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Customer references help close sales.
Customer references in the form of quotes,
success stories and other testimonial
collateral are among the most effective
promotional materials your company can
develop in its quest for new business.
A good success story doesn't focus directly
on your company's promotion of its solutions
and benefits but instead details the tangible
results your customers have realized by
using your solution.
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Customers can choose how to participate.
An ongoing customer reference program,
with a choice of activities, can be tailored
to each customer. Those who are not immediately
willing or able to provide a whole success
story might provide a quote to be used
to augment brochures, press releases and
other collateral. Perhaps these customers
will consent to participate in a story
at a later date. In addition, long-term,
very close customers may be willing to
serve as reference sites and as field
test sites for future products. By developing
quotes, stories and reference/field test
sites, your customer reference program
actively strengthens your company's sales
and marketing efforts. You'll be able
to show prospects a wider range of successes.
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Reference programs improve your customer
care. As important as its value in
helping to move prospects along in the
sales cycle, a customer reference program,
when used correctly, can help you deepen
your relationship with existing customers.
Customers who are invited to participate
in your reference program know that you
value your joint success with them over
the long term.
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You get to tell the whole story.
For technology-based businesses, where
the solution is likely to be complex,
customer references are best developed
as 2- to 4-page stories, a format that
is short enough to be read but long enough
to provide realistic detail about the
solution. Brief summaries of the stories
can also be posted on a Web site, with
links to the full story in PDF format.
Where resources permit, you can also develop
testimonial videos or ask customers to
participate in advertising campaigns,
trade shows, conferences and other activities.
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A reference program can be outsourced.
If you don't have the marketing resources
to dedicate to a customer reference program,
you can successfully outsource this function.
Make sure you choose a marketing agency
with experience in developing customer
reference programs for technology-based
businesses. Once you and your agency develop
a program process that suits your business,
all you'll need to do is pass qualified
reference customers to the agency-they
can do the rest, ensuring that your customer
feels valued throughout the process.
Outsourcing a reference program doesn't
mean you lose control or contact; it means
you can extend your ability to work with
more of your customers and to produce
more reference materials in a shorter
amount of time.
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