Yeah, it's a great question, and for me, it's really about allowing our customers to share their story in the way they want to share their story.

It's not only helping close deals. It is helping get their voice out, making them an advocate and a rock star within their organization. It’s showcasing how our technology makes them better at their job.

So, how do we get the voice out?

There's so many different pathways to do that. But also, it's not only how can customers help us, but how can we help them? It's bringing them in to be beta testers, it's CABs, PACs, it's all those things where we value the customer voice. So having an advocacy, customer advocacy, customer marketing, whatever you want to call it… having that place

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First, why did we implement ReferenceEdge? It really comes down to two things: the people and the technology. 

The people of Point of Reference, the team behind the technology, allowed us to implement ReferenceEdge in under two months. They were there for us, hand-holding the whole way through. When we had a technical question, they stepped in and helped.  They ensured I had the right help from a Salesforce admin to implement the right way. Having the team be there and be supportive through the entire process was awesome. 

What business challenges did we face? A couple of business challenges we had were lack of visibility and reporting in general. People would pull reports and just work off Excel spreadsheets–rigid workflows where it wasn't flexible enough for us and it didn’t really provide the reporting we needed.

So, when we made the decision to get ReferenceEdge, it ticked all the boxes as far as having robust reporting right out of the gate. There was really very little customization we needed to do. And if we wanted to further customize for our business, it was very easy to do that because, again, ReferenceEdge lives in Salesforce, so we were able to make those customizations based on an already existing environment. There wasn't anything that we had to rebuild or create custom fields for; It was just a matter of mapping it and then it was all set up.

One of the other things was the actual admin part of the tool. So, yes, the front end is for my sales users and I wanted that to be as easy as possible, and it is. RefEdge lives in Salesforce, so RefSearch is right there. It's right there in their opportunity, which is awesome.

But for me, as the day-to-day admin of the tool,  it needed to be easy for me to manage. Do I have to go to a Salesforce admin to make changes? For most of them, I don't. I can do that all by myself, which is great; if I want to pivot, if we have a campaign that's coming up, and I need to specifically target something, I can do that, and I can do it on the fly, without a Salesforce admin.

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Honestly, it's so easy to use. It's intuitive. And one of the really awesome things is Point of Reference has great documentation. So, you can go in and pinpoint what you want to do. You don't have to read a thousand pages, it's right there.

As far as ReferenceEdge, you open it up, there's checkboxes, there's maybe a couple of fields where you add text, but it's drop-downs, it's really intuitive. It doesn't take very long to learn. Like any technology, the more you use it, the easier it becomes. So my recommendation is to go in once a day, and just mess around.

Many of us will have the system within a sandbox environment, so play within your sandbox environment, and break things because that's what the sandbox is for–testing and trying new things. If you go, “Oh, okay, that didn’t work,” you do something else.

And having regular touchpoints with the Point of Reference account directors is wonderful. No question is a silly question. You can ask, “Hey, did I do it right? Walk me through it.” And then it just becomes second nature.

And once you see what it can do for the front end and your end-users, it’s even more exciting to see what you can do on the back end. You can keep making it easier for teams to come in and self-serve, and do what they need to do, and close that deal even faster.

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It has been awesome. And I will also say, because I didn't say this at the very beginning, this is my second time with Point of Reference. The first time was awesome. Second time?Equally as awesome, and I don't say that lightly. I've worked with many vendors, not all of them in the advocacy space, but just vendors in general, and sometimes it's a set it and forget it model.

Point of Reference takes the feedback and runs with it. The team answers questions, there’s the Trello board where I can easily see if my idea is somebody else's idea. It’s easy to go in and nominate and up vote an idea.

The feedback is put into action… for example, changing the UI, it's phenomenal and making things even easier. It gets our teams to where they need to be. 

And I will call out Joan, my account director; she is phenomenal. She takes my questions, silly or not silly and is responsive. I’m never thinking, “Hey, I asked you a questionI haven't heard back from you. Where did you go?” I ask a question and there's a follow-up that has depth of knowledge and information. It takes my question or idea to the next level. I can do something more with it. And then we have a conversation and it helps elevate and take us to being more strategic instead of transactional, from reactive to proactive.

