The account management model most tech companies employ puts sales and marketing at odds over customer references
Gaining access to customers for direct conversations is a long-standing problem in B2B marketing. The culprit is the account management model most tech companies maintain.
Under such a structure an account executive (AE), or increasingly a customer success manager (CSM), manages customer accounts. Their duties include everything about the account post-sale. Some key tasks include product usage, renewal agreement and cross-selling and upselling.
This is an effective way to manage customer accounts. These AEs and CSMs serve as internal advocates for customers. And it works well for most things – the one exception and it’s a big one – is customer references.
I’m using the term customer reference here interchangeably with access to customers by a marketing team. A “reference” could be a case study, participation in a marketing event, a quote for the media, or an interview with an analyst, to name a few. These are all routine activities a marketing team might need.
So, why are customer references so hard?
I believe it’s because the typical AE and CSM compensation packages incentivize deals closed. If there’s no renewal or upsell, then there’s no commission. So, AEs and CSMs closely guard access to their customers. They are disinclined to provide the marketing team with access because they want to save that reference for when they need it to close a deal.
The consequences for marketing are dire. One study found roughly two-thirds of B2B marketers had no direct communication with customers. You simply cannot produce effective marketing content without speaking to customers.
7 ideas to get more customer references
At a strategic level, this is a problem for marketing leaders to address. It’s easy to say things like “fix the comp package,” but I’ve never seen that happen in reality. It’s just too hard, too sensitive a topic and too far outside marketing’s purview. Besides, from an organizational behavior standpoint, if you incentivize references, you might get more of them than sales.
This puts marketing leaders in a tough spot: you have all the responsibility for references, but little authority to make it happen. This is a true leadership challenge because the change has to be cultural. References have to be part of the sales-marketing alignment conversation.
That may seem like an unsatisfying answer, but every department that touches a customer needs to be involved. Marketing cannot develop a solid customer reference program on its own. However, there are some things marketing can do to help things along. Below are some ideas – moving from strategic to tactical.
1. Put customer references in contracts
References should be a line item in customer contracts. If a procurement or legal team wants to remove such a clause before signing, then develop a negotiation playbook. For example, offer a percentage discount, early access to new features or free training.
Get creative and be sure the sales team is involved in developing the plays. They are adept at negotiation terms and will have interesting ideas.
Be sure to keep a running tab of the references you get from a contract clause. There may be deals where the team must capitulate – revenue over references – but this should not happen every time.
2. Program to provide marketing with consistent access to customers
Leaders have to find ways to connect their marketing team with customers on a regular basis. At a minimum, the team should be silent listeners on calls across sales, customer success and customer support. If are using sales coaching software like Gong, it’s very easy to share call recordings, metrics and analytics around calls.
As the program grows, you might bring in marketing team members to work closely with the customer advisory board and customer conferences. Local groups – often facilitated through platforms like Meetup – are another opportunity. You could pair up a marketing team member with a sales team member and assign pairs to certain cities.
3. Show sales the value of references for marketing
The sales team has to be convinced that providing references for marketing is in their interest. They have to see the connection between references and their pipeline. The biggest opportunity to demonstrate this is the annual kick-off meeting – and who you choose to present the information can have a huge impact.
Some interesting behavioral research shows the best way to convince the sales team is through peer presentations. Have a high-performing peer present the value of referenceable customers and how they use references. That’s the psychological principle of social proof at work. It’s important to understand this must be a sales peer, not the head of marketing or the VP of sales.
4. Instead of a case study, nominate customers for awards
It’s a big deal to ask for a case study. From the customer’s perspective, it feels like they are doing you a favor – even if they are happy with the product. They’ll have to get approvals, it just sounds hard to do, and it requires them to do extra work.
However, you can flip this on its head by offering to nominate a customer for an award. You’ll be able to ask the same basic questions as a case study, but now you’re giving something rather than asking for something. It’s also a good way to develop trust and rapport, which can put you in a better place to ask for a case study in the future.
5. Invite customers to share their expertise
About a year ago a client asked me to approach one of their customers for a case study. They made an introduction, and I went to work trying to convince them to do a case study. They were happy with the product, but after their legal department turned it down. As a matter of corporate policy, they just didn’t do case studies for any of their solution providers.
We shifted the conversation to sharing expertise. In this case, I’d interview the customers and write up a contributed article to pitch. The byline would be co-written by my client and the customer. It would have an editorial angle and less of a commercial angle which seems to assuage the lawyers.
Similar to the award nomination above, customers are often more inclined to share their expertise with peers, than they are to agree to a case study. It’s a much gentler request too. Instead of asking customers to say great things about you, you are simply asking customers to help educate their peers, and that puts them on an industry pedestal.
This also works well if your company has a proper blog. An interview for a blog post is a similar and low-pressure ask – and the customer will gain confidence in the process.
6. Invite them to a roundtable discussion
Roundtable discussions are sometimes preferable because they require less preparation. For example, a moderated discussion doesn’t require a presentation. Further, a well-rounded panel discussion focused on industry challenges is a much easier ask. Here again, the customer has a chance to get to know the marketing team a bit and build some rapport.
7. Get out of the booth at conferences
Conferences are a great opportunity to build connections – and find interesting people to work with. It’s worthwhile to have a marketing communications or PR person working the whole show – live tweeting or blogging about the show. This approach helps in multiple ways but there are two specifically related to customer references.
First, it has a halo effect. If you are doing good recaps of sessions and adding value, those pieces will get a lot of play. As a result, customers will just look at you differently – and more importantly, look at your engagement request differently.
Second, there have been so many times when I’ve attended a session and coincidentally was seated next to someone I wanted to get to know. These have included reporters, influencers and yes, even customers. Sitting next to a customer for 45 minutes in an industry session can do wonders for relationship building.
Good marketing requires good references
Like all things in marketing, a good customer reference program takes time and effort to build. We all know references are important for closing deals, but they’re also crucial to good marketing.
Think about it: if you want to communicate with someone, the best place to start is by listening. Marketing is no different. The marketing team must spend time listening to customers in order to produce materials that attract more of them.
If you want to improve your company’s marketing, take a close look at the frequency, substance and time the marketing team spends with customers.
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