The Sales Challenge Explainer Video - Point of Reference

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	a conversation with... Jessica Thomas Technical Solutions, Analyst, Benevity
Could you describe your program?	I manage the client reference program at Benevity. My title is Technical Solutions, Analyst, and I sit within the Pre-Sales team. We launched ReferenceEdge around October 2018. We have close to 100 team members with access to ReferenceEdge, including all of our sales reps and client success managers, across all the different time zones throughout Canada and the United States.
Where did the initiative to start a program originate, and why?	Benevity had a reference program before that we called 'BURT'—the Benevity Unified Reference Team, and we managed it through a different software product. We made the business case that we needed a reference-specific software application to manage reference activity at scale moving forward. We took on the responsibility of doing the research, finding ReferenceEdge, and learning how it would help Benevity streamline our program.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	Our primary stakeholders are the sales team, including our Regional Vice Presidents and our Senior Vice President of Sales, and then our Client Success Management team, which includes our VP of Client Success. We have a cross-functional working group that meets on a monthly basis to ensure our program is functioning well and address any challenges that may creep up.
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	We really wanted to decrease the number of steps in the workflow because, at times, it would take two or three weeks to hear back from the client success team about whether or not a reference request was approved, and that was just too long. So, streamlining and speeding up the process were big goals for us. Another challenge that we were hoping ReferenceEdge would help us solve was salespeople going around the process by simply reaching out directly to their client contacts with whom they had established relationships, instead of going through the BURT process. We wanted to have software that would make the sales reps feel confident that using the application would yield the reference results they needed. We also didn't have a central place where we searched for attribute data to help ensure that we were connecting a prospect with a client that had similar characteristics, so that was another checkmark for ReferenceEdge. And lastly, reference overuse. We definitely overused a few of our clients, especially some of the larger, well-known name brands, and because we weren't tracking usage very well, we didn't know how often we ended up using some of those contacts.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	By using ReferenceEdge, everything is more streamlined because reference requests are going directly from a salesperson to the appropriate client success manager. We've taken out the client success managers' managers; which was a bottleneck for us in the past. Another major change we put in place with ReferenceEdge is having an automated process to include and exclude clients in the program. There's much more reporting that we have access to, and because of that, we can clearly identify things that we need to work on, such as decreasing the time it takes for requests to be approved or declined. Lastly, everything related to references is handled in one central location and, if anyone has questions or needs help, they know exactly who to speak with, which makes things very simple. Those are the things that have really changed and helped us grow the program.
Since launch, how has your job changed?	A number of different responsibilities fall within my role, and references make up about 15% of it. I really appreciate that I don't need to spend more of my time working on things that are reference related because I simply wouldn't have the capacity to get everything else done. ReferenceEdge has helped to save us time. I don't have to be involved in the majority of reference requests because they're going from the salesperson to the CSM using the peer-to-peer functionality, and they don't need any intervention from me.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	About six months after launching, I reached out to our folks in Client Success leadership about how they felt the program was running, and they were so happy to be less involved in things. It was a time savings for them, and the general consensus was that the new processes with ReferenceEdge were running smoothly. That was such great feedback and really put me at ease.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	Many! To start with, I really like the Reference Lead Finder feature. We enabled this pretty recently, and it allows us to find new clients for the reference program who have recently implemented the Benevity software product(s). It's a simple and effective way of getting new clients into the reference program. At Benevity, we are very heavy Slack users, so when ReferenceEdge released the Slack integration, that was another feature that we turned on right away. We've been really happy with how those notifications go to our client success managers and our salespeople. We've also been able to look at how many and which clients are getting used most frequently. If clients have been used two or more times within the last year, we send them a Charity Gift Card (funds they can donate to a cause of their choosing) as a thank you for helping us win more business. So that was another report that was really helpful to us. As an added benefit, I would say that I've learned a ton about Salesforce as a result of using ReferenceEdge. I know how to build custom reports, and I understand how data is populated into various fields on various record types. I'm really happy that I've had the opportunity to work more within Salesforce and up-level my skills there.
How do you measure program success?	Right now, we're focused on ensuring that as many reference requests as possible are responded to before their deadline date. On an ongoing basis, we look at peer-to-peer request outcomes and the peer-to-peer average time to complete. We are consistently working towards improving both of those metrics.
How does Point of Reference’s service compare with other vendors with which you’ve worked?	Our account director is awesome. She's been wonderful to work with and truly cares about the success of our program. She discusses new features and functionality with us, helps troubleshoot various issues, helps us create new reports and dashboards, and enable new functionality on an ongoing basis. We’ve been surprised and delighted at how frequently we are able to meet with her. We definitely appreciate the dedicated support that we receive through Point of Reference.

	a conversation with... Lisa Kaspari Global Customer Reference Program Manager Genesys
Could you describe your program?	The global customer advocacy program supports Genesys’ global Sales organization, including LATAM, APAC, and EMEA. The program itself is located in North America and dare I say Canada because that's where I'm based—but really everything is run out of North America. Today, we operate under Marketing. That is a very recent change; up until about a month ago, we were under Sales Operations. Even though now we reside in Marketing, our sole focus is Sales. Our program lives in Salesforce because everything lives in Salesforce. Our sales team lives in Salesforce, and that's where ReferenceEdge lives, which is awesome from my point of view. Our program offers three different paths that our sales team can take to find and request a reference. The easiest path is through the peer-to-peer request feature in ReferenceEdge, where the account executive who owns the reference relationship solely manages the request. Nine times out of 10 times, I do not get involved in those. It's the second path that I get involved in; those trickier, hard-to-find, one-off references for which you really don't have a big pool; you might not have any. So those are the ones that I get pulled into. We then have the third path for when executive advocates are needed. Our Customer Engagement Team manages this type of reference request. Their responsibility is to foster the relationships that we have with our C-level contacts. So, our program goes from the simplest—peer-to-peer—all the way up to managing those C-level relationships. And they all factor into what we put into ReferenceEdge.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	As far as our focus, it’s Sales. We also have stakeholders within Marketing—PR, analyst relations; and the RFP team. For example, the RFP team itself does not use ReferenceEdge, as we made it the responsibility of the account executive to find references for RFPs. If they can’t find what they need through a Reference Search, the RFP team can come to the reference team, and we will work together.
