Why Running a CRP Isn’t Like Starbucks – and That’s Okay

Go into a Starbucks any day of the week and you’re bound to hear someone order some crazy concoction…a grande no fat, extra hot, double shot, low fat whip, two pump….you get the idea. Starbucks prides itself in giving you the exact coffee you want – no matter if it’s a plain drip with room or a twenty five word description of you coffee.

Running a customer reference program is similar yet can be vastly different from Starbucks. Although in both cases the customer/prospect may make a very specific request, when running a reference program it’s okay to not give 100% what the prospect is looking for. Sounds pretty crazy huh? Here are some reasons:

Set expectations: Let your prospect and/or sales person (whoever comes to you with the request) know that although you will aim to get exactly what they’re looking for, it might not be possible. Many times I’ve received very granular requests – even down to the area code! Seriously. When it gets that granular, I go to my next step…

Find out what’s the most important thing(s): We’d like to give everyone exactly what they want but it might not happen. After you’ve set the expectation, find out what the most important things the prospect is looking for. Maybe it’s the same type of deployment or someone with the same vertical yet the deployment doesn’t matter. Still, it might be the product deployed that’s more important. Find out exactly what’s going to be the deal breaker and work from there.

Get timing: If you have 3 hours to get a very detailed reference, it might not work. However, if you have two weeks, you might have time to get exactly what’s being asked for. The timing of the reference can make all the difference.

I’ve said over and over, running a reference program is about finding the most appropriate customer for each opportunity. That doesn’t mean it’ll always be a 100% match, but you can get close enough that the reference will be a great match.

Social media and customer references

Today’s Marketing VOX newsletter has a very interesting article on the use of Social Media and how it relates to purchasers. Here’s a link to the article but in summary, the article states that social networking is dissolving the effectiveness of email Marketing.

According to JupiterResearch, “more than one-fifth (22 percent) of email users said they use social networking sites instead of email, with higher numbers indicating they have used instant messaging (IM), text messaging, and cell phones instead of email.”

But I run the customer reference program why would / should I care about Social Media? It comes down to word of mouth. Consumers aren’t spending as much time “listening” to email blasts from companies as they are on social networking sites and listening to their peers. This means that as a reference professional, you need to be aware of what your customers are saying about you / your company on these sites. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful (good and bad) so make sure you know who’s saying what about you!

Prime picking time!

Somehow this week flew by and I just realized that it’s already Friday and I hadn’t posted anything yet.

With another quarter completed you now have or should have a whole new list of customers to chase – and hopefully that list is long. If you haven’t already been talking to your Sales team about getting customer references, now is the time because they probably aren’t pulling their hair out this week since it’s a new quarter.

You now have two tasks…

1 – talk to Sales and see what accounts they won over the past quarter (if you don’t already know)

2 – get it in their head that you won’t leave them alone until you get a press release, case study, media opportunity, logo usage, name usage, etc. out of some of their customers.

It may take a while for the customer to deploy or install or do whatever they have to do to your product to get it up and running/used, but the sooner you have the Sales person asking for stuff, the better chance the customer will agree to it.

So get out there and start bugging your Sales people!