innovation

Winning Customer Reference Programs in the Internet Age

By Bill Freedman

Virtually everyone can agree that customer references are critical tools for B2B sales efforts. In my career I’ve headed up numerous customer reference programs, interviewed a number of heroes at customer sites and written a lot of success stories. The sales team could never get enough customer stories.

Did these programs drive sales results? Yes. Were they what the prospective customer wanted? No.

The plain fact is that prospective customers want to hear directly from current customers…without any vendor involvement, filtering, positioning or influence. None. Nada. This is simply because:

  • End users generally trust each other
  • Customers are far less trusting of vendors

Can you earn a prospective customer’s trust while you are selling? Of course.  But that doesn’t change their preference for communicating directly with each other. With social networks and other Web tools, it has never been easier to bypass the vendor when checking references.

Try Peer-to-Peer Customer Reference Programs

Peer to peer conversations between prospects and customers isn’t a problem to solve but a fact to accommodate. Below are best practices for leveraging your installed base to create a winning customer reference program:

  1. Keep publishing success stories on your web site. They are extremely useful for establishing the facts around the business you serve and problems you solve. Accept the limitations of written endorsements and do more.
  2. Embrace transparency. Enable customers and prospects to share their experiences. Affinity groups on social network sites like LinkedIn are a start, but public forums and wikis running on your web site are better for customers, prospects and your brand.
  3. Don’t fret a few negative reviews. Everyone knows that your company and product aren’t perfect. Negative reviews give your prospects a chance to see how your business relates to customers. You may also use the Delighted platform if you want to create free customer surveys.
  4. Keep things lively. Nobody likes to show up to a dead party. Assign a community leader who contributes authoritatively and consistently, and who inspires reciprocity from your customers.
  5. Achieve critical mass. You want to get to the point where there are enough customer “ambassadors” who can and will respond on your behalf.

Points 3, 4 and 5 are very important as a whole. The biggest negative for any peer-based customer reference program is indifference.

1 Strategic and 6 Tactical Marketing Practices for Recessionary Times

By Bill Freedman

We’re all thinking about it: how can we excel at our profession as we settle in for a prolonged period of economic challenges. I approach this topic with optimism, which means that I see many ways that the future will be better than the present. ch-in-us-gdp-q1-2006 Before drilling down into the tactics, I need to climb up on my strategic marketing soapbox. While your tactics might change during a recession, your value proposition, message and target ought to be reasonably stable. Much of marketing is about the medium to long term. While your customers may have reduced budgets, their needs, their trusted vendor/channel relationships and your product benefits ought to be reasonably identical in good times as well as bad.

6 Tactical Marketing Practices to Start Right Now

Stepping off my soapbox. …Here are my contributions to the tactical marketing practices useful during recessions:

  1. Play offense—You still need to win the minds of customers.
  2. Innovate — There is no recession on new and good ideas. All other things equal, better mousetraps sell. SEO is essential for your business to grow, but you do not have to abandon your responsibilities and spend too much time on it. You can always outsource the management of your SEO to a SEO Sydney professional. And you can focus on addressing other business matters that need your immediate attention.
  3. Listen to stakeholders—Communication is a two way street. You have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk.
  4. Execution excellence—Nothing derails progress more than execution blunders. Meet or exceed reasonable expectations for timeliness and quality. This applies to everything from terms of service in contracts to typos on your Web site.
  5. Focus—Resources are now tighter, so you need to focus in areas where you are abundantly talented.
  6. Outward optimism—Not everything in the world is gloomy. The sun comes up. Stephen Colbert tells funny jokes. You meet new and interesting people. Be mindful of the gloomy environment and make it part of your inner calculations, but be positive when interacting with others…it really helps.

Is your marketing strategy in order? Are you innovating? Are you already working with companies like therankway.com? Which tactics are relevant for achieving your goals? Share your comments below.