What were your top challenges before ReferenceEdge?	Well, one major challenge was identifying which accounts we could reach out to at any given time, and prior to ReferenceEdge, things were housed in Excel files. We all know how quickly Excel files go out of date. You keep references in your back pocket and one day, "Oh, this company's no longer a customer!?" I was still seeing that back in 2016 when I first joined in this role, and I said, "Wait a second—why do you have an Excel file when we have this really awesome tool that's in Salesforce based on information that account executives and the Sales teams put into Salesforce?" People were like, "Oh, well, we don't know how accurate it is." I said, "Well, it's as accurate as the information you put in. And more accurate than that spreadsheet—just sayin.” The information in ReferenceEdge is continually updated. The information that's there is relevant, and it's current.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	First, we no longer use spreadsheets that become out of date quickly. The filters within Reference Search allow us to customize each search and provide the current references at the time of the request. We now have a single source of truth for reference information company-wide. And, of course, better reporting capabilities with standard reports through ReferenceEdge, which allows us to report on various factors such as revenue influenced by reference activity.
Since the launch, how has your job changed?	When I first joined, my responsibility was really to maintain the tool—so managing the information that was in ReferenceEdge and focusing on the data that the account executives see. Now, my role is more strategic. The majority of reference requests are peer-to-peer, which allows me to focus on getting new accounts into the reference program to help take the burden off of those customers that are the “go to” accounts for everyone. It also allows me to help with the unique reference requests as well.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	We have the buy-in all the way up to my VP level. Their thinking is, "Yeah, this is it—ReferenceEdge houses our reference information." So, when anyone, anywhere in the company, looks for reference material, this is where they find it, and this is the team they come to; they come to the reference team. I know the sales leadership—they get it as well. The tool works for them. I jump on weekly sales calls just as a friendly reminder, "Hey, remember, the reference team is here for you. You know, we have this tool. We get you're busy; we're here to help you." When a request comes in, and an account executive says "Hey, I'm looking for this third-party integration", I can say, "You know what? I have this, this, and this for you. And guess what? Two of them are in the tool. So, I'm now going to walk you through how to find this yourself.” They’re hesitant at first: “Oh, but I've never done it before." I tell them, “It's okay. It's easy. Let me walk you through it." And then realize, "Oh, it actually is easy." I use these opportunities to foster relationships with the account executives.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	Beyond the peer-to-peer request feature, another unique point is the Influitive integration with ReferenceEdge we’ve had since 2015. I'm very happy to say that the custom-built API that we've had starting in 2015 is now a standard integration within Influitive which allows transparency to our advocates as well as to our sales team. That's a pretty exciting integration for us because we use a points system for advocates. If you do a reference activity for us, you earn points, and we're always being asked: "How many points do I have?" Having Influitive integrated completely to ReferenceEdge, there's no having to do anything twice. When it happens on one side, it happens on the other side. For our users, having no additional logins or credentials is key to adoption—everybody's in Salesforce; nobody wants to have to remember another login; nobody wants to have to click another window when they already have something open. The out-of-the-box reporting is awesome. For me, Salesforce reporting is complicated; I still have a big learning curve. But having those out-of-the-box reports is terrific. I can see the last active date on a specific reference profile and tie it back to revenue or see how many peer-to-peer versus managed requests we have and all that stuff. Another benefit is that ReferenceEdge is entirely scalable. We went through a pretty big acquisition in late 2016. ReferenceEdge was able to scale with our bigger sales team as well as increased reference accounts. I was very excited to see that we could scale, and it really wasn't painful; it just happened. I have tell you, the mapped attributes—100% valuable. It could not be easier to go in and see, "Hey, there's a new picklist field I could use in the Search function. Oh, my goodness. Mapped—done."
How do you measure program success?	Success is definitely assessed by the company in terms of revenue influenced. We measure how many wins have reference activity tied to them. Personally, I look at how many peer-to-peer requests come in that I didn't have to support. It keeps growing each year. Another thing that we're tracking this year is the number of [reference request] emails that go out—when we see someone send a mass email to All Sales, "Hey, I'm looking for a reference" and I think, "Did you really just send a mass email asking for a reference? Are you new? Get to training!” Everybody's set in their ways sometimes. I know learning new software, whether it be Salesforce or changes to Word or Excel, some people don't take to the change. So, when we see the reduction in those types of emails, that's also a success.
How does Point of Reference service compare with other vendors with whom you work?	My account director is awesome. Every day, she goes above and beyond. When I send her those wacky questions where I think, "I feel I should know this, but I'm going to ask it anyway." She'll never come back and say "Oh, well, on page 20 of the user guide…" No, she gives me the answer, she gives me a screenshot—it's awesome. I have worked with the executive team for different things, most recently related to our integration with Influitive. The team, as a whole, is phenomenal. I've said this many times, and I'll keep saying it, that they're not just a vendor; they're really a partner. And you know, my success is their success is my success again when I suggest a product enhancement and they're like "Yeah, that's pretty cool" and then it makes it into a release. They listen—it's awesome. Honestly, sometimes, even when a situation isn't a ReferenceEdge issue, they still step up and provide suggestions. They might say, “Did you think of looking at this or looking at that?" And you know what? I hadn't, because Salesforce is huge. They help me, when a technical situation comes up, they put it into terms that I understand so then when I need to go to a Salesforce admin, I can ask intelligent questions. And not very many vendors will do that—if any. My experience with other vendors has been, "Oh, well, sorry—we don't handle that." The fact that Point of Reference is there to support us is phenomenal.
