Who Did You Eat With Today?

I recently finished the book “Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” by Keith Ferrazzi. Surprisingly, it was brought to my attention by a stay at home mom friend of mine. I can’t remember how she found out about it, but she’s an avid reader too, so who knows.

The book goes through how to build relationships and how one can lead to many others. More than anything, I learned that you never want to take advantage of a customer and tick them off from the reference perspective. I’m not sure about yours, but the network security industry is tight knit and people know each other and move around. I can expect that if something blows up with a customer, there’s a good chance other customers/prospects will find out about it. And likewise, if there’s a great article written about a customer or a customer is extremely impressed with my company, others will find out about it too. Does word of mouth marketing come to mind?

In the book Ferrazzi makes the point that no one is a self made man/woman. I couldn’t agree more. When I’m done with a press release/case study or a customer has a great article appear, I send out a note to the Sales team to let them know of the success. And without a doubt, I thank the Sales person for keeping the customer happy. I would love to be able to take full credit for the success of the reference program, but it’s simply not true. Yes, I am responsible for it, but if the Sales team was ticking off the customers every day, I wouldn’t have happy customers to write about. So, do yourself a favor and give credit to those who deserve it. Thank those who make your job easier!  In the long run, it’ll make your job even easier.

Also make sure that you are letting your customer know how they will benefit from your interaction.  As a vendor, I have to remember that 1) my customers are working with many vendors 2) being a reference for me isn’t the top priority for my customer and 3) my customers want to succeed.  I need to help them.  There’s nothing better to help the career of my customer than getting them into a top tier publication or giving them something to show to their management to prove that they’ve saved the company $XXX.  Show your customers what’s in it for them because if you don’t another vendor will!

One of my favorite quotes from the book is “Loyalty may be the forgotten virtue of the modern age, but it remains the hallmark of any strong relationship and a value many companies are working hard to bring into their day-to-day practices.” Need I say more? 

Keep your customers happy, treat them well and respect them and your relationship with them. I love it when I leave a company and my previous customers still keep in contact. It’s then that I know I did my job well. 

How do you build your relationships with your customers?

Ferrazzi’s follow up book “Who’s Got Your Back?” might be on version 2 of my “Dear Santa, I Want Books for Christmas!” If you have books you want me to add to the list, let me know!

Happy Halloween!

“The New Medicine” and How it Relates to References

I recently watched the movie “The New Medicine” which is a documentary hosted by Dana Reeve (Christopher Reeve’s wife). I have no idea how it got in my queue but I was pleasantly surprised by it. Granted, I had no idea what to expect and the thought of watching a medical movie for 2 plus hours did not initially appeal to me. However, I did find myself engaged in it.

Simply put, the movie makes the case that your mind plays a huge role in your health and the way in which we recover and/or fight illness and disease. With many real case studies of how people made themselves better with positive thinking, the documentary is pretty moving. It’s repeated over and over again that stress and tearing down your body doesn’t help you at all.

Throughout the documentary, there were many points that were made that I’m going to bring up here. Some may be far fetched, but I couldn’t help think about customer references when I heard these. So stick with me for a few more paragraphs while I explain. Here we go…

- Know the patient history in order to find out why they are acting the way they are. It is very important to know all about a customer before you use them for a reference – especially a large one. For extremely important ones like key media opportunities or analyst references, I will speak with the customer and see if there are any roadblocks or bumps in the road they may have. They might not be entirely related to the current opportunity, but it is best not to be blind sided when it’s too late. If I know that a reporter wants to talk to a customer about consolidation but has a habit of asking about support issues, I’ll make sure I’ve got a happy customer and one that loves our support.

- There is a partnership between the patients and the physicians. It doesn’t matter if you sell tires, shoes, software or routers, if you want to use your customers as a reference, you’re going to have to build a partnership with them. I’m not talking about legal documentation, but you’ll both have to get something out of it. You will get good publicity or a good reference (hopefully) while the customer may just want his/her name in print or you to escalate a question that they’re having. It’s a two way street and we as reference professionals have to remember that there are lots of other vendors that our customers are working with. He/she doesn’t have to do you any favors!

- “It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has” by William Osler. This might be a stretch, but this quote resonated with me so I’m sharing my knowledge. This is such a critical part of running a reference program. At the end of interviews, I ask my customer what they feel comfortable talking about. I put them in interviews that they feel comfortable with. Just because a customer is using product X, Y and Z doesn’t mean they feel comfortable speaking about product X. They also might feel comfortable being a reference for something I had no idea about. Sounds kinda crazy, but customers sometimes use products differently than we intend them too. By asking what they want to talk about, I put power in their hands and let them realize that it’s a partnership we have, not me just telling them what they’ll be doing (see above bullet). No one likes being told what to do.

- Understand each other and have trust in each other. Understanding your customers is a key point to this bullet. Realize that what’s important to you, might not be important to them. Sometimes this sucks when you think you’ve got the perfect customer for a cover story for one of your top tier publications, but it might not be so important to the customer. They have other aspects of their jobs that don’t include helping to make your company look good. You can’t have a good relationship with anyone without trust. Treat your customer as you want to be treated because as I mentioned before, they don’t have to do you any favors.

- Allow humanity to enter into the relationship with the patient. Your customers are people too. Yes, I know, simple comment, but remember it! Put in your calendar their wedding anniversary or birthday or when they’re going on vacation and ask them about it later. If they don’t want to tell you how their honeymoon was, that’s fine, but take an interest in them outside of work related things. I’m not saying go to their kids’ baseball games (that would be weird and borderline stalking), but in an email tell them that you hope they had a good Father’s Day or wish them a happy birthday. It’s the little things that build relationships that build trust.

Now go out there, be healthy and stress-free.