Bill Lee's Customer Reference Forum Announces 2013 Summit on Customer Engagement

News provided by

Oct 24, 2012, 08:35 ET

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Bill Lee's Customer Reference Forum announced the opening of early registration for its 2013 Summit on Customer Engagement on March 5-6 in Redwood City, CA. Participants who register now can ensure a spot and receive a limited-time $200 discount.

"With market power increasingly in the hands of customers, customer advocacy is now critical to business growth," says Bill Lee, President of Customer Reference Forum and author of The Hidden Wealth of Customers (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). "The Summit on Customer Engagement provides critical knowledge—from concept and strategy to implementation—to ensure that customer references and advocates achieve their considerable potential."

"At the heart of great customer advocacy is a robust customer reference program," says Lee. "Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was right: customer references are a powerful marketing weapon—but most companies execute them poorly. We've been showing the world's top firms for years how to properly build and manage reference programs."

Keynotes include some of the world's most respected executives and thought leaders:

The Power of Customer Engagement and Advocacy—Up to the C-Suite
By Chuck Ball, Senior Vice President of Health Systems, AmerisourceBergen, and
By Sean Geehan, author, The B2B Executive Playbook

Winning The Marketing Revolution
By Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer, Aprimo

From Chasing References To Harvesting Advocates
By Katharyn White, Vice President, Marketing, IBM Global Services

"Attendees will learn how to communicate the value of customer reference and advocacy programs to their senior management," says Lee. "If you don't get the strategic perspective of the C-suite—if you just learn about customer reference program tools and implementation—you'll get lost in the details and fall behind in today's world."

Summit sponsors include well-established, highly knowledgeable firms in the advocacy space, such as Big Sky Communications, Boulder Logic, inEvidence, Influitive, Mainstay Salire, MRM Consulting, Point of Reference, TechValidate and the Summit's newest sponsor, Zuberance.

About Bill Lee
Lee is the foremost authority in the world on customer advocacy and engagement. Forbes Online columnist Dorie Clark called his book, The Hidden Wealth of Customers (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012) "one of the most insightful business books I've read this year." When it comes to the dramatic changes in marketing and business growth strategies today, PRWeek has called Lee "one of the loudest, strongest and most respected authors."

Bill writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Blog Network. His article, Marketing is Dead which makes a compelling case that customer advocacy and community marketing will replace traditional marketing—was one of the most widely read and commented on in the history of the network, receiving nearly 600 comments and more than 4,000 recommendations on HBR's Facebook page.

He is frequently sought out and quoted by major media outlets, such as Fast Company, Forbes Online, CRM Magazine, Rain Today, 1to1 Marketing, and others.

He runs the world's best established and most respected educational conferences on customer references and advocacy. Nine years ago, he began building the foundational educational conferences for customer references and advocacy, including Customer Reference Forum, the Summit on Customer Communities, the CAB (Customer Advisory Board) Exchange Summit, and now the Summit on Customer Engagement. This year his firm, Customer Reference Forum, has launched a teleconference series, The Master Class Series on Customer Reference Programs.

About Customer Reference Forum (CRF)
Customer Reference Forum produces the oldest and most respected conference for customer reference and advocacy professionals across the globe.

Founded in 2005.
Includes more than 2,000 customer reference, advocacy and engagement professionals on five continents who participate in our events, research and educational services.
Advisory Board includes many of the top customer advocacy practitioners in the world. Our Hall of Fame recognizes the best of the best.
CRF partners with some of the world's top research organizations, such as Forrester Research, to bring important research to the customer reference community.

About the Summit on Customer Engagement (our major conference)

Well–vetted presenters
Bill hand select top practitioners and experts to present, with a careful vetting process, to make sure attendees get the best information and experiences available.

Critical information from important related areas of marketing and sales.
We always provide perspectives from experts in critical, related areas of marketing and sales—such as social media, advisory boards and councils, demand generation, and other topics.
"Customer reference programs are in a great position to take a leadership role in the new marketing," says Lee. "But if reference managers just learn about reference programs in isolation, they'll soon run the risk of being irrelevant."