And that's incredibly important because that’s where I'm at right now, transitioning our program from, “Oh, you needed that reference yesterday,” to “Hey, I have a reference for you, let's talk about it.”

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Again, the backend of ReferenceEdge and its ease of use. Being able to see gaps where we knew we had gaps, but it was a struggle to identify and fill them. Having this capability with ReferenceEdge has been a game changer.

It’s also about seeing the true value of our advocates, not just seeing how many activities they're completing for us, but tying that to revenue and results. And then, being able to take those metrics, and showcase the lifetime value of an advocate and the account: Are they renewing quicker? Are they doing expansion deals with us? To have that all in one spot is incredible.

The other thing is the ability to create reference profiles very quickly using import-export functionality. ReferenceEdgeDM allows me to take, say, five new accounts, and then easily build those reference profiles. I don't have to do them one at a time. I can take that sheet, import it in, and it's done. Before we couldn't provide a reference summary showing how a customer is using our products and their successes. Now, our teams can self-serve, so it's not just the knowledge staying on my desktop, on somebody else's desktop. We’re all working with the same information.- And this helps with turnaround time. We've taken reference requests from 10+ plus days to under five.

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First, I'll talk from a vanity metric standpoint. The number of folks in your program? That’s truly a vanity metric. It should really come down to engagement. Thankfully, I have a team that completely gets it, including management.

Go beyond vanity metrics and look at things like, what is a customer actually doing with us? Because if you have a thousand people in your program, so what? Of those thousand people, is it only 200 that are actually engaged?: That's the important number, taking it and really showcasing and telling the customer story. Focus on those that are willing to do speaking engagements, host reference calls, and share stories.

I look more closely at accounts with an advocate versus not. I ask and can now report on: How quick are they to renew? Are they renewing for multiple years versus year over year? Are they expanding with us? Are they trying more features? What else are we able to do with those customers?

Having an advocate on an account is truly beneficial. But before it was a hypothesis. I knew it was true, but didn’t know how to articulate it. And now with ReferenceEdge I have the numbers to curate the story and showcase the success.

Decisions are based on facts, based on the numbers, and real reasons why we need to now go after a certain number of new advocates.

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This is a difficult question, because everyone does things so differently, but I will say, be consistent and show your value. 

Again, it doesn't have to be 100 different metrics. It's making sure that you have a seat at the table, that you are not considered the fluff, or the last resort. 

We are not a last resort; it doesn’t work that way.

All of our advocates have their day jobs. Responding to an email could take 24-48 hours. We're not gonna browbeat you into responding within 10 minutes. Right? So it's allowing the SLA to work, it's allowing and building that trust with your internal teams that we know what we're doing over here. We have a curated list of wonderful advocates. We're always happy to reach out, but we need to respect everyone's time.

And then back to having a seat at the table, which can be scary, but you know what you're talking about and you’ll have the metrics to back it up. Because you have all your data in one place, in ReferenceEdge.

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For me the best source of advocates, out of all of the years that I've been doing this, is my CSMs. They have day-to-day interaction with our customers. They have insight into these customers doing super cool things. 

And with ReferenceEdge, we have the ability to nominate advocates, which then comes to us and the team, and we review. But then we can discuss if there are other contacts at an account we can tap into. And in ReferenceEdge we can make those notes and comments so we don’t lose that history. Because we never want to keep pushing and push someone out of being a customer entirely. 

Again, it goes back to that misperception that advocacy is fluff. We are far from it. We, in my opinion, are the foundation, we are the backbone.

But, it really does come down to your management and having those conversations to showcase your value and saying, this process is important. 

Work with your enablement team to get your message out there. Don’t just be on one call, be on all the calls. It's being present, and it's being sticky on your side, and having a process. So if you see Slack messages asking for references, jump in (after you take a deep breath because they aren’t following your process).

And eventually you’ll see this happening and your CRO is already in there going, “Did you try RefSearch?” That’s when you can sit and say, “I made it!”

And again, it's not just set it and forget it. It’s also being out there. It's showing the successes, going, “Hey, we helped influence this deal. We helped bring these customer stories.” The more vocal you are about your assets in general, is helpful, even as simple as getting a really cool logo for use in marketing materials. And that gets you in front of other teams.

You can’t just roll out a process and never be heard from again. Keep things concise, but consistent.

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