Senior Manager, Global Customer References

Company Description

It all started in sunny San Diego, California in 2004 when a visionary engineer, Fred Luddy, saw the potential to transform how we work. Fast forward to today — ServiceNow stands as a global market leader, bringing innovative AI-enhanced technology to over 8,100 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 500®. Our intelligent cloud-based platform seamlessly connects people, systems, and processes to empower organizations to find smarter, faster, and better ways to work. But this is just the beginning of our journey. Join us as we pursue our purpose to make the world work better for everyone.

Job Description

Role:

As the Global References Manager on the Customer Advocacy / Customer Marketing team, you will be the central coordinator of customer references across all regions. You’ll work closely with sales, product marketing, and regional Customer Marketing teams to identify, nurture, and showcase our most impactful customer stories. By building and maintaining a diverse, high-quality reference pool, you’ll ensure sales teams worldwide have compelling, real-world evidence to share with prospects. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Global Reference Strategy: Design and implement a company-wide references program, ensuring alignment with regional sales priorities and business goals. 

• Customer Identification & Recruitment: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to spot high-potential customers and convert them into reference advocates. 

• Reference Management: Coordinate one-to-one and group reference activities, including organizing calls, panels, and events to accelerate sales cycles. 

• Asset Amplification: Work with marketing and sales enablement teams to integrate customer references and success stories into global campaigns, collateral, and events. 

• Ongoing Customer Engagement: Build and maintain long-term relationships with reference customers, ensuring they see the value of continued advocacy. 

Detailed Responsibilities: 

Global Reference Pool Development 

• Recruit & Onboard: Expand and diversify the global reference pool by identifying new customer champions. 

• Regional Alignment: Work with sales leaders, partner marketing, and product marketing to target references that match regional sales objectives. 

• Reference Lifecycle: Periodically refresh or retire references to ensure relevance and maintain high engagement.

Reference Call Coordination 

• One-to-One Calls: Match the right reference customers with prospects, handle scheduling/logistics, and provide clear talking points. 

• Group Sessions & Panels: Organize and moderate multi-customer reference calls or webinar panels, ensuring discussions showcase a range of success stories. 

• Feedback & Insights: Gather feedback from reference calls to continually improve the process and share insights with internal teams. 

Amplification of Customer References 

• Global Campaign Integration: Partner with regional advocacy managers, field marketing, and sales enablement to feature reference stories in global programs, events, and demand-gen campaigns. 

• Asset Management: Ensure reference assets (videos, slides, written success stories) are easily accessible and effectively utilized across all geographies. 

• Performance Tracking: Measure the impact of reference assets on pipeline acceleration, deal size, and overall brand perception. 

Ongoing Relationship Management 

• Advocate Well-Being: Maintain positive relationships with reference customers by recognizing their contributions and providing exclusive benefits (e.g., early product access, executive briefings). 

• Customer Burnout Prevention: Monitor participation levels and schedule advocacy activities strategically to avoid overburdening the same references. 

• Growth & Retention: Identify additional opportunities for references to evolve their advocacy, such as speaking engagements or advisory board participation. 

Skills and Capabilities: 

• Reference Program Expertise: Proven experience managing or contributing to a large-scale references or advocacy program. 

• Collaboration: Skilled at working across sales, product marketing, and regional advocacy teams, fostering alignment and open communication. 

• Project Management: Adept at juggling multiple requests and timelines, ensuring reference activities are executed promptly and effectively. 

• Storytelling & Communication: Ability to tr