What are your future plans?	We're always looking for 'How do we make it easy? How can we make it easier for our sales team?' Providing the best tools for Sales to have easy access to success stories, to the database, to be able to sell and sell quickly. That’s our program in a nutshell. We're turning on ReferenceEdge content functionality within the latter half of this year, and really, truly giving our account executives that one-stop-shop. We are creating Reference content packages for use in Sales presentations. They will include talk tracks and links to any case studies or videos we may have with that particular customer. Our company-wide content is housed in Seismic today, and there is a lot of information to sort through. Sometimes all that is needed is the story of why an account chose Genesys. This content will give that information to the AEs through a platform they are in every day. By using the reference content feature of ReferenceEdge, we will be able to set review dates for each piece of content. This will allow us to keep the content current. We are also able to control if we need to pull a piece of content based on the customer’s reference status. In 2020, we are looking at doing more with ReferenceEdge through the Salesforce mobile app. It hasn't been our focus, but I think once we get past the content initiative, I think the adoption of the mobile app is just going to skyrocket. Then they’ll have the tool at their fingertips anywhere.

	a conversation with... Kate Restaino Customer Marketing Program Manager Samsara
Would you describe your program?	Our customer reference program is primarily a sales enablement function led by the marketing team. It is focused on helping our mid-market and enterprise sales teams find the right customer references easily and making sure that we're tracking our conversations and interactions with those customers. We have a twofold mission: one is to make the lives of the account executives (AEs) easier, and the second is to be able to track our interactions and the impact of those interactions on the deal cycle on the back end.
Where did the initiative to start a program originate, and why?	The initial idea came from my supervisor, who is the marketing manager, and her colleagues on the sales side. It grew out of Samsara's desire to grow the sales organization. They saw how quickly our sales team was growing and that we needed a better way of scaling our reference process to match. The question we faced was, "How can we enable our global sales team, and can we give them tools that are going to increase their efficiency and drive deals to close quicker?"
Who are your internal stakeholders?	We have multiple stakeholders beginning with our marketing leadership. The stakeholders we really try and align with all the time are sales leadership. We want to make sure everybody on the sales team is aligned and understands our KPIs for the quarter, the program outcomes, and how they are going to benefit their organization. Mid-market and enterprise sales leadership are our significant stakeholders there, and additionally, we're looking to create an ongoing dialogue with managers, directors, and VPs.
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	One challenge was efficiently responding to reference requests, which we had previously handled through internal messaging channels. The customer reference program automated and streamlined the process. Samsara has a large sales team, which required a more streamlined process with an actual database. An internal messaging channel didn’t provide the efficient framework that ReferenceEdge has in place. Our second challenge was tracking our interactions with our advocates because, a) we don't want to overuse them, and b) we also want to make sure we are using good advocates who might not have been used before. And then our third challenge was tracking our impact on sales. Enterprise sales is a company-wide focus. Reference calls happen on almost every enterprise deal, and we had no existing workflow to systematically track the outcomes of those. As the company was growing its enterprise sales business, we realized that enterprise sales are significantly affected by reference calls. Leadership wanted to understand the impact of the deals on end-of-quarter numbers, end-of-year numbers, etc.
How did you launch your program so successfully?	We had a pretty big launch with global events. We made it an event because it's obviously a major work shift. Our approach to our sales teams was, "This is going be your new best friend, and this is actually going be a gamechanger for you." We also provided incentives to our AEs. The first quarter was all about making it fun for the sales representatives (“reps”), and now they've adopted it. We've also created a program so that each time a customer takes a reference call, they get a reward—which is another big incentive for our reps to use the application.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	We've gone from a message thread culture to a ReferenceEdge culture for customer references. Now the default is to go to ReferenceEdge first and then work backward if you can't find anything. I think the biggest changes have mostly been about streamlining our process. We're saving AEs quite a bit of time on finding a reference. References are always needed, and we're enabling AE’s to find references by themselves—and to find good ones. AEs can search for a reference based on specific attributes like integrations, previous camera provider, previous telematics providers, etc.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	Our mid-market team has been loving it; they like that they can go in right away and select somebody instead of waiting on somebody to respond in a large message thread. We're a pretty fast-paced culture overall, especially with sales; they want to get their deals done, and they want to get them done quickly. I think they love that it takes less time to find a reference, and more importantly, they love being able to filter references on use case. We’re still transitioning other teams that are operating in a more remote basis, and those reps are getting more excited about the program over time.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	Being able to create search filters around use case, geography, and segment has been the most helpful; that was our number one request from the sales team. Since we have so many products, having a centralized database where you can filter on products and all the other attributes is just so important. We want to set our prospects up with customers that have a similar use case or are in their same geography or same size. Before ReferenceEdge, there was no real way to do it; now we can. Our AEs go into ReferenceEdge, and they're pretty much guaranteed to get one or two references coming back with a 'yes,' so they can just set their prospect up with them right away. Another thing is figuring out and being able to better track and understand who our top advocates are, and then being able to leverage them for other activities too. A big part of customer marketing is figuring out which customers we want to leverage for a specific advocate opportunity. Having all this information now in one place allows me to see when they've been used, how they've been used, what they've influenced more systematically. We position ReferenceEdge as a sales tool, but it's also been great for events and for marketing communications because those teams are able to request happy customers for their activities too. Now everything is streamlined, so ReferenceEdge has been a benefit for these other groups as well.
