All You Need to Know About Customer Reference Programs

Episode 15 December 06, 2022 00:37:44
All You Need to Know About Customer Reference Programs
The Advocacy Channel: A Customer Marketing Podcast
All You Need to Know About Customer Reference Programs

Dec 06 2022 | 00:37:44

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Show Notes

What do you do when a hot prospect asks for a customer reference?

Is it a last-minute dash on Slack with everyone trying to find a happy customer?

Or do you have an organized way of finding the best match?

No matter where you are between these two extremes, a customer reference program might be just what you need.


What you need to know about customer reference programs

To help you get started, David Sroka has joined us on The Advocacy Channel to provide his expertise. As the CEO of Point of Reference, David has years of experience helping large enterprise companies like Benevity and Amplitude run successful customer reference programs.


Tune in as David and Will discuss when you need a customer reference program, how to get started, what to avoid, and the importance of training your sales team.


Get prepared for 2023 with new strategies to leverage the power of your advocates.


Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pointofreference/


Read David’s blog article: https://www.point-of-reference.com/blog/capturing-and-keeping-cxo-engagement/


Connect with us:


Have a question? Suggestion? Email us at [email protected]

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

Will: David, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Dave: Thank you for having me, Well, looking forward to the conversation. Will: Our listeners have just heard the intro to the show, but I always want to get a chance for people to understand the business that you have today. So maybe you could just give us a little overview of Point of Reference. Dave: Sure. Point of Reference has been supporting this customer reference world now since 2003. And we started in a different form and pivoted to what we have today, which is a full fledged customer reference management system, a tool that covers all the things that a reference program manager would be concerned about, like keeping your data current, recruiting new customers, tracking uses of those customers, perhaps issuing reward points, all those things all in one package. Will: Nice. And you said you kind of started in one version or one incarnation and grew. Was that kind of an organic, just kind of step by step or were there any really exciting organic changes? Dave: Nice. I would say it was very organic. Myself and the other founder started in sales. And so when we wanted to build a business, we asked ourselves, what did we not like about the sales process? What could we make better for our fellow salespeople? And it was immediately, man, that request for references in the 11th hour when your quota is based on it and you can't find somebody because they're out of town. The perfect reference, whatever we said, wouldn't it be cool if you could pull up a due diligence interview that was recorded and share it with a prospect so that you didn't have to find calendar time for a live conversation? So we started doing that, interviewing our customers' customers, initially over the phone and then video and in person and started to build these libraries for our clients that their salespeople could tap into whenever they needed to. But the system was limited to that. And our clients said, yeah, it'd be really great if they could also share case studies or white papers or whatever that would support any part of their sales cycle, not just the later stages. And so then we took our platform and kept expanding it to the point where it almost broke. And we said, okay, let's re-platform. What's the best place to do that? Gee, all of our clients but one are on Salesforce. Let's do this all in the Salesforce environment. Will: Yeah, I love the scratching your own itch. And it must be really helpful to really know that problem inside and out. And we're excited to chat about this problem space a little more now. Dave: Yeah. Will: So before we dive into some of those details, let's just come right up to the top. Maybe you can give us just a high level overview of what a reference program is in your eyes. Kind of what does that mean when someone says I want to run a reference program? Dave: Well, what we were, the problem we were trying to solve was the one that we experienced, which was it was always a last minute dash to try and figure out who was happy today because clients do fall in and out of happiness. So who was referenceable today and also be able to filter down so that there was a good match. It was similar size organization, similar use cases, similar industries, the same products, all those things. And so to have that database with pre-qualified customers ready to go when somebody needed it, that was the holy grail we were going after. And I think that any good reference program that should be their goal is to support whoever their stakeholders are. And I think I'm seeing more and more that it's the entire organization, whether it's the events, people, PR, investor relations, analyst relations, you name it, all the way through to sales. Sales, you want to have a set of customers willing to do different activities to support all of the needs of those stakeholders. So that in my opinion, that's the largest role of a reference program manager. To make sure that the database has the right customers in it to support the needs of the organization. And that really ought to correlate to the company's growth goals. Not just we need 200 customers in here to feel good about ourselves. Those 200 customers really should support the primary goals of the company for the year or the quarter or whatever it might be. Will: That's interesting. We kind of talk about these goals, this idea of supporting the entire company's goals. Do you find that many companies today are kind of leaving their reference program maybe in a corner or they're not thinking about it across the entire organization or how are you seeing those conversations unfold? Dave: It