What to Know When You re Just Starting Your Customer Reference Program

State of the Profession Series

Case studies from the world’s top customer advocacy and engagement programs, showing how to grow the business in today’s buyer-empowered world.

What to Know When You’re Just Starting

Your Customer Reference Program

By Charlotte Lilley,

Head of Customer Programs,

For new (or rebuilding) customer advocacy programs, if you need to start with the basics, want a mentor "who's been there and done that" to show you how, and also show you the pitfalls and rabbit traits to avoid, this session is for you. Charlotte is one of the most dynamic members of our Advisory Board, has built the advocacy program at Box from the ground up and grown it into a superb engine helping to fuel Box's rapid growth.

What to Know When You’re Just Starting Your Customer Reference

Program

In this report, I’m going to talk about the fundamental building blocks of an effective customer reference program. That’s a very important topic for us as practitioners, but especially for those who are just starting their own program. I’ve lived this over the last four-plus years at Box. Since then, our company has grown from 40 employees to about 1,000 today. I wish I had known then a lot of what we’re going to go over now.

A successful reference program is supported by 11 pillars

The Parthenon in Athens, Greece was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. If you’ve ever visited the site, one of the most prominent features are the columns everywhere. In total, the structure had 46 separate columns to support its massive weight.

I think that a column, or pillar, is a fantastic analogy that we can apply to

a reference program. Reference teams interact with many different departments and people within the enterprise and we’re called upon to provide substantial output, such as customer content, a growing number of customer advocates, and metrics demonstrating impact.

Maintaining a successful reference program requires infrastructure and it’s the conceptual pillars that make up that framework, just as the marble columns upheld the Parthenon’s superstructure.

Figure 1: 11 components support an effective customer reference program.

In this report, we'll focus on the first five, which are the most critical for a new

advocacy program.

REFERENCE

PROGRAM

ATIONS CUSTOMER

CON TEN T PROGRAM ME TRIC S CLIEN T REL ATIONS

IT VISION PROGRAM OUT

SIDE EXPER TISE M AN AGING UPW ARD

Executive Support

In order to be successful, you absolutely must have the full support of your executive team. Executives set the tone for your program. Others look to them for cues as to how they should treat you. If your executives are dismissive about your role, then everyone else will be too. That’s important for a number of reasons. If you look to the far right of the diagram above, you’ll see Cross-function listed. Successful program managers work effectively with a lot of people across the enterprise. If your executives support you, then these people tend to work with you. If not, gaining support for your program can be more challenging.

At Box, we’re lucky to have a CEO who is extremely passionate about our customers and using them as public references, which helps inspire me to grow the program as much as possible, and as quickly as possible. Direct attention from your CEO can seem intimidating, but it’s a great position to be in for a person in our role, especially if you can leverage that passion to get more customers into your program.

Another reason executive support is important relates to your budget. If your executives support and value your mission, then you’re much more likely to get the resources to grow your program(s).

Executive support is also critical when it comes to recruiting marquee-brand references. We’re all aware that it’s challenging to get in front of a high-level executive at a large brand, let alone getting them to publicly partner with us. Leveraging your executives’ existing relationships with their peers can yield the introductions necessary to get one foot in the door. And that can jumpstart a long-term relationship with those customers.

Program Promotion

When it comes to a reference program, the adage that “If you build it they will

come,” does not apply. Successful program managers promote their programs:

to their executives, to fellow employees and to customers. At Box, we do this in a number of ways.

“Co-brand” with customer logos

At Box, we’re proud to have so many great brands among our customers. One way we promote our program is by putting our customers’ logos up on our walls. It’s a great

way to promote your hard work and to show appreciation to current customers. And it gets noticed. Often, when current customers or prospects visit our

offices, they ask how they can get onto the wall!

We also compile lists of referenceable customers segmented by industry, use case and geography to help support the sales team. The goal is to equip them to “name-drop” when appropriate to their prospects. Our stellar client list helps validate Box as a technology solution provider and proves that we’re here to partner long term with our customers.

Give out cool swag

“Hey, David, where’d you get that cool shirt?” We try to give out swag that’s both useful and that represents the BoxStar brand. That means putting thought into the design of our handouts and making sure it’s something people will use, wear and/or display proudly. People love the design of our “BoxStar” t-shirts, so it’s that type of gift that stimulates conversations about our program, which is exactly what we want. We want our customer advocates talking up our program in the marketplace.

