Our friend, Barb Krasner, just posted to her new Reference Management Insider blog with the idea of using customer reference programs to boost employee morale. I say… ABSOLUTELY!
Let me hit a few quick reasons why making an active point of sharing the positive stories from your customers internally is the right thing to do. Firstly, it is highly motivating for employees to hear about the success their business brings to clients. Everyone wants to know that their company is providing value. Sometimes when you’re deep in the day-to-day of your job, it’s hard to see that value being generated by the business overall. Hearing from customers about their success is rewarding. Secondly, it’s a great way to create senior level support for your program. I’m a big fan of bringing success stories directly to senior executives to disseminate. Let them take some ownership and credit, and as a result you’ve earned an advocate for your reference program. Thirdly, there is an opportunity to drive increased participation from sales. By nature sales folk are competitive. If you can get your executive to give a shout out to the sales rep that closed the deal behind the success story, other sales reps tend to get the message that contributing their success stories to your program is something they should be doing too. Don’t forget to enourage your executives to mention your program and say how salespeople can contribute.
One of the most important, but most often overlooked, areas of customer reference management is internal marketing. Use it to boost morale, create broad support and drive positive behavior. Communicating customer references internally is a great way to build a virtuous cycle within your organization!
