Referenceability: The High Cost of Recovered Fumbles

My very talented colleague Michael Pearce (FocusOnRevenue.com) says, "The sale is not won until it is referenceable." In other words, it's not enough to close a sale and deliver the goods: Did the overall experience meet the customer's expectations, or did it fall short? A "diving catch" or a "recovered fumble" is a heroic rescue that saves a project headed for disaster. The save often wins you a customer for life, so it can be easy to miss the residual damage. The damage comes later when prospects check a vendor's references, often with long-term customers. Ideally, diving catches and recovered fumbles are rare occurrences. It was one vendor's norm. Their customer satisfaction metric had been a passive tracking of customer loyalty. They didn't know prospects calls to loyal customers often included cheerfully recounted tales of the vendor's averted disasters. Without meaning to, loyal customers were costing them new customers. The vendor's customer acquisition percentage grew faster once they began actively tracking and monitoring referenceability. ..»