In B2B

sales Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred ...

and

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

, a reference customer is a customer (especially, but not always, a high profile one) who agrees to publicly endorse a vendor's product, receiving in exchange various benefits such as improved support, influence over the product's future direction, access to the vendor's senior leadership team, or discounts. A reference customer program (or customer reference program) represents a formalised business process involving the identification of potential reference accounts, internal processes of validating their appropriateness as reference customers, approaching the customer with the offer to join the program and selling them on its benefits, seeking the customer's consent to join and obtaining legal permissions to use their name and logo in marketing collateral, organising opportunities to leverage the reference customer base throughout the sales process (such as by having them join sales calls), and ensuring the reference customers are continuing to experience the arrangement as mutually beneficial. Commonly, the ownership and overall management of a reference customer program belongs to

product management Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ...

References

{{Business-term-stub Business-to-business Marketing Sales Product management