Over 30 Years of Research Success
Customer Reference Program Opportunity Solutions
How many of your sales losses were at least partly caused by your customer references? *
Demand Facts offers research & analysis services which accurately identify, diagnose and provide improvement guidance for the sales effectiveness of customer reference programs (CRP).
CRP assessments are proposed, approved and conducted for two primary purposes:
(1) Provide conclusive evidence on the program's
impact on sales success to gain or maintain
proper levels of support
(2) Obtain accurate diagnostic insights to better
pinpoint the program's most appropriate
development priorities
A significant number of sales opportunities are lost each year among firms who do not give adequate attention and priority to ...
Assessing the true impact of their references
Insuring that their CRs are fully qualified
Recruiting an adequate number of qualified
references to fulfill all prospects' requests
Warning: Given the confidential nature of reference calls, lost prospects rarely tell reps they lost the sale due to poor references.
* Only 50% of customer references typically match prospects' requests, reducing close rates by as much as 40%, according to a top provider of hosted CRP systems. However, reference-caused losses are much higher when you also account for prospects who contact references that are less positive, less credible or less helpful than competitors’ references; who do not receive, or request, any references since none of the available references match their request; and who do not request a proposal or bid once they become aware that no references match their request.
Demand Facts designs and delivers the following objective research & analysis services to assess and guide improvements on the sales effectiveness of Customer Reference Programs: Are your customer references better than your competitors'?
CRP Impact Assessments
To assess performance, diagnose causes and set development priorities
CRP Feedback Services
To obtain confidential feedback from involved parties (Reps, Prospects, References, etc)
New Reference Qualifying Services
To identify and fully profile the most qualified CRP candidates
Current Reference Updating Services
To confirm qualifications and to complete their profiles
Consequences are severe for firms who do not precisely meet reference requests and who provide relatively weak customer references.
Only a limited number of “final round” new
business opportunities arise each period
Your ROI for all preceding marketing/sales
efforts depend on “final round” success
High quality references are often needed to
even make it to “final round”
Demand Facts' CRP Assessment Solutions provide objective, accurate evidence and insights on the quality and effectiveness of recently used customer references and related processes. If you suspect that your references are damaging or just not adequately boosting your firm's sales success, or if you need solid evidence on the performance (ROI) of your customer reference program, these assessment services are exactly what you need to accurately and objectively determine sales contribution and effectiveness levels, and also identify the specific areas which are positively vs negatively impacting the effectiveness of your reference program.
It is especially useful to conduct a Baseline Assessment prior to upgrading or expanding your customer references or related CRP processes in order to ...
Precisely determine your improvement priorities and key strengths to maintain Provide the basis to conclusively detect the effectiveness gains from implemented changes
Baseline Assessment Identify the quality and effectiveness levels for previous customer references based on confidential survey responses of the involved individuals: sales personnel, customer references and won/lost prospects. Separate surveys are created for each group. Progress Assessment Detect any meaningful quality and effectiveness differences resulting from the customer references used since the Baseline Assessment based on confidential survey responses of the involved individuals. Additional questions may be included on specific CRP changes. Test/Control Assessment To provide more conclusive impact measures for CRP changes, obtain confidential survey responses from individuals who were involved with references provided through the new CRP process (Test Cell) and those who used previous references (Control Cell).
Verification Process Services Periodic process to verify reference activities and, for contacted customer references, to update qualifications and profile information as appropriate Feedback Process On-going processes to rapidly obtain general and specific feedback following each reference occasion from the involved parties: Customer References, Sales Prospects & Sales Reps Feedback Analysis Services Periodic indepth analysis & reporting on the sales results and patterns/trends associated with recent reference activities combined with the insights produced by the verification and/or feedback processes
Feedback Solutions
Demand Facts provides adhoc and bundled design, management and reporting services to help businesses set-up, operate and effectively benefit from on-going CRP feedback processes.
While these feedback processes are not designed to conclusively measure the overall business impact of customer reference programs, they help manage on-going CRP process quality, help build support among the involved parties, and produce a stream of useful ideas and insights on ways to improve or grow the reference program.
Services
Development Solutions
The #1 customer reference development priority is to make sure that existing customer references are truly qualified in terms of product use, the positivity of their opinions, and their willing to participate in the current customer reference program ... and that current references are accurately and completely profiled on all the dimensions required to fulfill your sales prospects' requests (i.e., matching process).
Our Existing CR Updating Service uses a customized multiple-step research process to help you accomplish this top priority for your CRP as quickly, accurately and thoroughly as possible.
Contact Information Company & participant name, email & mailing address, phone numbers … Participation Preferences Types of references, frequency, time periods to avoid, contact methods … Usage Characteristics Product used, prior product, use level, features used, integration, # users … Company Characteristics Industry/sector, total size, prior product, global presence, HQ/other location … Participant Characteristics Department, position/title, product use, knowledge level, other credentials …
Once your existing customer reference database has been cleaned and fully profiled, you are then in position to identify the key voids or gaps in your CR database; that is, the number and profile requirements of additional customer references that need to be identified, recruited and profiled in order to precisely fulfill your prospects' specific reference requests in the foreseeable future.
Our New CR Qualifying Service uses a customized multiple-step research process to efficiently and accurately identify current customers who are most highly qualified to provide references. This list of pre-qualified CR candidates allows you, in turn, to more quickly and efficiently recruit the desired number of strong customer references who meet your exact profile requirements.