used to be more common that it was we only take care of sales. You know, marketing can do whatever marketing needs to do. Or it was, you know, we're primarily a case study company and that's our program, and that's what we call reference program. But today it is much more, I would say well over half of our clients are supporting their entire organization's needs in terms of advocates, not just one particular segment. So it is viewed as a company resource. Will: Interesting as those companies go. Is there a type of company that this really makes the most sense for? Is it a size A? B2B? B2C? Where are you seeing the most valuable applications of reference programs today? Dave: Well, in our case it's B2B but on the B2C side it's probably product reviews and customer reviews that you would find on E-commerce sites. We're primarily supporting companies that have more complex sales cycles. There's a decent amount of competition in their segment. The sales cycle or the product price point is probably, I don't know, maybe on the low end, $50,000 and then up into the millions. So they're the kinds of decision buying decisions that require a lot of confidence. And the way I look at it is customer advocates provide that confidence. I know that these three companies have done what I want to do and they're similar in size and similar in their use case. So I'm not going to just base my decision on marketing material and my fantastic salesperson. Will: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I guess the next question I would look at there is we've got this 50,000 to a million plus size and complex sales cycles. Is there a time in a company's life where a reference program is more applicable or less applicable? So is an early stage company, should they be holding off or should they jump into this right away? And maybe the same question, I guess for a later stage company. Dave: Yeah, it's funny because we have a customer right now who we kind of question whether they were a little early to start this. I was like, hey, great that you're proactive. That's fantastic. You want to make sure though that within at least six months to a year the need makes sense. I think there's a point where you can manage things either with custom fields in your CRM system or God forbid, spreadsheets. I never thought I'd be saying that. But there's probably a point where it's okay, you know, you'd have maybe you have 30 references, maybe you have 50 references and your volume isn't that high and you can manage it. And the point, the tipping point is we can't keep up anymore. And it's starting to impede our ability to either close deals or on the marketing side, support the kinds of campaigns that we're attempting to do where we're leveraging the advocate's voice. When you can't do those things anymore, you know, you've hit that point where you need to be more organized and more proactive about building and maintaining that database. Will: I always love that approach. And I hear suggesting spreadsheets feels a little bit sacrilegious some days. There is a point where it's like these are often tools that are designed to help accelerate, help automate, help systemize. But spreadsheets at low volume can work for a lot of things. And I'm at least a believer that I would rather come in and solve the pain you're experiencing in an effective program. Or some of you have some ideas of ROI versus, hey, we have a brand new idea. Let's all risk it together. And it can be a bit of an investment and be honestly might be harder to get buy in on because of that investment. Dave: I mean, honestly, when we started our business, we didn't use our own product in the early stages. We didn't need it. We didn't have that kind of volume. It wasn't overwhelming, but we definitely use it now. Will: No, that's awesome. I mean, that's kind of the truth. I think sometimes when you're building solutions for companies that are just a little bit further than where you're at or... Dave: A lot further in our case. Yeah, a lot further. Will: Okay. Are there any other reasons that you see a company that just isn't ready for a reference program? Dave: Yes. Yeah. There's certain conditions within a company. You know, when I think about the culture, I think about the leadership team. I think that there are some companies that are too immature in their thinking about advocates to really embrace and absorb a solution like ours or a program. Forget about our solution, just to give it the right budget, the right priority. Include them in the thinking of planning. You know, if companies don't get that, if the leadership in particular doesn't get that, it's very difficult to be successful because you really do need alignment all the way to the top of the organization. I think to do an advocate program well. Will: And any tips or tricks you've seen work for someone who wants to gain that alignment is that starting with a spreadsheet is that, you know, what kind of have you seen work, if anything? Dave: Well, you know, the function of reference management happens in one form or another in every single company. So I think if you can identify where the pain is coming from and bring those people, whether they're managers or VPs or whatever, you know, get their pain harnessed into a message that can go to decision makers and you can easily say, this is how this leader or this manager is telling me references or lack thereof are hurting them, slowing things down, decreasing their win rates, whatever it might be. That's. I think the only way to do it is you have to build your business case and you have to use real pain points in the business case. You can't just say, I just want salespeople to be able to find things easier. No, that's not it. The way to go to a CEO or a CXO of any level is to say, I understand your goals are this, here's how what I'm proposing supports your personal goals, then it resonates. Will: You know, I think that's very, very true. You can't just explain the need or the outcome or the better state for yourself. Just how does this really affect the company? I think that kind of ties back to what you're saying earlier as well. Like, this is a whole company service as