Recorded Client Reference Interviews

Close more business in less time while solving the reference dilemma

We all know the challenges of Client References

If you are a B2B firm your sales success often relies on a reference call between a hand full of your best clients as references and a prospect you desperately want to close. The reference call validates you as a quality firm that the prospect should do business with. But the reference call process can be deadly and has always been a delicate final stage in the sale.

B2B salespeople and executives know too well the problems that each client reference call can bring:

Top 10 problems resulting from the reference process

  • Asking your best clients to take reference calls from prospects is a burden

  • Clients can only take so many reference calls before they burn out

  • Even your best clients' views of your firm can fluctuate, depending on issues that arise in any B2B relationship - resulting in questionable recommendations at all times

  • Your best clients don't know what to say on reference calls to properly sell your firm

  • Prospects don't know what to ask to uncover the most important selling details about your work with your reference clients

  • The reference call happened at the end of the sales cycle - so 95% of the sales cycle does not benefit from your prospect hearing your reference clients' praise

  • Reference calls are too short to provide the key details that a prospect needs to fully understand just how much you did for your best clients

  • Only one person from the prospect firm can be on the call, while there may be three to eight members of the selection committee who do not hear the reference call and do not have their questions answered

  • The live reference call conversation is not monitored, so you don't know what is being said and what is being asked, and if your sale is going forward or backward

  • The live call is the only time prospects can have independent verification via the reference's voice

Clients have very little time and patience to educate prospects as a favor to your firm. Client references can burn out fast after just a few phone calls with prospects. Moreover, even if they do continue, clients can quickly become irritated about the added reference workload.

Limitations with mechanics of the reference call

  • References have little time to sell on the call. Time is wasted trying to get prospects up to speed, leaving little time to discuss reasons the prospect should absolutely do business with your firm.

  • Prospects don't get the details they want. Prospects bring lists of background questions to the reference call so they don't miss anything. Unfortunately, it becomes a one-sided inqui\ sition to get these details, with less than 10% of your project's successful details provided in the best call. While it's critical to get the details of the the project's success to the prospect, it's just as essential for your clients to sell your firm during the reference call. But that's just too much to accomplish on a live reference call.

  • The live reference call is doing too much. The perfect live reference call should be a 100% in spirational conversation that doesn't include a review of the history of the project. Prospects need to hear deep reference project details early in the sales cycle right from the client's project team. This should happen well before the live call, when the prospect has the whole sales cycle to study those success details.

The live reference call should no longer be the sole part of your reference process. Your firm needs to enhance the reference process to meet the growing needs of prospects, or suffer client frustration and loss of sales.

SRC Has a Solution That Will Help Your Sales Team Close Business, Faster

SRC has created a complete service. We can record in-depth reference interviews with your best clients, and provide your sales team with a simple system they can use to provide the most compelling Reference Interviews for each prospect on their own tailored website. It's that simple. Our service is an all in one solution where we not only design and conduct your client reference interviews, but we also provide your sale team and management with a cloud based easy to use system. Sales can provide recorded references to prospects in minutes at the start of the sales cycle, while also providing sales management with a dashboard into your firms entire recorded reference process.

We use our unique Reference Interview service to turn the traditional reference process from the age-old, unmonitored phone call between a prospect and your most valued clients into a controlled and infinitely scalable system with prerecorded and audited interviews. We create client references that can include whole client team interviews that are scalable, controllable and editable recorded assets for ongoing use.

SRC has developed a complete service to put your best client references into the hands of prospects at the start of the sales process:

Benefits of our Recorded References:

Here a just a few benefits your firm will enjoy as a result of our recorded reference service:

We are so confident in our SRC Recorded Client Reference Interviews™ that we are offering our system risk free with no commitment for the first three months of implementation to qualified firms. To see the system firsthand, to find out more about our 300% ROI guarantee, and to see if your firm qualifies for a three-month, no-risk project start, please contact SRC today.