How do you measure program success?	Our initial goal during rollout was to get a certain number of advocates into the database and requests processed through ReferenceEdge; we met our initial goal this quarter. On average, we're going for a 20% increase in the total number of nominations and requests per quarter. We also now have an enterprise focus, so we have specific KPIs for that. We try to measure everything, and we have pretty extensive dashboards. To measure program success, I have an executive dashboard that gives a high-level overview of the program. We have an enterprise-specific dashboard that shows how we are engaging with enterprise reps, enterprise leadership, and marketing leadership. We also have a more general sales dashboard that tracks different aspects like the total number of nominations, the total number of requests, who's nominating the most, and who’s requesting most. It tracks our more detailed KPIs as opposed to the executive dashboard, which is just tracking high-level KPIs.
What is your experience with Point of Reference’s service?	Our account director has been great. We had a couple of issues with some attributes and reporting prelaunch, and we were able to get the right people on the phone immediately to figure those out; that would have delayed our entire launch had we not figured it out. Point of Reference is very responsive in that way.
What are your future plans for your program?	We have big plans for what we can do with the advocates, and we want to get them as involved as possible. We’re on the pathway, but we’re only five months into the program, so it’s still laying the groundwork and ensuring the foundation is strong first. In addition to the sales team, our marketing communications team is starting to become more involved because ReferenceEdge has a referenceability type for press activities. Our marketing communications team was not an initial stakeholder, but they're finding that it's been really helpful to request time with the AEs to figure out which customers would want to participate in press activities. We can also see how using ReferenceEdge may be a tool to help our product management team figure out which customers Samsara might want to be used for beta testing. Moreover, our product marketing team uses ReferenceEdge all the time to identify customers for case studies, webinars, etc. Our marketing team has also partnered with our legal team to start using ReferenceEdge to track which customer logos we can use for marketing purposes and which ones we can't. These examples are not our primary use cases right now but definitely have an impact.

	a conversation with... Sandi Montour Senior Marketing Program Manager Mitel
Would you describe your program?	The Mitel global customer reference program currently resides within the sales enablement team in marketing. For the past nearly four years, I've been administrating our customer reference program. Our global program supports all products and geographies, including the Americas, EMEA and APAC. ReferenceEdge is the software tool that tracks and manages the overarching, strategic program, called the Mitel Ambassador Program. It’s in four languages—English, French, German, and Spanish—and provides public-facing information on the benefits and process.
Where did the initiative to start a program originate, and why?	The initiative started as a massive data integrity project with the reference system that ShoreTel had at the time. With the Mitel acquisition, the team took a fresh look at all of our systems, including our customer reference database. We considered the options and chose to replace the former system with ReferenceEdge, primarily because it’s a Salesforce native application. Since I was a Point of Reference customer for four years at a previous organization, moving to ReferenceEdge felt very comfortable – both with the technology and the business relationship. For the ReferenceEdge launch with the legacy part of our business, we cleaned up the data, decided what would be moved to ReferenceEdge and what fields to map to. Those stakeholders were relatively familiar with the concept of a customer reference database system and just needed to learn how to use the tool, which had a renewed sense of trust and excitement because of that data clean-up project. For the other part of the business, the legacy Mitel part, having a customer reference database system was brand new and very exciting. Internal surveys and feedback had shown that finding a reference was a top pain point for sales. Having a tool to solve that pain point was a big leap forward.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	Our stakeholders include sales, customer success, executives, training, product marketing, field marketing, brand and corporate marketing, user groups, PR, AR, and IR, product trials, and the RFP and activations teams.
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	The problems across legacy ShoreTel and Mitel were ultimately the same: no metrics, no central hub for all information and activities, and no scalability.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	There's a greatly improved understanding of who our reference customers are and what they're doing with us and for us. We’ve seen a decrease in that scramble for references, especially for new salespeople who may not yet have a complete understanding of our customers. There's improved coordination amongst departments, like with the RFP team, product trials and the activations team. It has also increased our value to partners as an additional way for us to collaborate and help each other.
