Resources for Customer Reference Professionals

Customer Reference Forum® is a community of customer reference professionals and customer reference managers from many of the leading corporations in the world.

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Customer Reference Pros Share Best Practices in Santa Clara

2010 Customer Reference Forum

March 1-3, 2010

FAST FACTS

Keynoters

  • Julie Tung, VP of Global Customer Programs, Oracle
  • Dr. Laura Brooks, VP, Research and Business Consulting Services, Satmetrix

Who Attended:

Customer Reference professionals from many of the top B2B firms in the world, including Adobe, Cisco WebEx, CA, Dell, Genesys, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle, Actuate, Alcatel-Lucent, salesforce.com, VMWare, SAP, Research In Motion, Genesys, Satmetrix, Blue Coat, Diebold, Fortinet, Hitachi Data Systems, Lexmark International, Inc., Forrester Research, Netezza, Siemens PLM, Picis, Red Hat, Saba, AmerisourceBergen, SumTotal Systems, Blackboard, Riverbed Technology, Beeline Labs, and Infor.

Awards

President’s Award Winner for Overall Presentation:
Julie Tung, VP of Global Customer Programs, Oracle for her presentation “How Oracle Attracts Executive Customers Into Its Customer Reference Programs”

Co-President’s Award Winners for Breakout Sessions:
Francois Goisseaux, Co-founder & Partner, Beeline Labs and Dean Hidalgo, Director of Industry and Customer Marketing, TIBCO for their presentation “The Tribalization of Business: The Art and Science of Building Successful B2B Communities”
&
Diane Davidson, Program Manager, Customer Success Programs, Cisco WebEx and Rhett Livengood, Chief Reference Officer, Intel for their workshop “The Nuts and Bolts of Using Video to Create Compelling Customer Content”

Awards of Excellence
For delivering presentations that received outstanding evaluations from an audience of his/her peers.

  • Tami Andrews, Worldwide Customer Reference Manager Dell for her workshop “Just Getting Started: A Workshop for New Customer Reference Programs”
  • Cynthia Hester, Worldwide Software Customer Reference Program Lead, Hewlett-Packard for her presentation “Transforming the Customer Reference Experience: Customer Reference Online Community”
  • Francois Goisseaux, Co-Founder and Partner, Beeline Labs, Wally Thiessen, Manager, Client Development, SAS Canada, Abby Atkinson, Sr Director, Infor and Chris Caile, Sr Marketing Manager, Microsoft for their panel “The Future of Customer Reference Programs”
  • Lisa Hanna, Sr Manager, Customer Reference Program Holly Lugassy, Sr Manager, Customer Programs and Emily Chu, Sr Customer Reference Manager, Adobe Inc for their presentation “Getting Sales and Marketing's Attention: How Adobe Increased the Strategic  Importance of its References”

Best Implementation Plan:
Tricia Sale, Sr Manager, Client Reference Program, Blackboard

“We were already in the midst of developing our implementation plan; the forum allowed me the opportunity to learn from other professionals and update our plan to include some critical items to help move this plan forward successfully. Some of the things I plan on implementing include:”

  • Have all reference data built into our sales database
  • Establish a “Reference Launch Team” (include folks from various departments like Marketing, Sales, IT, RFP)
  • Schedule a phased rollout to sales team.  Keeping in mind different regions have varied calendars/schedules (example folks in Europe may be on ‘holiday’ certain months in summer)
  • Build ongoing communications to sales team into our plan
  • Build reference training into our sales boot camp

Best Takeaway from the Forum:
Kristin Storer, WW Customer Reference Program, Dell 

“The evolution of the traditional written case study! How can we make our case studies more interactive and drive people to the stories and the solutions?”

Featured Presenters

  • Forrester’s Laura Ramos, Intel’s Rhett Livengood and salesforce.com’s Jamie Grenney on the “how to’s” of moving customer references into a community marketing effort.
  • Dell’s Tami Andrews with a workshop on just getting started with your customer reference program.
  • Hewlett-Packard’s Cynthia Hester on transforming the Customer Reference experience.
  • Adobe’s Lisa Hanna, Holly Lugassy and Emily Chu on getting sales and marketing’s attention and how Adobe increased the strategic importance of their references.
  • Lexmark International, Inc.’s Jeanne Talbot on maximizing global impact and how Lexmark International, Inc. has extended it Customer Reference Program around the world.
  • Cisco WebEx’s Diane Davidson and Intel’s Rhett Livengood on the nuts and bolts of using video to create compelling customer content.
  • Red Hat’s Sean White and Eccolo Media’s Lorie Loe on collateral that sells.
  • Beeline Labs’ Francois Gossieaux and TIBCO’s Dean Hidalgo on the Tribalization of business, the art and science of building successful B2B communities.