well, right? This is a reference program. And we see it in our company. We absolutely see everyone. And whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, I mean, half the time, heck, it's even like, what's a customer reference that a product team member can talk to for a second because they need to understand something, that it can be used well across that company. Before we started recording here today, we had talked with this idea that sales teams need reference training. You know, and it's interesting because you came from the sales background, so I know you support the sales guys out there, but what is that? What does that kind of mean to you? And what kind of training would you recommend that they need? Dave: I know it seems so obvious when you've been in this field as long as we have. And I certainly gave it a lot of thought when I was in a sales role. Exactly how to incorporate an advocate's perspective and in what way, what format and things like that. So I think what we see are salespeople learn from those around them when they're earlier in their careers. There is no training in most companies. Here's the proper way to leverage a customer advocate or a reference for a call, whatever specific needs you might have. So they don't always think about when to incorporate them when it's appropriate. Often a newer salesperson wants to use them as soon as they get worried about the deal getting potentially off kilter because of a competitor's messaging or whatever. And it's like you need to use them at the appropriate time, number one. And you hopefully have other ways to incorporate the voice of the customer in print, in video, et cetera, in ways that don't necessarily require calendar time and a live phone call or a group call or whatever it might be. Dave (continuing): So that's number one, is knowing when to use them properly, also making sure you're aligning with the right reference customer so they have the, again, those similar characteristics in terms of company size. If you're selling to an executive versus, I don't know, administrative level person, a director level person, you know, you're not going to match up a CEO and a director. That would be weird. You're not going to match up a small E-commerce operation with Amazon. You got to be smart about those things so that the parties can relate to one another. Because otherwise you walk out of that conversation if you're a buyer and you go, well, everything sounds good. That's not quite our situation. And then you haven't really resolved the issues at all. So that's part of it, matching it up, knowing the protocol within your organization. A lot of times it's a free for all where people are just slacking each other and hoping for the best. But other times there's really a protocol working through. Maybe it's the CSM or account manager or whatever it might be. And you certainly don't want to end run that stuff because you don't know everything about that account, whereas that relationship manager does. And then I think the other part is closing the loop. So you should have, as part of your process, following up with each of the parties. I mean, we get messages from our customers when they provide references for us and they give us all kinds of insights. Like they sounded a little hesitant on this or you got this one in the bag. They are absolutely sold on you. And these are fantastic things to know. But if you don't ask for that information or if they don't volunteer it, then you're missing out, missing out a lot. And you also certainly want to follow up with the customer, not just. Or the buyer, not just to say, so are we ready to sign? But like, did we get all of your questions met? Do you have any concerns, any lingering questions that we need to address so that you might have to get another reference if necessary or provide some other form of information that'll satisfy that need. Will: You know, I love that little nugget there about, you know, the reference themselves will provide information back to you on the deal. And it seems so strange because like some days you're kind of thinking, well, like the prospect and the client, they're on the same team, they're not the vendor. But man, the number of times you get like a phone call or an email and like you're like, it's like a small report of the call and... Dave: You're like, I've gotten those. Will: Yeah, I asked you to help me and now you're just okay, thank you so much. Dave: It's so wonderful, isn't it? I mean, it's like when you're customers are like that with you, it's really pretty gratifying. Will: Yeah, no, it's definitely cool. But I mean, even that idea of just asking, right. I mean, I've definitely seen it be volunteered, but just to make that part of your process to ask is huge. Huge. Dave: Yeah. So by the way, the training part you think of like at onboarding maybe or, you know, we encourage all of our clients to have sort of open training sessions during the month for anybody that might have missed training or they got training, but there was so much other stuff at that point in time they kind of forgot. We suggest that, but building it right into your tools that salespeople use is even better. And one of our clients has a help system and they've actually added process steps for each stage of the sales cycle and it includes their suggestions as it applies to advocates. This is a good time to share Customer reviews from G2. This is a good time to do this. Now you should start thinking about finding a referenceable account. On and on and on. We discovered something not that long ago. It's a fairly new feature, but a lot of our clients use Slack. You can create a slack listener that listens for phrases. I need a reference, I'm looking for a reference. When it catches that in any channel, you can have a response. Hey, looks like you're looking for a reference. You know, click here or contact this person or whatever. But don't do it through the black market people. Stay in bounds, stay in bounds. So like that kind of stuff that's just always present, you know, ever present. Training is really key. Will: Yeah, I had never heard of a slack listener before. So I'm definitely going to use that