Managing vendor references
Analyst types that are not focusing on the vendor landscape only, regularly want to talk to end user organizations to verify some of the vendor claims, learn from real implementers the good, the bad, and the ugly about someone's product, service, support, etc. Those reference calls are an integral piece of evaluating vendor offerings, as they go beyond advertising and marketing blurb, screenshots of products, high-level demo materials, and the popular death-by-powerpoint approach.
However, it's interesting how difficult and time-consuming it often seems to be to get a vendor to communicate a reference's contact details, even (or maybe particularly) in the large and mega vendors. I would have thought that there is some kind of internal program by which customers that make a good reference story are managed somehow. Apparently not so. Now, I don't expect AR or marketing folks to pull those customer contacts out of their hat, but I would think there must be something more efficient than starting from scratch everytime some analyst wants to talk to one of the vendor's customers. Ideally, there should be a database of referencable customers (by product, by service, by region, etc.) and the appropriate contact details of the spokesperson. Doesn't sound like rocket science to me, but it would dramatically speed up the reference process, if AR had access to that sort of a database. Thoughts, anyone?
7 Comments:
This is a good point, as you imply that vendors should improve this aspect.
To answer your question, the issue boils down to the fact that the relationship with customers is (quite logically) owned by sales reps.
In order to communicate references to analysts (or anyone else actually), marketing, comms or AR need to go to the account teams and ask on a case by case basis. In most large vendors though, there actually IS a database of references, but those are often a small subset:
- it sometimes only contains public references (this supposes that it's approved by the customer, legal, comms, etc...)
- and any customer references database supposes that sales have actually taken the time to document their wins (either through brute force or bribing) -something they positively hate
How important would you say are references to your research work?
Would you say a good reference list is a key differentiator?
100% correct aronaut.
In addition, references that were good for a previous exercise could be out of the question for the next one, due to changes in relationship/project etc, so unfortunately it's always necessary to go back to the Account Managers for an update on that customer's "referenceability"!
@aronaut:
I agree that the account is typically owned by sales. But the story that is worth a reference would need to be managed by someone else, because sales has no incentive to do this. In fact, there may be multiple reference stories in a single account: a public reference, one for the press, one for analysts, a CRM reference, a database reference, etc.
BTW, as far as analysts are concerned (or maybe it's just me), we are not so much looking for simple wins. What does it mean if vendor X sold product Y to company Z? To me, not much. I'm rather looking for deployments, things in production, so that the user organization has actually something to tell. What worked, what didn't, how was support, how well did it integrate, how does it scale and perform, that sort of thing.
How important are references? Well, fairly important, particularly with smaller vendors that don't come up in our daily load of client inquiries anyway. There are numerous vendors in any particular market that seem to have a decent business, but rarely anybody asks about them. Sure I can get a briefing from those guys, but I also want to hear from their customers.
A reference management process would certainly have more benefits than just making an analyst happy. Think about the vendor's prospects. Don't they regularly want to talk to an existing user of a product?
@nerys:
I actually agree and I'm not suggesting that marketing (who should probably own vendor references) should bypass sales. I talk about keeping those references and the stories in one place, some database I guess, that can be queried for a particular product reference, or service, industry, country.... If a request comes in, then you check with sales whether that account is still referencable. If not, update the reference. You could also store who talked to the reference and when. That way, you don't propose the same reference all over again, and it doesn't look as if there weren't enough to choose from (happens quite a bit). It all boils down to "managing" the references.
I always advised vendors that were having trouble getting heard above the noise to have sales discover if their customers were Gartner clients. Then have them schedule inquiries. Guerilla tactics I know, but a typical Gartner analyst does fewer than 10 end-user calls a week. If they get three calls on a new technology and discover they all selected the same solution *that* is influential.
Here is a tool that can be used to track customer references. Produced by a friend's start-up in Colorado.
http://www.boulderlogic.com/
From the splash page:
Boulder Logic introduces Boulder Logic Reference Manager, the first software application designed to help you manage your organization's customer reference program. We help you build a library of customer testimonials and simplify the effort required to find the best customers willing to speak about their success with your product or service.
good site
nice site
http://www.tutorials.net.in/
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