Sales reps are hungry for content to help them win deals. But we all know the truth. The decks, PDFs, and beautiful Picasso-esque designs marketing teams give them usually fall flat.

So, what do we do?

Create more content and promote your existing content.

What happens then?

That content falls flat like bad soda. Or flatter.

The cycle then repeats itself. Content marketing teams would not approve. Sales efficiency drops.

What if your marketing team didn’t create the most persuasive sales content at all, but by your customers? They’re your target audience after all.

In this article, we’ll explore how B2B marketing and sales and marketing teams can collaborate to bring customer references into the spotlight. A quick guide to sales enablement content strategy and equipping sales teams with the best, perhaps. From video testimonials to real-world quotes that address buyer objections, these stories build instant trust and help reps close with confidence.

This one’s for your entire GTM organization. Anyone who wants to improve sales outcomes. Sales professionals and sales enablement professionals alike.

How can they fit into your sales strategy to move the needle towards revenue growth? Let’s break it down.

What Is Sales Enablement (and Sales Enablement Content)?

Sales enablement provides sales teams the tools, content, and training they need to engage with prospects and close deals. Who owns sales enablement or the sales enablement process? Well, that depends on your organization.

Sometimes, it falls on marketing, specifically product marketing. Sometimes, it’s even part of content strategy. Sometimes, a team within the sales organization sorts it out. Again, sales enablement responsibilities shift from team to team and organization to organization.

Sales enablement content (or sales assets) isn’t just marketing content. It includes anything that supports buyers in decision-making and moves deals forward in the sales process. You’re familiar with the usual suspects.

Your existing content may already include the usual types of sales enablement content: messaging frameworks, objection-handling guides, sales presentations, product one-pagers, email templates, sales scripts, and case studies.

These sales enablement assets can be internal sales enablement content or external sales enablement content. These could also be housed in sales enablement tools.

The best sales enablement professionals go beyond simply making content available. Great sales enablement content has a deep understanding of the buyer’s journey and makes sure sales reps are trained on how to use each piece at the right time. Empower sales teams to win.

If you couple that with understanding how good your sales enablement material is, there’s a huge advantage here. In fact, HubSpot found that 65% of sales leaders who outperformed their goals had a dedicated person or team focused on sales enablement.

What Is Reference Selling?

Reference selling is the strategic use of customers and their stories during the sales process. The goal is simple: Experience matters. It’s different from just sending over a case study or trying to highlight the value of this feature or that feature. Reference selling is intentional and targeted.

These people have traveled along the same path as your prospects. Their own experiences as ex-potential customers, good and bad, can engage prospects and help your prospects make decisions with confidence. These customer success stories matter.

Bottom line? Great experience = great sales content.

Here’s another way to think about it.

What are all of the touchpoints your customers have with your company?

They interact with technical experts, customer success, and support. Through the events you host, either virtually or in person, they experience a sense of community and belonging.

There are also many opportunities to share knowledge, showcase their expertise, network, and improve as professionals. Why not show this off? (Tip: Create sales enablement content with this in mind)

Reference selling works because prospective customers trust peers more than vendors (no offence!). In a world littered with wild marketing claims and not-so-honest salespeople, authentic customer voices cut through the noise. Simply put, the peer-to-peer experience is critical to building trust and creating effective sales enablement content.

There’s incredible proof that reference selling works, too. G2 and Heinz Marketing found that 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted customer review. From this, we can deduce that: trusted customer review > your company’s sales scripts.

Customer Enablement vs. Sales Enablement

Let’s take a moment to cover one important point. While you work tirelessly to ensure your sales enablement content is A+ quality, don’t sleep on making the same effort for your customer references—the entire sales cycle matters, even after the sale is done. You can’t just engage prospects; we must look at the customer journey.

Sales enablement helps reps sell, usually to potential customers. Customer enablement helps customers succeed.

When you enable customers to share their success, you’re also setting them up to showcase their expertise, knowledge, and even act as mentors to peers. Here are a few practical examples of what customer enablement looks like.

• Customer onboarding programs that provide in-depth product education, guided tutorials, and milestone-based recognition.

• Advocacy training sessions to help customers articulate their results compellingly and confidently. These can be used for external or internal audiences.

• Reference interview prep guides that walk customers through how their story will be used, with specific sections to capture business outcomes.

• Customer communities or Customer Advisory Boards are places where users can network, share tips, discuss product roadmaps, and stay informed about trends in their industry or job role.

When customers are supported and understand the value they’ve received, they’re more likely to participate in advocacy efforts like reference calls, video testimonials, event panels, and other activities.

The beauty is that their enablement becomes part of your enablement. A customer who can clearly articulate how you helped them solve a real problem is one of the most persuasive assets you can provide to your sales team. Customer support teams can help with this.

So, how do you turn those stories into content your sales team (and other customer-facing teams) can use? Let’s dig into the most effective ways to use customer references in your enablement toolkit.

6 Ways to Include References in Sales Enablement Content

Now comes the fun part. Here’s where marketing and sales enablement teams need to get creative. There’s an important step to take before you create snazzy new content or hit the refresh button on existing material.

You need to know your buyer personas and map out your buyer’s journey based on what you know about your sales process. Look for ways to integrate customer stories into every stage of the sales conversation, and include product knowledge, too.