for probably a couple other keywords, if I'm perfectly honest. Dave: And it's easy, it's easy to set up. Yeah. Will: But I do like that idea of continual training. I think we can be, we can get a little carried away with thinking. We did training when we launched the program. Dave: Yeah. Will: We did training when someone onboarded. Yeah, done. Dave: Right. Will: You know, forever solved. Yeah, absolutely. One of the other things you had kind of mentioned is this idea of, you know, reference programs needing a 360 view of what's going on. Maybe you can speak a little bit more to that for us. Dave: A 360 view. Are you talking about in terms of what the stakeholders need or do you have a different... Yeah. In addition to just being aware of the company's imperatives for the year, it's important to then meet with the stakeholder department heads. And that's getting into, hey, campaign people, what do you have planned and how do you want to use advocates? Oh, you haven't thought of using them yet? Oh, well, let me tell you about some of the stories that we've recently captured in one form or another. And these people would be terrific for exactly what you're trying to accomplish with your campaign. So not only finding out what they have and what you're going to need to fulfill, but being the consultant and suggesting where there are opportunities to incorporate your customers perceptions of your product, your company, whatever, to be much more effective in what they do. You know, we're biased as you are, I'm sure as well. It's like customers solve a lot of things. You know, if you got happy customers, they take care of a lot of, they give you great feedback, they talk about, they tell you about the product. They certainly talk to their peers. They can be great for media. I mean it goes on and on and on. So it's just a matter of harnessing that. Will: You know, I really like that idea though. You know, I think we're talking today, how do you get buy in for the program and kind of, you know, we got trained people but that idea that you're out there prospecting for new ways that you can add value to the business through the reference program. Dave: Yeah. Will: I think is huge. And that a lot of people, you know, I have this need from sales that asks for references. I assembled the reference program and ta da, it is done. But I like that idea of going out there because I mean we do it, you know, a little more informally sometimes, but you'll have like a conversation between someone on the customer success team and someone, typically we are solutions architects and success team with our solutions engineers, our sales engineers, pardon me, on the sales team, and they're talking about something and it goes, someone goes like, oh my gosh, you know, I can use that story on which way of the process. And it's just kind of like hunting for those opportunities. Dave: And it's so powerful when you come across something that fits exactly what you're trying to do. I don't know, it just, it's a breath of relief when I have a customer that can fill a need, whether it's a sales need or it's a marketing need. It's just like, oh, well, this is the best way to go. There's no choice, no decision about it. I love it. I love it when I hear those stories. Will: So it's interesting, we're kind of talking about kind of a bit of the post launch of a reference program. And I think a lot of people, when they're thinking they want to launch a reference program and they're really thinking about that zero to something phase, right? You know, we gotta get, we've got no program, it's all ad hoc. And I want to get something set up. Once they get something set up, you know, what are the keys I have to think about to make sure that it's actually successful and it stays successful? Like, you know, sure, it's live and there's a way for things to come in and out. But, you know, beyond training for salespeople, is there anything else I need to... Dave: Be thinking about lots of things that I can think of right off the top. So when we think about user adoption, we think about awareness, we think about education and we think about data quality. So awareness, they certainly have to know that the tool exists, that the program exists. They have to know where to find it. Because sometimes you survey and people are like, yeah, I didn't know it existed. Like, how can you not know it existed? There's a button right there that's not obvious. So awareness is big. And that's about promotion and reminding and being in sales meetings and talking about the program and talking about whatever tool you might have. The education side, of course, is how do I do things? How do I accomplish this task or that task, which we built that into our system. So like when you're on a page, you can quickly call up help and it'll walk you through things. I think that's really important. Just in time training the data quality so you might know about it, you might know how to use it. But the data stinks. You're not getting what you need. Can't find it. Every time I go into that database, I can't find anything that matches what I'm looking for. Why is that? Well, either the accounts of that type don't exist. The way to search for it isn't available. You know, there's something like that. So those are the three basic things that we focus on. But beyond that, I'll get into carrots and sticks. You ideally have some reward, something that makes it fun to begin using the reference program, whatever it looks like or behaves like. So that might be points that are awarded for completing certain activities like nominating customers or submitting requests to the system. Stop using Slack. You know, you don't get points if you use Slack. So there's the carrot side. Recognition. Right. You can say these are the top three users of the program in the last quarter. And executives, sales managers make a big deal about that. That means a lot to salespeople. Competition. You got a leaderboard that helps with salespeople. They respond to that. On the stick side, it's oversight. If the sales managers see things happening in their Slack channels, for instance, they should jump in and say, stop it. If they don't have