If you are involved in coordinating customer reference phone calls, you are doing a disservice to everyone involved if you aren’t doing a little work to help prepare your customer for the questions they might receive.
One approach we’ve seen used successfully is a Customer Reference FAQ document that can be shared with customers when they join your program. While each prospect is going to have their own set of questions, they usually won’t veer too far from the basics. Here is a link to a timeless post with a set of customer reference questions related to Software that may help you get started. Prepare your own questions by collecting feedback from customers, your sales team and product management.
The original purpose of Kalsey’s list was to prepare the potential buyer so they could get good information from the reference. In fact, once you’ve prepared your own Customer Reference FAQ you could consider sharing it with your prospects. As long as you don’t imply that they are limited to any set of questions, you may gain goodwill by helping them conduct an effective evaluation in ways your competitors haven’t considered.