Since launch, how has your job changed?	Based on our self-service model with sales and customer success managers owning the reference process, my role is to manage the customer reference system and the program framework, training and tools to support it. For example, I’ve created customized how-to documents, videos and a learning management system course. This also includes my favorite practice of kaizen, which is the concept of continuous improvement. By connecting with and listening to my internal customers – primarily sales, customer success and marketing – and through the great insights of our Point of Reference Account Director and the constant innovation of Point of Reference, we’re always looking for – and implementing – ways to make the system serve our stakeholders even better. Our model also allows me to strategically develop and manage other programs such as the win reports and lead other special customer and partner-related projects.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	There have been a lot of positive responses. A colleague in content marketing said, "I love how you are bringing structure to this very important part of our business." Also, a territory account manager, wrote, "Thank you for providing me an overview of ReferenceEdge last week. It was super-informative and helped me understand how powerful ReferenceEdge truly is. As many of our prospects usually ask for industry, size, location, and product-specific references, this tool is very efficient, easy to use, and will be a competitive advantage. In my career, I have not seen a reference tool like ReferenceEdge." And, after I met with a sales team and sent a follow-up email with resources, a sales vice president said, "I just happened to be on the phone with a salesperson when you sent this. She has one that should close this quarter and will be a nice success story. One cool thing about it is that she was able to move them forward based on references from our reference program." Based on the reports I send to leadership every month, they love seeing the increase in program adoption and the objective, hard data. In essence, the program adoption equates to more opportunities to showcase our customer’s success and our ability to quickly match our customers to the reference activities that are of interest to them. It’s the quintessential win-win. Leadership also appreciates the decrease in those urgent emails trying to find a reference, and the more efficient and focused process via ReferenceEdge.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	First, that it's a native application to Salesforce, so there isn't an additional or different login. We meet sales, our key internal customers, where they already are. Another one is the Gainsight integration. We’ve set up automated processes around the Net Promoter score, contract renewal date, and the overall health score. Based on the numbers reported in Gainsight, we automatically set a customer in ReferenceEdge to 'caution' or 'inactive.' With the contract renewal date, we automatically set a customer back to 'active' when they renew. The customer success managers have especially loved this because it doesn’t distract them with reference requests for customers who may not be currently appropriate. The Gainsight integration further streamlines our processes – and based on our own data and criteria, which increases the trust and confidence in the system. For the overall health score, on a monthly basis the customer success managers and I receive and review a report of the scores. The customer wellness score is based on a variety of internal indicators and provides us with evidence-based, valuable leads for our reference program. Another function that I value is Reference Lead Finder because it streamlines and automates the process of identifying customers who may be appropriate for our reference program. It saves time and harnesses the beauty and power of software. No one needs to keep a list or remember which customers closed 'X' number of months ago. It automatically prompts us to check on a customer’s readiness and provide the option to send the notification to somebody else who may be more appropriate to answer the question. With the reference content functionality, along with case studies, we've also added our win reports. These are internal only reports that provide additional sources of insight that may help win business, and they're searchable based on the same criteria as reference contacts. We’ve also enabled advanced request routing. With the Advanced Request Routing capabilities, supervisors can respond to reference requests for team members/account owners who are out-of-the-office, which keeps the process moving forward at a critical time in the sales cycle. And, of course, the customizable reports and dashboards show all of the objective, hard data needed for the reports to leadership -- in a single place.
How do you measure program success?	The primary ways we measure program success are revenue influenced by the month, the year, percent increase, and by the number of new references. As of July 2020, our revenue influenced is more than 122% higher than all of 2019.
What is your experience with Point of Reference's service?	Our account director is a true business partner. She’s always thinking of how to improve the tool for our unique environment and needs. She's responsive, creative, patient, knowledgeable about the tool and the industry, highly professional, and an absolute joy to work with. She's made the overall experience with Point of Reference a very positive one by taking a keen interest in our business and how ReferenceEdge can help. She relates well to all stakeholders—so beyond me as a reference manager to include our representatives from IT and Salesforce support and anyone she interacts with. Our ReferenceEdge implementation and our program would not be what they are without her.

	a conversation with... Liv Schichtel Customer Marketing Manager AvidXchange, Inc.
Could you describe your program?	The customer Reference Program is part of our marketing department. My title is Customer Marketing Manager, and I handle our ReferenceEdge program, our customer community, and our customer story writing. AvidXchange works with real estate, construction, HOAs, and other vertical markets to help automate their payments and accounts payable. We sell different solutions to make it easier and more seamless when they're making payments and processing invoices. So, our references have to address those specific verticals and products.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	The groups who use ReferenceEdge and or customer references include Sales, Product Marketing, our PR and social media team, and other various departments. Our Customer Success or relationship management people are also deeply involved.
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	Our sales team was pocketing their best customers in their “little black books,” which they went to whenever their prospective customers needed a reference, not really wanting to share them for fear that their contacts would get overused. We didn't really know how often customers were being used or if they were being used at all. We couldn't see if salespeople were actually even contacting these references that they pulled. It was a hot mess.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	Over the last year or so, references have been a very hot topic at AvidXchange. There's just been such a need for them across the board. I was hired specifically to get ReferenceEdge and customer marketing off the ground. I've only been here for a year, but our company has had ReferenceEdge for 4-5 years. Unfortunately, nobody truly owned it; it was just sitting there. I think there were waves when people would put references in the system, but then it would just kind of sit there. Neither the references nor ReferenceEdge was being used effectively. That history is to explain that this last year has been about starting from the ground up to build the customer data and educate the reference users. We had to meet with the sales team and educate them on how to use ReferenceEdge. Then we met with our customer success team, who are the ones approving and maintaining relationships with those references. We put rules in place to incentivize customer success to put references in and remove old contacts from ReferenceEdge continually. They are now keeping that pool fresh and current so that whenever a salesperson dips into ReferenceEdge, they're not just coming to the same exact references that they saw last time; there're always new ones available. ReferenceEdge wasn’t being used a year ago. Now Sales, Customer Success, PR, and other teams are using it—and it isn’t just me working in the system.
Since launch, how has your job changed?	My job's changed a lot. I don't have to be in ReferenceEdge or involved with finding references as much. I'm also doing less data entry because our customer success staff is now coming in to make sure that our reference contacts are updated. Going forward, ideally, we're not going to see as many cases where I need to be involved. Part of this change results from training sales on how that they can find references for themselves, and they don't have to click the button to ask for help from me. Educating them on how to use the system for themselves has made my job a little bit easier.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	The leadership is constantly telling me how important this program is. Since I've gotten here, it's been easy to get executive and higher-level backing, so that's been a blessing. When I first started, I met with a lot of the sales leaders and they essentially said, "You got passed a hot potato because ReferenceEdge is complicated to work with." They were nervous that it would distract their team. Then, they realized what ReferenceEdge would actually do that for them, and so it's been cool to see how supportive people have become of it.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	I definitely love the reporting and the dashboards; they're extremely helpful. We have gamified the customer success team's incentive to nominate references. We’re able to pull a report or a dashboard easily—like their leaderboard—to see who's in the lead for the number of accounts they've put in per quarter. I also like the peer-to-peer request management a lot because it's pretty intuitive, reference requests go straight to the customer success manager for approval and I typically don’t have to intervene.