the autoresponder setup that I was talking, that would be good, though. That would be like coming right from the manager. Hey, looks like you're looking for a reference. Stop doing it here. Signed, you know, Becky. Dave (continuing): Yeah, sales manager. So anyhow, that kind of, I think of it like parenting almost. It's consistency and it's persistence. And that's why you need the executives buy in. Because if all they do is say, hey, we've invested in this program, this person, this technology, whatever, we're behind it, and then they disappear. It's not executive support. That's not executive support. Will: Yeah, no, no, that's a good point. And, and I do like that idea. You talk about the carrots, right. You know, building a little rewards program of some sort inside of the company to get that momentum going. And I'd imagine that that program could be valuable, you know, across the support organization, success organization, sales organization, broadly, you know, anyone who's going to be able to help get things in or get things out of the system. Dave: Yeah, or primarily, I would say it's the success side or account management, whatever they refer to it as. It's the sales team. And it's anything within marketing that has, as part of their job description, working with customer advocates. Will: Yeah, I know for sure. You know, what are some of the most, you know, you're looking at these kind of programs, any kind of really creative or unexpected uses of these programs that you've seen. We kind of have references and case studies, but anything else where you've kind of seen people take this data and do something kind of very unexpected with it? Dave: Yeah. Two things come to mind. One, you know how customer marketing can be viewed in different ways. That term, if you look at job openings, you see customer marketing manager and you read the description, one might say focuses on existing customer base and runs campaigns and expands footprint in the company, whatever. So that's the marketing to customers. Our definition, the way we work on it, is using customers to market to get new business. So that's how we approach it. But we have clients using it for the first definition. So they are saying, to customer success. You might need to find references in order to renew a client or to expand our service offerings in that customer. They're not quite sure they want to get that module or that feature or whatever. It's an extra cost. We have references that can tell you why that makes sense. So it's kind of a continuation of the sales process. The other thing that I thought was really cool, this is back in the day when we were doing those interviews, but it applies now as well, is they would use the customer stories that were captured to train new salespeople. It's like, we can tell you what the value props are, but if you want to know how to tell that story to a prospect, listen to these customers explain it in their words. So they would actually have them read a case study and then test them. What did you pick out of that story that correlates to some of our value props? Did you pick out anything that you wouldn't have thought of? You know, it's like they really used it as a tool to train, not just to get new business. It was cool. I thought it made a lot of sense. Will: Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And there's always like, at my experience, at least, there's always something that's lost in translation, whether it's like the commitment or the belief in what's being said. Like sometimes, you know, I'm recounting the story of what a customer said to another team member and, you know, they get it, but they don't quite have that same impact. They don't have that same level of belief. And then also they talk to the customer, they go, did you know? And I'm like, that's literally what we talked about. Yeah, I did, actually, but I'm glad you know it now too. So watching those videos and having that as a training tool, that's a really cool, really cool idea. Dave: It's smart. I mean, honestly, you want to be able to talk in the same language as your buyer, and so you're learning. You're learning to speak that language. Will: Absolutely. Are there any great sins that you see happen in reference programs? Like anything that you do, you see people do that's just kind of shooting themselves in the foot, that people should try to avoid those pitfalls? Dave: Yes. I have to pick this list carefully because I could go on, but I'm going to pick the ones that are common. The most common ones, I would say, first off, building your database without knowing what you're building it for. So it's that I've got a quota. I'm gonna, you know, I won't launch this program until I have 200 happy customer references in this database. But you don't know if those 200 are gonna help. They may not be where the bulk of the demand is. So that one kills me. Another one, I would say is being hesitant to understand the sales world. So most of the people we're dealing with are in marketing. Some of them came from sales, and they have a distinct advantage, but being hesitant to dig into, well, what is the average sales cycle like, and how many references are usually needed, and which of our products need more references than others and why? Dave (continuing): What do you guys usually see as a win rate? How can we help with that? Where do you get stuck? Where could a customer telling a buyer something really overcome the obstacles that you see on a regular basis? Like, dig into that. Really dig into that. We have a couple clients, contacts at our accounts that do a really good job of showing their partnership with salespeople in particular. You know, they will, right from the get go, start asking them a lot of these questions about how they operate. But then, you know, for each opportunity, they want to get into the details. I want to find the right person for you. So tell me more. And it's such a different relationship that comes out of that approach. Salespeople are like, you got my back. Like, I'm not alone trying to do this. And it creates such synergy and willingness to help each other, and that's a beautiful thing. So not doing that, I