The title, “Yes, Sales Needs Customer Reference Training,” sounds crazy, doesn’t it? The people who always seem to need customer references, and often at the 11th hour, may not be following best practices. How could that be?
Think about how many companies you’ve been at where customer reference training was part of Sales onboarding/orientation. One? None? The result of omitting customer reference from sales training is that junior salespeople learn by watching what the Sales veterans do, who learned from salespeople they emulated when they were junior, and so on and so on and so on. And often, none of the salespeople in that training chain were doing it right.
In an earlier post, Why Sales Teams Need Customer Reference Training from SMEs, I broached the notion that reference program managers are the SMEs, rather than sales, as one might expect. In this post, I’ll provide what would make sense to include in customer reference training. The goal of offering, even requiring this training, is to close more deals and increase Sales. Here’s how you might organize the class.
Most Sales and Marketing pros would agree that references should not be provided after, say, the first call with a prospect. That’s clearly too early. Consider the following:
How often does a cry for references include “ASAP” and “URGENT” in the first line? I’d venture to guess that most of these requests result from putting off the reference search until it becomes an emergency. It’s crucial to teach salespeople that reference customers aren’t waiting by their phones. They take vacations, have family emergencies, travel for business, and attend conferences. Leave a reasonable amount of time to secure references. It’s a matter of courtesy to their peers and the customers. Reference requests need not be an emergency that ends up with an “I’ll take anyone at this point” situation.
It’s hard to imagine this needs to be said, but reference customers and prospects should be comparable in terms of accounts and contacts. Your organization might include any number of the following considerations and some that are unique to your ideal reference profile: revenue size, number of employees, geography, using the same solution of interest, industry, use case, and contact seniority or persona. It’s not unusual to compromise on one or more of those criteria, but the initial request should start with the ideal reference profile. Salespeople would be wise to factor the following into their choices:
Every company’s reference management processes and practices are specific to that organization to some extent, but whatever your established practices are, communicate them clearly. Deviations from those prescribed practices should not be supported by peers, program managers (if applicable), or managers. Typically, the reference account is identified, the relationship owner (e.g., customer success manager) is consulted, a customer contact is identified and secured, and the salesperson coordinates the call.
That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable approach, yet we still hear stories of salespeople trolling through the CRM system, identifying desirable references, and using their contact information to reach out directly. That’s going “rogue” and a real novice move. Put an end to this behavior.
We’re biased, of course, but this process, start to finish, ought to be in a system, tracked and quantifiable. That’s the logical way to ensure repeatable best practices and the most favorable outcomes of reference use.
Salespeople need to know when a reference activity, such as a reference call or site visit, occurs, and they should follow up with both parties for a debrief. Here are some key reasons to debrief and track reference activity:
Consider building your customer reference training module and adding company-specific elements that your salespeople relate to. I’ll bet just about every salesperson can tell stories about poorly executed reference practices (maybe not their own, but someone they know :-)). You can use those stories to further flesh out your training. There’s nothing like storytelling to reinforce learning. New hire training is the obvious point to introduce this material, but don’t forget about the existing team. When you take on this training responsibility, you become a more strategic advocate consultant, and executives notice.
As this infographic illustrates, a mature advocacy program is responsible for continuously identifying advocates, maintaining accurate advocacy data, protecting customer relationships, and aligning with top company goals to accelerate growth.
The infographic contains six key components. Here's a description of each for you to translate into your own talking points.
Every advocate starts as a customer.
The journey begins when account teams, customer success managers, support teams, and services organizations create positive experiences that build trust and confidence.
As customers achieve success, some become enthusiastic supporters of the company, its products, and its people. These customers are identified as potential advocates and introduced to the advocacy team.
The advocacy team interviews these individuals, learns about their experiences, captures important details about their interests and expertise, and creates a searchable advocate profile.
The result is a discoverable advocate: someone who can be found, matched, and engaged when the business needs credible customer voices.
Without this process, valuable customer relationships remain hidden inside co-workers’ heads or team spreadsheets, unavailable to the broader organization.
Great advocates are rarely discovered by the advocacy team alone. It’s really just too much to ask of any one part of the organization. Every customer touchpoint plays a part in cultivating and retaining advocates.
Customer success managers see customer enthusiasm firsthand. Account teams hear success stories during business reviews. Support teams witness customer loyalty. Product teams interact with passionate users who influence future direction.
A successful advocacy program creates a systematic way for all customer-facing teams to identify and nominate potential advocates, as well as a means for customers to self-identify..
Think of it as building a talent pipeline.
The broader the participation across the organization, the stronger and more diverse the advocate community becomes.
This collective effort ensures the advocacy database reflects the full spectrum of customer success stories across industries, products, geographies, and use cases.
The advocacy team serves as the steward of the organization's advocacy data.
Their responsibilities fall into three primary areas.
First, they recruit continuously. Advocates change jobs, priorities shift, and customer enthusiasm naturally evolves over time. Maintaining a healthy advocacy community requires constant replenishment.
Second, they keep information current. Customer stories, product deployments, business outcomes, and willingness to participate all change. Outdated advocacy data quickly becomes unreliable.
Third, they measure and report value. Advocacy programs must demonstrate their contribution to business outcomes such as customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
Beyond maintaining records, the advocacy team actively shapes the composition of the database to align with company growth objectives. This is essential if the program is to be seen by executives as a strategic lever vs. a low-level function an intern can run.
If the company’s strategic direction includes expanding into healthcare, launching a new product, selling through a new channel, entering Asia, or targeting a specific buyer persona, the advocacy team ensures the advocate population evolves accordingly.
In many ways, they function as portfolio managers for one of the company's most valuable assets: customer credibility.
Most organizations initially think of advocacy as a sales resource.
Sales certainly benefits from customer references, but advocacy creates value far beyond the sales organization.
The common thread is credibility.
Advocates provide something no marketing budget can purchase directly: authentic proof from real customers.
Most mature advocacy programs include additional components that extend value for both advocates and the business.
These activities are connected mechanisms that strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create additional opportunities for customers to contribute.
Together, they help transform advocacy from a transactional activity into an ongoing customer experience.
The ultimate purpose of customer advocacy is not activity.
It is business impact.
In Summary
Advocates are valuable assets. The advocacy team's job is to make sure those assets are available when needed, protected from burnout, and aligned with the organization's most important priorities.
When done well, customer advocacy transforms customer success into measurable business value. It is an enterprise capability built on trusted relationships, reliable data, and authentic customer voices.
.svg){kind=icon}
