Why would you make customer reference management a high priority initiative?

"Even though Microsoft is a well-known brand, our entrance into the business solutions space is relatively new. When our customers are going to invest in a new business solution--for example, an ERP or a CRM package, that’s a fairly significant change and investment for a company. It’s important that we have existing customers that are available to talk to our prospective customer so they can understand how easy it was to implement the system, what their total cost of ownership is, and how it’s made them a more competitive company."

"Reference management really sits smack-dab in the middle of the sales process because, for our business solution sales, we’ve estimated that between 85 and 95 percent of all of our sales opportunities require some type of reference activity or reference material in order to actually close the business. Having references available and easily accessible is critical to our business."

How did you justify the investment in this type of program?

"Justifying the investment for a customer reference system for Business Solutions was pretty easy...." Read the full interview.

###