How do you measure program success?	When I came on board, our biggest goal was to get as many contacts and accounts into ReferenceEdge as possible. So, last year I was getting measured on upping the number of references in the program in general. I think we probably had maybe 150 contacts in ReferenceEdge when I joined, and we more than doubled that number this last year. We’re now measuring on revenue, or to put this in easier terms, closed/won opportunities—how many of those deals had a reference attached. Where we want to take the program this year is more about how many people are using it. We'll be tracking Sales, and other customer facing teams that actively use the references that we're collecting. Something else that's important to point out is that customer marketing is not a one-way street. We don't want just to be using references to close deals. Yes, that's a piece of it, but it's also to make sure that we're taking care of our customers. These are our happiest customers and biggest advocates, and so we want to make sure that we're thanking and rewarding them accordingly as well. Our reference contacts are real people, and they enjoy the service that we're providing, and so we want to acknowledge that and their participation. The functionality within ReferenceEdge has been awesome to help us do that. There's a place where we can track how often somebody's being used as a reference and then be able to reward them accordingly, whether it be with a swag gift or a gift card or just a fun surprise gift. It's just nice being able to celebrate them and surprise them.
How does Point of Reference service compare with other vendors with whom you work?	It's been amazing. I would do anything for our Account Director--she's the easiest person to work with. I've had a lot of other customer success managers on other platforms that I've used who haven’t been responsive—one just completely ditched me and sent me to their support page on their website and a generic email. With Point of Reference I meet with my account director twice a month and it's just very easy. She responds to emails so quickly. She'll jump on a phone call whenever I need her. I don't think I could have done a lot of what we've been able to do with ReferenceEdge if I didn't have the support from them. Probably my favorite part about having ReferenceEdge in general is their customer service.

	A conversation with... Wendi Wolfgram Senior Customer Advocacy Manager A10 Networks
Could you describe your program?	Our global customer advocacy program has been ramping up over the last few years. A10 Networks has a lot of great customers, and we wanted to share their expertise and knowledge of our solution. To do that, we wanted to build a program to share our customer stories and build stronger relationships with our customers. Part of that was implementing the ReferenceEdge solution. The program includes content: written customer case studies and video testimonials. A lot of work goes into creating internal documents such as customer success slides, which we use to highlight a customer story. Additionally, we kicked off a customer advisory board and relaunched a customer community on a new platform. We have around 7,000 customers across the globe, and we are on tap to have roughly 10% in the advocate program in some way by the end of our second year.
Where did the initiative to start a program originate, and why?	A10 did not have a structured program. It was bits and pieces here and there with various marketing owners. A10's marketing leadership recognized that A10 needed to manage a formal program to leverage customer testimonials and provide a better user experience for our customers. You know, they say happy customers equate to lifelong customers and continued business, and I think it's a good way for A10 to be seen, as a partner, with lifelong customers and not just another vendor. A10 had already done quite a bit of solution research before I arrived. I believe they realized right away that ReferenceEdge was a really good fit as that foundational tool on which to build a program. I was brought on initially as a consultant to get the solution implemented and up and running, and then roll out a formal program. Once I did that, I was offered a full-time position to manage it going forward.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	Primarily sales, but also the events team and PR. Occasionally our CMO and CEO ask me to support an activity of theirs. We also respond to quite a few RFPs, so that team depends on our program heavily.”
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	A lot of the challenge before ReferenceEdge was tracking customers on multiple spreadsheets, which was ineffective and inaccurate. When I first came on board, that's what I was given; multiple very, very large spreadsheets of customer account names and contact names and notes here and there about their reference status or if we had content featuring them. That's just unmanageable. They also saw a lot of missed opportunities to leverage customer content because it wasn't centralized. And, of course, probably too many email blasts hitting global sales when customer reference information was needed; that was not manageable, either. We just didn't have a good handle on how to find customers that were using our solutions by specific use cases, and now that we have ReferenceEdge in place, it's much easier to manage all of this.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	ReferenceEdge gives A10 that centralized tool to be able to track reference customers. It's that one place for sales to go for reference content and answers. We have automated processes to collect the sales win information easily and then disseminate that across the company. Prior to ReferenceEdge, sales wins were collected as Microsoft Word documents. We collected them and stored them in a Salesforce library, but they weren't easily searchable, and there was no way to tie those wins to accounts or report on them. Now with ReferenceEdge, we can easily report on the data that's collected. We can even identify who responded and who didn't, and then we can share that information with other parts of the organization. Our process includes escalations to the managers to collect that data from slow-to-respond account owners. We recently implemented an automated process to update reference account and contact profiles using ReferenceEdge with the Profile Update Minder feature. This feature helps to keep our reference data fresh and up to date—and it's all automated. It doesn't require me to manually dig through the database and figure out what's current and what's not. We can automate that process, and account owners can make the necessary updates.
Since launch, how has your job changed?	The first year was all about administrative activities, program creation, and implementation of ReferenceEdge along with promoting content. Going into the second year, it's more about increasing customer participation along with new content development. I now have more time to spend on specific projects and relationship development with internal stakeholders and customers.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	It's all been really very positive from the start. I've had strong backing from the sales and marketing leadership who see the value of having an organized and centralized program. I send out weekly news flashes to most of the company, announcing new wins and new customer content. I receive positive feedback from other parts of the organization beyond sales, too—just like "Hey, this is great to know, I always enjoy learning about our customers." This information wasn't being shared in an organized manner before. So, now that we have a formal program, everybody knows this comes through the advocacy program.
