Here are a few scenarios you may relate to:

• You’re sure you’ve just implemented a customer reference program that sales people will flock to. There’s now a team or an individual dedicated to solving the reference conundrum, freeing sales to be more productive. Who wouldn’t be thrilled? So why aren’t they coming?
• Or maybe, after months of selling it to management, you’ve been able to get funding for and eventually launch a customer reference database that sales people can use 7×24. Everything they need:  the ability to search for customer references and customer content. You’ve removed the hassle of quickly finding important assets to closing new business. So why aren’t they using your new baby?

Reference managers and sponsoring executives have struggled with these questions particularly over the past few years as the novelty and euphoria of simply getting programs and technology solutions off the ground wears off.

User adoption of any marketing program or enabling technology is always a keystone of success. It’s no different for customer reference management. We’ve distilled our learnings from our work supporting some of the top reference programs in the tech industry into two new user adoption white papers:

• A Guide to Increasing User Adoption of Customer Reference Programs
• User Adoption of Customer Reference Management Systems: Overcoming the Eight Most Common Hurdles

We hope you find some new ideas or at least affirmation of your suspicions in these new resources. There’s no way we could have captured every idea that exists in the brain trust of the reference community, so we welcome your comments/contributions to our work.