe even trialed)
Gov certs / Industry Certs or recognition
Fortune 500, 100, etc.
Purchase date & Go-live date
Region, State, etc.
Sarah McCoy
·
·
I got really good at crawling win notes, Sales Engineering notes, etc on closed won opps to get all of this info which we were lucky to have in SFDC one previous role
Sarah McCoy
·
·
And probably even easier nowadays w/ AI depending on what you have AI connected to 🙂
Wynn Tanner
·
·
Thanks Sarah McCoy - so these would be more the info you had on the customers themselves, right? Not the information needed to put in the reference request form for the sellers?
Sarah McCoy
·
(edited)·
Oh whooops, sorry I didn't realize you were just asking for help w/ the form! My form is pretty straightforward:
Opp #
request summary
Suggested customers (i.e. in case they have a specific customer in mind for the request)
Primary contact and title for the call (to make sure we get the right persona on the call)
Estimated Close Date
Sarah McCoy
·
·
I use Smartsheets for our form which I love because it makes a tracking sheet (and reporting) for me and I can have a bunch of fields that are not visible to the field and it also has if-then logic. We use Deeto but for all requests where sellers weren't able to find what they needed in Deeto or needed some help, the form is awesome. Apologies if this wasn't the info you were looking for.
Wynn Tanner
·
·
no worries! I appreciate the help! If-then logic is great - harder to do in SFDC, that's for sure!
💯1