Our Story
Since 2003, Point of Reference has been helping companies turn customer love into measurable results—fueling growth and strengthening brands along the way. With over two decades of experience, we’ve built ReferenceEdge, the most mature customer advocacy platform out there, designed from the ground up on the Salesforce platform.
Now we’re taking things even further by pairing our trusted technology with Agentforce 360 AI to make finding, managing, and activating advocates smarter and faster than ever. And while many software companies stop at the software, we don’t. Every client gets a single, assigned point of contact—uncommon, one-to-one support that’s become rare elsewhere but central to who we are.
We started Point of Reference in 2003 in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado (yep, that’s why all the mountain pictures). The founders, career salespeople, thought there must be a better way to handle the part of the sales cycle we dreaded most—the customer reference request. “Could I speak to some of your references,” set in motion hunting expeditions that often didn’t produce the ideal result: quickly finding the most relevant customer advocates available for each buyer, every time.
Since that time, we’ve added functionality to support all customer advocate needs, for peer reviews, event speakers, quotes for social and corporate websites, PR, case studies & videos, demand gen campaigns…wherever the voice and insights of customer advocates can tip the scales in our customers’ favor.
Finding customer advocates is an important need, but there’s a lot involved in building that searchable database of pre-qualified, reliable customer advocates. There’s recruiting, qualifying, and maintaining customer advocate information. Advocate uses must be managed, tracked to revenue influenced and advocates rewarded. Trying to accomplish all these motions using spreadsheets is a fool's errand.
Today, B2B buyers don’t engage salespeople until they are 65-90% of the way through the sales cycle. We do much more of our own research before contacting the companies we think are the top 1-2 providers.
Buyers don’t accept the standard corporate sales rhetoric like they used to. As consumers, we’re accustomed to relying on peer reviews on Yelp, Amazon and TripAdvisor, and now expect the same in our business transactions. Peer influence is the #1 factor in B2B purchase decisions.
The need is very clear. Businesses must make access to their customers’ success stories―written, recorded or live― effortless and plentiful. Those stories are your competitive advantage and are more effective than data sheets and PowerPoint presentations.
Customer advocacy processes are ripe for automation. It is typically understaffed and over tasked. The manager of the program generally has 2-3 additional responsibilities. Salespeople and customer success staff have the most knowledge about customer advocates, but they can be hard to engage. Being part of the Salesforce platform has enabled us to develop embedded automation for the most time-consuming, tactical components: advocate requests, identifying new advocate customers, updating advocate information and quantifying/visualizing program value.
Since 2003, Point of Reference has been helping companies turn customer love into measurable results—fueling growth and strengthening brands along the way. With over two decades of experience, we’ve built ReferenceEdge, the most mature customer advocacy platform out there, designed from the ground up on the Salesforce platform.
Now we’re taking things even further by pairing our trusted technology with Agentforce AI to make finding, managing, and activating advocates smarter and faster than ever. And while many software companies stop at the software, we don’t. Every client gets a single, assigned point of contact—uncommon, one-to-one support that’s become rare elsewhere but central to who we are.
We started Point of Reference in 2003 in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado (yep, that’s why all the mountain pictures). The founders, career salespeople, thought there must be a better way to handle the part of the sales cycle we dreaded most—the customer reference request. “Could I speak to some of your references,” set in motion hunting expeditions that often didn’t produce the ideal result: quickly finding the most relevant customer advocates available for each buyer, each and every time.Since that time, we’ve added functionality to support all customer advocate needs, for peer reviews, event speakers, quotes for social and corporate websites, PR, case studies & videos, demand gen campaigns…wherever the voice and insights of customer advocates can tip the scales in our customers’ favor.Finding customer advocates is an important need, but there’s a lot involved in building that searchable database of pre-qualified, reliable customer advocates. There’s recruiting, qualifying, and maintaining customer advocate information. Advocate uses must be managed, tracked to revenue influenced and advocates rewarded. Trying to accomplish all these motions using spreadsheets is a fools errand.
Today B2B buyers don’t engage salespeople until they are 65-90% of the way through the sales cycle. We do much more of our own research before contacting the companies we think are the top 1-2 providers.Buyers don’t accept the standard corporate sales rhetoric like they used to. As consumers, we’re accustomed to relying on peer reviews on Yelp, Amazon and TripAdvisor, and now expect the same in our business transactions. Peer influence is the #1 factor in B2B purchase decisions.The need is very clear. Businesses must make access to their customers’ success stories―written, recorded or live― effortless and plentiful. Those stories are your competitive advantage and are more effective than data sheets and PowerPoint presentations.
We started Point of Reference in 2003 in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado (yep, that’s why all the mountain pictures). The founders, career salespeople, thought there must be a better way to handle the part of the sales cycle we dreaded most—the customer reference request. “Could I speak to some of your references,” set in motion hunting expeditions that often didn’t produce the ideal result: quickly finding the most relevant customer advocates available for each buyer, each and every time.Since that time, we’ve added functionality to support all customer advocate needs, for peer reviews, event speakers, quotes for social and corporate websites, PR, case studies & videos, demand gen campaigns…wherever the voice and insights of customer advocates can tip the scales in our customers’ favor.Finding customer advocates is an important need, but there’s a lot involved in building that searchable database of pre-qualified, reliable customer advocates. There’s recruiting, qualifying, and maintaining customer advocate information. Advocate uses must be managed, tracked to revenue influenced and advocates rewarded. Trying to accomplish all these motions using spreadsheets is a fools errand.
Customer advocacy processes are ripe for automation. It is typically understaffed and over tasked. The manager of the program generally has 2-3 additional responsibilities. Salespeople and customer success staff have the most knowledge about customer advocates, but they can be hard to engage. Being part of the Salesforce platform has enabled us to develop embedded automation for the most time-consuming, tactical components: advocate requests, identifying new advocate customers, updating advocate information and quantifying/visualizing program value.
Our technology, expertise and services are laser-focused on saving time for program managers, sales, marketing and prospective customers. When you can consistently inject authentic, credible customer insights throughout the buyer’s journey, your win rate soars. When you win we win.
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