As a reminder, early registration ends on February 24. To register for the event, please click here or cut and paste the following URL into your browser:
http://www.customerreferenceforum2006.net/registra tion.htm

WHAT'S DOING IN SAN FRANCISCO:
PROJECT KNOWELDGE EXCHANGE

This will be an entirely new initiative at Customer Reference Forum that I'm really excited about. Participants at our last event in Boston said it loud and clear in their feedback last October: we want to spend more time collaborating with each other, picking each others brains and brainstorming to develop best-practice approaches to the critical issues we face. In San Francisco, we're going to be doing just that.

I'm working with some very skilled reference professionals who'll be attending in San Francisco, along with a well respected event planner, Allison Saget. Here's her book.

We're going to put together "Birds of a Feather" sessions, in which we'll break up into relatively small working groups designed to give a good mix of experience and perspectives. They'll address the top issues of interest that participants will identify in a pre-event survey. (If you plan to be there, please be on the lookout for this!) Then everyone will reassemble and we'll have each of the small groups report their findings.

No single reference professional has all the answers to the tough questions you face. No single vendor or consultant has all the answers. But it's become clear to me that collectively, we can come pretty close! In San Francisco, we're working with top advisors to do just that - to tap the energy, brains and experience of this group of professionals as a whole. I hope you can be a part of it.

UPDATE ON PRESENTERS AND PANELS

In addition to the Birds of a Feather sessions, as well as internationally known Net Promoter guru Fred Reichheld as keynote speaker, we're going to have a great lineup of presenters and panel leaders in San Francisco.

Additional panels and presentations will include:

- "Taking Charge of Your Reference Program: How to Create and Implement Your Vision," a panel led by Coleen Kaiser, Vice President, Customer Value and Reference Services at SAP AG. For those who attended our last event in Boston, Coleen has done a remarkable job of taking over and transforming SAP's global reference program. Now she'll be leading a panel of other top reference leaders that will give us a variety of valuable perspectives on how to take charge of your program. If you're struggling with:

- There's so much to do - where do I start? Where do I focus?"
- How can I gain the attention and support of senior executives?
- How do I know if my program is succeeding? How can I convince other key constituents, such as sales, marketing, public relations and others.
- What are the things I can STOP doing?

then this panel is for you.

- "Does Size Matter: Small Teams can Yield Big Results," by Barbara Krasner, Director of Client Reference Programs at Lucent. Barb runs Lucent's ambitious reference program with just one other full time support staff, and must deal with a customer references who are quite complex in terms of influences who get involved in the decision making process. Yet she runs a program that's helped close more than $400 million in new business, influence more than $2 billion in new business, garner significant C-Level attention and support, and has one a Marketing Excellence Award from ITSMA. She'll show us how she gets the most out of scarce resources.

- "How to Make References a Priority for Every Department," by Kathryn Perkins, Senior Manager, Customer Marketing, SumTotal Systems. If you're tired of having to plead, bug, wheedle and meddle to get the references you need, you'll want to hear this. Kathryn will show how to make references a priority for the key players in your organization whose cooperation you need, whether it's to build your reference pipeline, keep existing references happy or gain approvals to get their message out to prospects and the media.

For more information on the upcoming Customer Reference Forum, and to register, please click here or cut and paste the following URL into your browser:
http://www.customerreferenceforum2006.net