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	I think what I value the most from ReferenceEdge is the ability to centralize and track the accounts, the contacts, and the content and then have all that tied together. ReferenceEdge being a native app within Salesforce is a must. Without it being part of Salesforce, the management isn't the same. I think that's huge. Being able to search for references and content by meaningful attributes is so helpful across the organization. Data Collector has been a real win for the advocacy program. It's even used by our operations team to leverage sales input about key wins to share for quarterly earnings or company meetings. Before this, the task was very siloed, and sometimes multiple departments would ask Sales for that same type of information. Now, the question is asked once, and that information is easily shared across all those departments. So, for me, that really was a huge win this first year.
How do you measure program success?	So, in this first year, measuring internal use and changing their behaviors is probably the number one measurement. Changing internal behaviors is probably the number one challenge. Once the sales team sees the benefits not only to themselves but to the overall company and they trust you as a key component to their relationship-building with the customer, then it becomes a win-win. Another measure is the program growth: the number of customer nominations for the program, content creation, and expanding how customer references can be used. For content, we're looking at how many win stories, customer quotes, and reviews we have overall and by each product line. Being able to tie revenue to the program is always a goal, but with A10, I've found that it's more important, at least for now, to arm the A10 sales team with customer names for namedropping and to share how those customers benefit from the A10 solutions. Once the sales team realizes the benefits not only to themselves but to the overall company (and they have to trust you as a key component to their relationship-building with the customer), then it becomes a win-win. At that point, I can track and follow the customers' journey easier through the ReferenceEdge tool by capturing that win story, following up to get the nomination, and then determine how we might leverage that customer for future marketing use.
How is your relationship with Point of Reference?	Point of Reference has been really wonderful for me to work with over the years (at a few different companies), and it's a true partnership; they actually do listen to their customers. I've always felt that if I require a new process, or for something to work a little bit differently, that they listen. I've had a few different account managers over the years with Point of Reference and have always been treated very well. They'll always consider my requests, and they either make it happen, or they might suggest a new way for me to think about that issue or that business problem based on industry best practices.
What are your future plans for your program?	Now, it's definitely all about program growth. As I said, the first year was for implementation, setting the foundation, identifying the processes, rolling it out to sales users, and then continued education. I think the second year will be more about increasing the participation—getting the program's internal customers, primarily sales, to nominate customers and getting new customers to participate. I'm going to focus a lot this second year on looking for ways to speed up our content creation. I'm thinking about integration with a community platform or maybe integration with third-party review sites; those might be other areas to investigate. I want to also focus on other initiatives, such as creating more exclusive groups within our overall customer advocacy program. We can then focus on customer relationships with our strongest advocates and provide a more unique experience with them. Having ReferenceEdge as a foundational tool makes managing reference initiatives so much easier. Customer advocacy touches all parts of the business, not just sales, and marketing. Anybody in the company that has interaction with the customers, this program can relate to them or can be a part of their plans as well. We want to be able to motivate the employees to let them know 'Hey, we have all these great customers. You all should be very proud of where you work.' Having the foundation of ReferenceEdge gives us the power to expand the advocacy program and focus on customer relationships.

	a conversation with... Abby Atkinson Senior Manager, FireEye Lighthouse Program FireEye
Could you describe your program?	We have a global customer advocacy program – the FireEye Lighthouse Program – that fulfills reference requests, encourages social sharing and develops assets (case studies, videos, slides, blogs, etc.) for all products, regions, and verticals. Our customer success initiative is critical to the advocacy program and includes NPS surveys, advisory boards, customer award programs, and industry awards. The happier customers are from the start, the more apt they are to become advocates. For our top 30-40 customers, we've initiated a program we call Pinnacle, where we are nurturing them every step of the way to becoming advocates/evangelists for FireEye.
Where did the initiative to start a program originate, and why?	FireEye has been working with an advocacy consulting agency, Referential, Inc., since 2009 to develop customer testimonials and start the initial program foundation by documenting reference account data and requests in spreadsheets. Given the speed of growth FireEye was experiencing both as a company and in its advocate pool, tracking in spreadsheets was unwieldy. Plus, sales reps needed more access and transparency into the available references, so Referential recommended to the CMO that FireEye bring in both a full-time Program Manager and a reference management system, and that's when I came on board to drive the scaling of the program.
Who are your internal stakeholders?	Our program supports Sales, Marketing – including field marketing, product marketing, AR, PR, corporate marketing, etc. – the Deal Desk, customer success, and executives.
What were your top 3 challenges before ReferenceEdge?	There were frustrations and challenges with the shared reference spreadsheet, such as multiple people trying to update or access information at the same time. Plus, the risk of thousands of rows or cells of data being sorted improperly and made completely invalid and unrecoverable, was a real concern. My vision was to create a fully global program with a reference management system—a tool that would help us streamline processes. I also believed that my responsibility was to develop best practice automated processes for supporting the fulfillment areas, the recruitment of new references, and all of the asset development. Being able to track all of that in a robust and accurate database is very, very critical.