Once you’ve done that, let the fun begin. Below are six of our favorite, most practical ways to bring your customer references to life across the buying process. These are also great sales enablement content examples:

1. Video testimonials: Authentic, concise videos build an emotional connection. Use them in email outreach, pitch decks, or live sales calls.
2. Sales email sequences: In outbound campaigns, include a relevant quote or link to a customer story to boost open and reply rates. Customer reference management software can organize references by industry, company size, or use case so reps can tailor proof to their prospects.
3. Case studies: Provide depth and data. Include industry, use case, challenge, solution, and measurable results to show ROI.  Read more: 25 Case Study Questions to Ask Your Best Customers
4. Quotes: A single quote, or a collection of quotes, can be the tipping point in a presentation or RFP. Feature quotes from people in similar roles to those you often see during the sales process. With Upland RO Innovation, sales reps can access approved quotes and use them whenever needed. Relevant content is key to success.
5. Objection-handling guides: Match a common buyer objection with a customer quote or story that directly counters it. For example, if a prospect is worried about onboarding end users quickly, share a link with a customer who had the same concerns and could overcome them with the help of your professional services, customer success teams and the quality of your training material.
6. Competitive battle cards: Equip reps with customer references that show success after switching from a competitor.

These tactics and others like them are only effective when they’re easy for sales to access and use. That’s why the next step is crucial: Embed customer references into your sales process so reps use them every day, improving sales productivity.

Embedding References into Your Sales Playbook

To get the most value from customer references, they must become a non-negotiable part of your sales playbook. That means embedding reference usage into every stage of the sales process, from discovery to proposal to closing.

This isn’t just a nice-to-have, either. It’s a must-have for success. The vast majority (76%) of leaders note that improvements in sales performance are related to their investments in sales enablement.

Here’s how sales enablement teams can make this happen:

1. Build a reference strategy by sales stage

Identify what kind of reference content is most effective at each stage. For example, peer video testimonials should be used early in the cycle to spark interest, and detailed case studies should be used in the middle to justify investment.

2. Create reference bundles

Package a video, case study, and quote into a single asset tailored to a specific persona or industry. This makes it easy for sales reps to grab and go. Better yet, equip sales reps with the ability to create micro-sites or landing pages with personalized content for specific contacts and accounts. Now, that’s solid sales content.

3. Standardize reference usage in sales training

Teach reps how to bring references into conversations naturally. Role-play when to introduce them (e.g., “Let me tell you about another healthcare CIO we worked with…”) and how to follow up with supporting content. This will come in handy to create even more sales enablement materials.

4. Include references in proposal templates

Automatically insert relevant reference content into proposals and business cases. Train sales reps to do this. This reinforces value at a critical decision point.

5. Tag and track content for reporting

Last, but not least, sales enablement teams can see which content performs best by industry, product, persona, or type. You can gather all this in a sales enablement report.

When references are treated as optional, they are often underused. Ultimately, sales teams perform best from a consistent, proven framework.

By embedding customer references into a framework, from initial discovery to proposal and negotiation, you create a repeatable system that boosts confidence and results. But they become the ultimate differentiator when they’re built into how a deal is worked.

Once this structure is in place, measuring its performance and optimizing accordingly is essential.

How to Measure the Impact

You’ve operationalized your reference strategy. Now, let’s explore how you can assess the impact of your sales enablement content to see how it’s working.

Measuring how customer references perform within your sales enablement strategy is essential. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to measure anything and everything.

Don’t.

Remember Einstein’s quote, “Not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured.”

You’ll want to start with these three key metrics.

1. Content usage rates: What’s the top-performing sales enablement content? Which assets are used the most?

2. Speed to close: Do deals close faster when a reference is involved? Do references for specific industries lead to shorter sales cycles?

3. Reference influence on revenue: How many deals include a customer reference? What’s the win rate with and without a reference?

RO Innovation gives you visibility into how customer references are used across your sales process. You can easily see which deals involved reference calls or content, and which have the most significant impact on closed revenue.

If you’re in the content world, there’s a dashboard that highlights your top-performing sales enablement content, complete with usage metrics to show what’s getting traction in the field.

Measuring results allows you to improve, refresh the references mentioned in your sales enablement content, and fine-tune your playbook over time.

 

Let’s wrap up with a few best practices to help you keep your reference program strong and scalable.

Read more: 21 Best Ways to Get Customer References in 2025

Best Reference Practices for Sales Enablement Success

You’ve built your reference library, trained your sales team, and embedded references into the sales process.

So, what now?

This is where your sales enablement strategy and consistency come in. Similar to a sustainable content strategy, consider these best practices to maintain long-term success with your reference program.

Keep your content authentic: Don’t over-edit what you hear or get from your customers. Use real quotes from real customers.

Make sales enablement content easy to find: Store reference content in your customer reference management system or sales enablement platform with clear tags and categories.

Regularly train sales reps: Show your team how and when to use different reference types. This training can be part of new staff onboarding, ongoing skills training, and development.

Keep it fresh: Regularly refresh your reference library to reflect new industries, product features, or market segments. We recommend an annual audit of your highest performing assets (sooner if necessary).

Use internal champions: Identify sales reps who use reference content well and ask them to share tips with the broader team during sales kick-off meetings, QBRs, or other open forums.

Improve Sales Effectiveness with RO Innovation

Customer references are one of the most powerful sales enablement content you can create. In particular, references provide credibility, relevance, and proof — all in a format today’s buyers trust. It should be a part of your content strategy. It also improves your sales efforts.

By integrating them strategically across the sales cycle and the buyer’s journey and embedding them into your standard playbook, sales and marketing teams can empower reps to close more deals, faster.

Not sure where to start?

Audit your current sales enablement library.

How many pieces include customer proof? If the answer is “not many,” it’s time to invest in your most persuasive asset: Your customers.

Need help to get started? Let’s chat.