They say three times is a charm. They (whoever "they" are) also say bad things happen in threes. Well I've seen something happen three times over the past four months so I thought it deserved the attention of reference professionals. What I've seen is this: reference people lost in the blind spots. Here's an example. Back in December, senior marketing at a company we work with asked me to sit in for a sales reference call brokered by the reference organization. A little background: this invitation was extended after an audit with sales during which we understood why the program wasn't getting support - because buried beneath laments of "we need more financial services references" and "more ROI case studies" were comments from some reps who'd been actively involved with reference customers. They said, in essence, that after a few reference calls they found their prospects actually wanted them to do more "selling" on services and on the quality of delivery. Why? Because the calls were raising doubts with prospects, or because the references served up by marketing were not appropriate for the prospects' stages in the opportunities. Back to the example... the reference customer participating in the call I sat in on had been well-qualified against the prospect - the callers matched in industry, business challenge and organizational role. Sounds great, right? The call moved smoothly along for the first two-three questions - the obligatory basics about the product and implementation were asked and answered - until the prospect started to drill the customer on the company's commitment to service level agreements. The customer had experienced some issues in that area and had to honestly tell the prospect about it. Good thing for the company that they had worked those issues out. But that doesn't always happen - I've seen deals red-line during reference calls because of such blind spots. Identifying the Blind Spots in Your Reference Calls What exactly are blind spots? Blind spots are the areas a prospect asks about in the late stages of a deal. After all, the most substantial costs associated with technology sometimes isn't the products; it's the services that spiral out of control or the technical support that doesn't happen fast enough or with enough vigor. These are the questions a late-stage prospect often wants answered. When a prospect is late-stage, the basics have already been asked and answered. Now the prospect wants to know about the service. About fair billing. About delivery. About how responsive and engaged the company is. The prospect wants to know what interacting with the vendor will be like. And questions of this nature aren't typically on a reference manager's map. They're blind spots. A prospect speaks with customers to figure out if hidden blind spots exist. And blind spots can cause real trouble because they're not uncovered by questions typically asked during success study or case study interviews. The prospect is searching for them; the reference manager usually doesn't know about them. In my next posting I'll address how reference managers can remove blind spots. Promise Phelon, Partner promise.phelon@phelongroup.com