Use events to create a buzz

We participate in a number of events throughout the year to promote our reference program and to recruit references. Talking to customers face-to-face creates a human connection and is the most powerful tool we have in building relationships. If you’ve met and spent time speaking with a customer face-to-face, I guarantee any future requests will have better results in getting them to agree to be a reference.

Give people a badge of honor

Another fantastic way to promote your program is through stickers and other fun reminders. We use stickers as a badge of recognition for our Sales Advisory Board

Members. Reps put these on their computers and desks to show their involvement. We also use magnets [with program facts] to walk our colleagues through the steps of how to get involved in our reference program.

Field Relations

Much of a successful reference program relies upon the relationships you

have with the field (sales, post sales and sales engineers.) That’s because partnering with your field people is the most important way to identify new

reference customers. By taking the time to communicate clearly with them, to offer incentives and to make it easy for them to participate, you will increase the success of your program.

At Box, we do a lot of things in this area, but I’ll focus on a couple in particular.

The first is incentives.

One incentive that was extremely successful for us was what I called the “Story Time Happy Hour.” I needed to get sales reps’ “customer stories” out of their heads and into a central database so that they could be leveraged across all departments. It isn’t easy to get reps to take time out from selling and dedicate that to writing out the whole customer story (use case, contacts, deal cycle, workflow, etc.) Therefore, I made it as easy as possible by scheduling one-hour time slots on their calendars, bringing in beer for them to enjoy and paying them in cold hard cash for every story they wrote. The result was over 100 stories to be utilized by my team, an average of about 2 stories per sales rep.

This incentive worked because I made it easy for them to show up, made it very clear what their deliverable was and made it fun with beer and cash. I can say that this approach certainly stood out against other “spiffs” or incentives they were competing for their attention.

From my experience as a sales person, I know that pure competition drives sales peoples’ behavior. So to take advantage of this, we created a quarterly

contest to incent them. The contest calls for specific types of customers and stories that map to our pre-identified gaps for use in Box’ marketing programs

and campaigns. Of course, there are prizes along with public shout-outs of the winners to boost their egos.

Another thing we’ve found helpful to scale our message is to provide how-to videos on how how-to get involved with the reference program. These videos cover how to nominate a customer as a reference, how to request a reference, how to search references in the database and more. Sales people are busy so

everything that we do to make their lives easier ultimately benefits our program.

Understanding your customers’ conversations and how to harness them in cold hard cash for every story they wrote. The result was over 100 stories to be utilized by my team, an average of about 2 stories per sales rep.

This incentive worked because I made it easy for them to show up, made it very clear what their deliverable was and made it fun with beer and cash. I can say that this approach certainly stood out against other “spiffs” or incentives they were competing for their attention.

From my experience as a sales person, I know that pure competition drives sales peoples’ behavior. So to take advantage of this, we created a quarterly

contest to incent them. The contest calls for specific types of customers and stories that map to our pre-identified gaps for use in Box’ marketing programs

and campaigns. Of course, there are prizes along with public shout-outs of the winners to boost their egos.

Another thing we’ve found helpful to scale our message is to provide how-to videos on how how-to get involved with the reference program. These videos cover how to nominate a customer as a reference, how to request a reference, how to search references in the database and more. Sales people are busy so

everything that we do to make their lives easier ultimately benefits our program.

Customer content

One major output of a reference team is customer content. At Box, we produce this “collateral” in many different forms to support many departments and initiatives across the organization.

We create customer case studies,

which are 1-3 pages in length using the standard, challenge, solution and

benefits format. We make liberal use

of customers’ quotes to insert the voice of the customer. We also make a concerted effort to articulate the measurable impact of our services, such as ROI, time-savings, cost savings, customer employee productivity increases and how Box changed the way that they do business overall.

We also create customer statistics

assets. Things like charts and graphs based on data from real-world clients that tout the basic measurable results that our customers experience.

Another great content piece is

infographics. What I love about them is the visual story that they tell. It’s quick and interesting and you can show data in ways that plain text cannot easily describe. Content is important, but so too is the need to place your content in a strategic context. It’s always a good practice to meet and strategize with your program stakeholders to identify ways to support their initiatives. For example, product marketing might need customer quotes for an upcoming product launch or analyst relations may need customer statistics for an important analyst report. Partnering and agreeing upon an executable plan before creating content ensures that the assets you produce will be valuable. Remember to revisit that plan at consistence intervals to be sure that your priorities remain aligned.

Program Metrics

One of the best ways that you can get—and keep—executive support is by capturing, tabulating and reporting the impact that your activities have on your company’s revenue. At Box, we measure a number of things.

Internally, we measure who’s taking part in our program, including sales people, sales engineers and marketers. These statistics have been an eye opener for my executive team because out of a pool of 500 sales people and sales engineers and post-sales people, 400 are participating in my programs. So that proves right there the effectiveness I’ve had promoting our program.

New Box Stars Customer Stories Qualification Calls Special Requests 14 % 5 % 72 % 9 % Boxer Reference Activity

216 reference activities completed by Boxers in Q1

We are able to report on which customers participated in what activity. And that gives us the ability to analyze what we’re doing and tweak our program accordingly if needed. One of the most important metrics you can report is the influence

that your reference activities have on revenue. This is an absolutely essential component of a successful

reference program. Your executive support is based on these reports when you get right down to it. That’s because they spend their days looking at, analyzing

and strategizing about financial

reports. They are a major part of an executive’s life.

We do track metrics for the collateral that was produced for each quarter. This is important only in so far as we’re showing the output from our work. We also use these stats to promote our program and to show sales people that we are constantly adding fresh content to help them close more sales.

Note that metrics about what you do isn’t nearly as important—not by a long shot—as being able to link that work to your company’s revenue and business growth. So don’t get mired in spreadsheets and reports that show what you’ve done. Instead, focus on the impact that your activities have had.

So those are the first five pillars of a successful reference program. What I’ll do now is briefly touch upon the remaining five.

Client Relations

Implementing and managing your touches with customers is a very important skill. So think through the things that you do in this area. How are you talking to customers? Email, events, etc.? What are you doing to get them engaged? Are you giving them swag, or doing user groups? Have you set up a community or portal for them to meet and exchange ideas?

Customer participation in Reference Program by activity Reference Call Speaking Press/ Analyst Case Study Video

BoxStar Collateral Produced

15

Studies

7

$523,970

IT

This is a huge area. There is an entire ecosystem of vendors and applications (SaaS and standalone) that you can draw from. That of course depends upon the size of your company and your budget.

What’s important here is that you need a system to capture, and manage, all your reference program information and activities. For some that might be a spreadsheet. But I highly recommend that if you’re able, that you look at the other technologies available out there today.

What you want are software applications that include the following features:

• _{The ability to roll out self-service functionality to users. If you don’t, then your}

whole day will be spent on tactical fulfilment.

• _{The ability to track, collate and report metrics. IT is a blessing for reference}

practitioners because it allows us to report the metrics that executives care about.

• _{The ability to automate some processes and drive up departmental}

productivity. Reference program staffs tend to be small, so you don’t want your team to spend hours performing manual tasks each day.

Program Vision

You need to have a clear strategic imperative and link your program’s goals directly to your executives’ top corporate goals. Then you need to map out strategies to achieve those goals and of course tactics to support each one.

Outside Expertise

Many of us are fortunate to partner with outside vendors and people who help us with their technology or consultation. So you want to enlist the aid of companies and individuals who do customer references for a living.

I would also add the importance of joining customer-reference-centric groups like the Customer Reference Forum, groups on LinkedIn and other relevant organizations. The time I’ve spent talking with my industry peers has been extremely helpful to me throughout my career.

Managing Upward

Managing your business relationship with your executives is every bit as important as how you manage your client relations. For this pillar, I would have you consider how you’re taking the successes of your program and conveying them to your managers and executives. It’s important to do that effectively to ensure the consistent and strong support that you need for the long term.

Crossfunction

Lastly, you need to make sure that you’re working and playing well with all your corporate stakeholders and constituents. Like I said, so much of what we do depends upon the assistance and support of many people across our companies that we have to pay attention to this area. That means educating people about your program along with establishing realistic expectations about turnaround times, and what content you can produce for them. It also means establishing processes that keep things running smoothly, and that don’t let things fall between the cracks.

Final thoughts

So that’s it! That’s all you have to do. Yes, admittedly that can be an intimidating

list of pillars to build. But many of them already exist at your company, so your challenge is to learn to use and optimize them for best results. After that, I would suggest that you prioritize the missing pillars and focus on implementing them gradually.

The payoff for this hard work will be a successful reference program. And it will beef up your resume too. Companies are always going to need skilled people who can develop and use the 11 pillars of a successful customer reference program.

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