think, is a serious disadvantage and a serious mistake. So those are two big ones. Another one, I would say is getting too involved in the weeds or being distracted by too many other things so that you lose focus on the need to continually iterate the database itself. Things will change. You know, the company may pivot to going after a different industry or acquire a company and want to go to market with a new joint story. The database doesn't support it. But you won't notice that until all of a sudden you're getting asked for these references you can't fulfill. Or people are saying, I went and searched, I couldn't find anything. What do you need? And it's like, when did you know? How I didn't know that because you were so far in the weeds, you weren't being proactive. Will: That's when I could definitely fall victim to myself. Is that you start getting in there, you're monitoring your own little internal metrics and fighting that day to day fight. You said all of a sudden you've acquired another business. And it was like, oh yeah, that's fun. Dave: I think if a program manager comes into their position thinking like a consultant, it's a huge advantage. So that's discover there's discovery work going on, there's crafting a solution and then rinse and repeat. It's continuous. Will: Yeah, wonderful. Well, this has been a ton on reference programs and I think I'm glad we got those pitfalls out there because I think those are all fairly doable pitfalls that we could fall into. But I clearly kind of see the disadvantages when you lay them out there. Any other thoughts or advice you'd want to kind of share with our listeners on reference programs? Either how to be successful or maybe what the future might look like in your mind? Dave: Well, on the topic of how to be successful, just don't underestimate the need to engage executives and keep them engaged, not just get approval for budget for one thing or another. You want to keep them in your court because you will run into things that they can help you clear the obstacle of. You know, maybe you're not getting the time you need from IT, or maybe you're not getting cooperation from this one region of the country. The sales region X is not doing things the way it's prescribed. The other regions are doing great, you know, so you always need them to be aware of your successes and that's really important that you're reporting your success in terms of their goals. Right. And then the second part is make sure that they understand what obstacles you're running into and ask them for that assistance so that that's the biggest thing, I just can't say that enough. Dave (continuing): I have a blog post that just says, you know, this is what executive support really looks like. Because what people say is executive support. And then they go. And yet, yet salespeople aren't. Well, they just ref nominate customers. Like, then you don't have executive support. It's that simple. Like, when have you ever had a job where your manager says to you, you must do this, it's important to your job, and you ignore it. It doesn't happen, at least not for long. Will: Yeah, exactly. Dave: So what's the future? I think the future is getting more sophisticated in, at least for us, helping our customers run these programs more and more on autopilot. And I'll be clear about that because technology doesn't solve everything. But I think what we're looking at is trying to do more predictive work. For instance, I was talking about getting your heads down in the weeds and all of a sudden you look up and realize you missed something important. What if a system could predict to you based on what's in the pipeline right now you're going to need references that are in these industries, these product groupings, et cetera. And as we look at what's in the reference database, you don't have enough. And what if you got a couple months lead time on that? If your sales cycle is six to 12 months, for instance, and you saw that coming through the pipeline, then you can actually be prepared when the tidal wave hits. So I imagine all of us in the technology space are going to be doing more predictive type work to do some of that thinking for those very, very busy people. If your experience is like mine, we've never had any program managers that are like, I got way too much time on my hands, you know. Will: You know, I often tell people, you know, if you can't figure out what to do, maybe it's time to prepare the resume. Like that's... Dave: Yeah, it should be a long list. Will: Yeah. You got that much spare time? Dave: Yeah. Will: We'll definitely have to link that blog article that you're talking about. We'll link that off in the show description here for people to give a chance to read that. Dave: Sure. Will: And I totally agree. You know, the challenge is that face people with the amount of data and the speed of change that we do have access to today, predictive is just huge. Whether it's a recommendation on how to tune your program prediction on what you're going to need in six months, that's the kind of intelligence that I think people really need to make the most of their limited resources out there today for sure. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining us here today, David. I've learned a ton. Learned a few mistakes I hope to be able to avoid in my own life. Thank you very much for this. Before we break here, where can people connect with you, learn more about what you're doing? Where can they find you the best? Dave: Oh well, my LinkedIn page always has good stuff. I post a lot there. Our blog at pointofreference.com with hyphens between point and of and of and reference. Those are good places. And then we have our own page as well on LinkedIn that we're always posting to with one thing or another. So lots of good information there. But I would say the blog post has the most probably in depth resources for anybody focused on a particular topic and it's not product specific. It's very agnostic. Will: Perfect. Well, we'll make sure we link those out as well. And thank you very much again for your time today. Dave: It was a pleasure. Will thank you.

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