It's not the widget

I met with lots of people last week that seemed to share the opinion that lower marketing budgets = a clear mandate for a self-service customer reference model.

Sure this is logical for low-level activities with pre-approved content (quotes and case studies) however the most spangly of widgets does not replace relationships with sales teams and the organisational buy-in that required to be successful at providing good customer references; preventing reference customer burn-out.

Building another one-stop-shop will not change the typical behaviour of a sales person and defining how potential customers will engage with your company to satisfy their reference requests is nothing short of arrogant.

Applications play an important role but are simply a tool; the reality is you can build it and they won't come.