July 9, 2026

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Hi Everyone,

A buyer may like your product, believe the demo, and trust the salesperson. But someone else involved in the decision still wants to know whether a company like theirs has already used it successfully.

That is where a reference helps.

TrustRadius found that 71% of enterprise buyers spoke to a product user before buying. So if your team sells larger deals, customer references can’t be something sales figures out at the last minute.

In today’s issue, we’re covering how to build five usable customer references in five weeks.

Build the smallest version that works

Before you ask customers for references, set up six things.

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1. A clear definition of reference-ready: the customer should be live, happy, active, and able to point to a clear result. A good score is useful, but don’t rely on the score alone. The account also needs to be healthy.

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2. A shared list: use a spreadsheet at the beginning and include the account, contact, segment, use case, what they’re willing to do, and when they were last asked.

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3. One owner: someone needs to keep the list clean, handle requests, rotate customers, and make sure people are thanked afterward. This can sit with marketing or customer success.

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4. An opt-in form: capture what each customer is willing to do. Some will take calls. Some will approve quotes. Some can do case studies. Some need legal approval first.

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5. A request process for sales: sales should ask with context. “We need a healthcare customer” is too vague. “We need a healthcare customer who switched from Salesforce and can talk about our speed of implementation” is useful.

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6. Rotation rules: track when each customer was last used. Otherwise, the same customers will get every request until they stop saying yes.

The five-week sprint

Here's the plan, week by week. It takes roughly half a person's time across the five weeks.

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Week 1 — Align and set up: Pick one or two priority segments, define your "reference-ready" criteria, and build your reference roster.

(To make this easier, we've built a companion spreadsheet you can use as your roster. It has tabs for your priority segments, reference-ready criteria, candidate scoring, and a request log that enforces the "no more than two major asks per quarter" rule automatically.)

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Week 2 — Build your candidate list: Pull happy customers from the last six to twelve months. Ask sales and customer success for names too. They’ll know who has a good relationship with the team and a useful result to share. Aim for 15–25 candidates.

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Week 3 — Outreach and opt-in. The ask should come from the person who knows the customer best. Explain that you’re building a small group of customers who may occasionally help buyers understand the product. Ask what they’re comfortable doing: calls, quotes, case studies, or something else. Aim for 5–8 opt-ins, so a 30–50% conversion rate from your candidate list.

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Week 4 — Create assets and enable sales: Draft a short mini-case (150–250 words) and one or two approved quotes per reference. Then show sales where the list is and how to request a reference.

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Week 5 — Put them to work: Match references to 3–5 live late-stage deals by industry and use case. After each one, track what happened. Did the buyer speak to the customer? Did it answer the concern? Did the deal move forward?

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By the end of week five, you should have five active references, a working process, and some early data on whether referenced deals move differently from the rest of your pipeline.

Go deeper

👉 Product School: Customer Reference Strategy — Good for setting reference-ready rules and building the first customer list

👉 Pragmatic Institute: Seven Ways to Acquire and Retain Customer References — Useful on rotation, thank-yous, and avoiding customer fatigue

👉 Reviewflowz: Customer Reference Program Guide — A simple guide for teams starting without dedicated software

👉 Influitive: Building Best-in-Class Customer Reference Programs — Useful benchmarks on win rates and sales-cycle length

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’re covering a simple way to decide whether to hire, hold, cut, or move a role.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading.