#general

Unless being a reference specifically comes up in conversation as part of the interview, you’re unlikely to find indicators of the customer’s willingness to be one just doing a keyword search for “reference”. I think your best bet is to either make sure your vendor asks about references/referrals in the interview, or have AI analyze the interview transcript for context clues on the customer’s sentiment.

I definitely capture info after the deal is closed but I don’t ask about being a reference bc at that point they wouldnt be a great person to talk about their experience (except if after expansion). If the sentiment is positive after a new sale closes then I wait until onboarding is complete to start nurturing them to become advocates. I realize this is 0% helpful. 😂 You could have the interviewers ask if they are open to co-marketing opportunities in the future.

I use our closed won interviews as a starting point for further research. I'll review their Gong calls, CSM notes, and anything else we already have. Then, I'll connect with the account owner if it seems like there's a good story there. I leave the vendor out of it, because their remit is a totally different objective.

Sidenote, I also use the closed lost data to identify where we have gaps in our customer proof points so I know where to focus time and energy on collecting new content and enabling the field to use it.

Also, we use Peerbound and can’t keep up with the amount of potential references, advocates, customer stories. It’s a freakin game changer.

I should have mentioned that because a lot of these convos are after expansions, renewals, or far enough after a sale we actually have pretty good success identifying advocates from the survey that the vendor sends out. We use this question.

Would you be interested in sharing your experience in any of the following activities? (Multi select)

Public testimonial or case study
Peer reference call
Online review (e.g. G2)
No, I’m not interested

@Emily Coleman what do you look for in Gong calls? Anything specific or more general sentiment and background info? I love the detective/research part of advocacy, but I'm finding I have less and less time for it these dayes

I have an prompt I just copy and paste into the account overview genAI tool that searches for positive sentiment, quotable moments, and any proof of value conversations they might have had.

@Emily Coleman love it. Are you willing to share the exact prompt you use? Good prompts are a skill!

This is the prompt. I modified it from one that @Angela Ferrante shared in a CMA Weekly call months ago. 🙂

```Review the activity with our team at LaunchDarkly and the customer to assess their potential as an advocate and for a case study. Specifically, please evaluate:

Case Study Readiness: Based on the calls, does the customer demonstrate enough positive sentiment, tangible outcomes, and value from using LaunchDarkly to justify creating a case study? Please highlight any specific results or success metrics that support this.

Advocacy Readiness: What is the overall sentiment of the customer? Would you recommend proceeding with an advocacy ask (e.g., requesting a reference or case study participation) or waiting? Please provide the key reasons for your recommendation.

Potential Quotes or Stakeholder Identification: Were there any standout statements or quotes from the customer that could be used in a case study or advocacy material? Additionally, are there specific stakeholders (by name or role) who seemed most engaged or positive and could represent the customer in an advocacy activity?

Your response should be a brief, one-sentence summary for each section, with specific examples or data points where possible. For section 3, please provide any notable quotes or names of key stakeholders.```

@Emily Coleman tell me more, what does: I just copy and paste into the account overview genAI tool
mean? What account overview genAI tool?

@Leslie Barrett can you recommend a contact at Peerbound? My team might want to check it out. thank you!

@Sunny Manivannan will show ya @Amy

@Rebecca Grossman in the account view in Gong for a specific account, there's an "Ask anything" function where you can give a genAI prompt and it will answer it for you!

@Evan Huck related to customer evidence data shared with sales through an automated process

One pattern that can work well in this situation is triggered/automated win/loss surveys based on stage changes in the CRM. IE opp goes to closed/lost you ask questions more about why you lost, what could we have done better, product gaps, etc

Closed/won you ask questions about why you won, which competitors you beat, why you beat those competitors, what you're hoping to get out of the investment, etc -- and yes, what types of reference activities they might be interested in (eg reviews, taking a call, speaking at an event, etc)

Especially w/a scaled user base like Zoom or Grammarly or Gong or w/e, have a more 1-to-many scaled way to ingest feedback and structure the feedback into actionable buckets/patterns/themes in an ongoing way is important - and can feed A) internal insights for PMM, sales, PM, strategy, B) advocacy content creation (Case studies, testimonials, stats, etc) and C) building the top of the pipeline for more indepth advocacy/reference activities (ie community, reference program, CABs, w/e)

The scaled survey approach does NOT obviate the need for some sore of more low-scale, human, high quality interview though on a select set of "interesting" closed/won and closed/lost deals - you need that more nuanced, in-depth colorful 1:1 research from a good human interview to get that next level of detail. Even at UserEvidence where we obviously have no shortage of scaled survey feedback collection, we still used professional win-loss interviews on 6-10 interesting opportunities. But the nice part was the survey actually gave us insight into which opps were "interesting" that we wanted to dive into deeper and pass off to the interviewer. And of course you can tell the interviewer to include important questions like advocacy/reference identification. We used Goldpan for interviews, but Klue also has a win/loss research arm via acquisition that is really solid as well.