Since launch, what has changed in terms of your company’s reference practices?	We started with a “butler-style” reference service provided by my team because of our reliance on spreadsheets that required filtering to find suitable advocate matches. At this point in time, I think the self-service search and request capability in ReferenceEdge is going to help our sales reps; they need this as a tool in their back pockets. They need to own it. We will take the burden from them for a lot of the processes behind the scenes, but they can access it at any time. As an example, over the weekend, a sales rep may be preparing for a Monday morning phone call, and realizes, "I want a list of namedrops or some quotes that I can pull, or case studies that I can reference and share." The tool provides that without them having to contact someone on our team on a Sunday.
Since launch, how has your job changed?	Once we'd established ReferenceEdge and got everybody got on board with the process, we had a well-oiled machine. The process has been working very smoothly. With ReferenceEdge, I’m able to be more proactive with our strategic advocacy initiatives knowing that our day-to-day needs for customer advocates and content is under control. We’ve gained efficiencies across the board and are running at full speed, so we can expand deliverables. I look at the reference program very holistically. I'm very passionate about customer satisfaction and not just waiting until the customers become nominated and referenceable for the program but also monitoring what's happening throughout the initial stage of their FireEye experience.
What feedback have you gotten from stakeholders? Leadership?	Adoption of a reference management system by sales reps is a gradual upward trend; that's my experience across the board with reference programs I've been involved in. Still, we’ve had some good responses. Our account managers say ReferenceEdge is extremely easy to use—and one even said they’d spread the word as an internal advocate for the system. Another told me, “Wow, this looks very easy! We didn’t have anything like this at my other companies.” Adoption also depends on how strongly the executive team proactively pushes using the program and the tool, and we’re getting traction there too. The head of Sales is vocal in his delight that the Lighthouse Program supports over 60% of all net new and cross-sell deals because its efficiently supporting FireEye's continued growth. I spoke with him recently, and he reiterated how important it was, and I said "Well, I'd love to send you the monthly reports that we do. I think it's important for you to see how we're impacting your sales organization." So, this month I sent him the new report. He immediately sent it to all his direct reports and said, "You all need to get your teams involved with the advocacy program. Leverage it. It's important." The Latin American sales director contacted me right away, saying, "I need to set up a demo of ReferenceEdge for my team."
What aspects of ReferenceEdge do you value the most?	One thing that was key to our decision to go with ReferenceEdge and Point of Reference was the fact that it is a native Salesforce application, which means that all of the customer advocacy data is stored within the FireEye Salesforce environment. Being secure within Salesforce was a “must have” from our security operations team. As a cybersecurity company, we really can't afford to have additional databases interacting with our customer data that could be compromised or open up an additional threat vector. The way ReferenceEdge works, the application and all related data are secure in Salesforce, where only FireEye personnel can access it. Another critical factor is all the great reports in ReferenceEdge. The most recent release of ReferenceEdge now has the functionality for us to report on the individuals who accessed the search function of ReferenceEdge from either an opportunity or from just the reference search tab. We can see how often they went in and whether it was through the opportunity. This data enables us to encourage those with licenses that aren’t seen using the system to boost self-service engagement. I also receive our customer satisfaction survey scores every month. Anyone that's considered a promoter—the 9s and 10s—we document in ReferenceEdge and initiate the on-boarding process. We also document those that have a lower score so we can look into it. I want my advocacy team to think, 'Gee, how good a reference is the guy that gave a 10 if he knows his colleague is really unhappy? Will some of that be reflected in what he says to a prospect?' It's always good to see the big picture with an account.
How do you measure program success?	I love feeling that we're making a difference and impacting revenue. I'm a big proponent of metrics. We look at the confidence in data quality, revenue influenced, the total dollar value of opportunities won with a reference, and the growth of program membership. We also track the number of requests by region and product so we can do a gap analysis. We have adoption goals—that's very important to me. I don't think we have the adoption level at the point I’d like as we have such an invaluable tool here, but we have plans in place for boosting engagement this coming year. We do a weekly CMO report and a monthly metrics report that captures the high-level point of view. The report includes the number of references we recruited, the number of requests we handled in that month, the number of total references we have to date, and the sales assisted or influenced number. We break down the references and requests by region, and then we break down the number of assets and types of assets we created. We also do a spotlight bar chart on the top four products and how many references we have available for those products.
How does Point of Reference’s service compare with other vendors with which you’ve worked?	I think it’s an important thing to mention is that we, FireEye, as a customer, can talk to our vendor, Point of Reference, and say "We have this desperate need; can you help us? Can you add this to a release?" And they do. Our Account Directors have gone above and beyond working with me and with our team at Referential.
What are your future plans for your program?	When we have a majority of the sales reps using the self-search capability, then it will give us a little bit more time to be able to do some proactive things. We can be more active in a broader number of opportunities that are out there because our team will have that extra time. As our sales reps begin to use the program more and more, I'd expect to see a reduction in the backdoor sharing of references among colleagues, and that's going to help us prevent burnout with customers. We plan to be more proactive with our Anytime Advocates program, so we want to find more customers willing – at short notice – to do media and analyst calls. We also expect to increase the advocacy marketing campaigns, promoting advocates through thought-leadership opportunities such as blogs, podcasts, and presentations. The freed-up time will also enable my teams to make quick update calls with advocates that haven't been used in six months. Maybe they have a product that just isn't the top-selling product, or they're in kind of an offbeat industry. For whatever reason, they're sitting there wondering, "Hey, I joined the program, but nobody called me." If we can have time to pick up the phone and be proactive and call and say, "I know we haven't offered you opportunities in a while, how's everything going? Are you still happy? What type of other activities would be of interest to you?" I'm looking forward to engaging more ReferenceEdge features such as Profile Update Minder and Data Collector—they are great tools to get more customer information from the account owners into the database. We also haven't used the sales leader board yet, and I think it will help us drive adoption since sales reps are competitive people by nature.