ExpandReference requestHuman review required

Reference and Advocacy Request

Ask a happy customer to be a reference without over-asking or spending relationship capital you will want at renewal.

A reference ask spends relationship capital, so ask for the smallest useful thing and make it easy to say no. The requests that land acknowledge what the customer already gave, respect their constraints, and never imply the partnership hangs on a yes.

The template

Copy it, swap the {{marked}} variables for your account, and run it.

prompt.txt

Help me ask a happy customer for advocacy without being presumptuous. Match
the size of the ask to the strength of the relationship, and make it easy to
say a small yes or a graceful no.

Contact and role: {{contact_name}}
The relationship (how strong, what they have already given): {{relationship_context}}
The specific win they got: {{win}}
What I would love, in priority order: {{ask_options}}
Their known constraints: {{constraint}}

Write a short message that:
- Opens by acknowledging their result and their effort, not our product.
- Offers a menu of options, smallest first, and lets them pick one or none.
- Respects their constraints without making them explain.
- Gives a clean, face-saving out.

Rules:
- Ask for the smallest useful thing first, not the biggest.
- Never imply the relationship or their pricing depends on a yes.
- Do not offer them "exposure" or "profile" as if the favor runs the other way.
- Keep it under 150 words. A wall of text reads as a heavy ask.

Variables

{{contact_name}}: Contact and rolee.g. Priya, VP Operations at Atlas Logistics
{{relationship_context}}: Relationship strength and historye.g. strong 18-month relationship; she already gave a quote for our website
{{win}}: The specific result they gote.g. cut new-hire onboarding time 40% in two quarters
{{ask_options}}: What you would love, in priority ordere.g. a 20-minute reference call for a prospect; or a written quote; or a case study
{{constraint}}: Their known constraintse.g. their legal team does not allow public logos or press

Worked example

A CSM has a genuinely delighted champion who just hit a standout result. She wants to ask for advocacy, but she also wants this relationship intact at renewal in four months, so she cannot afford to make the ask feel like a withdrawal from the account.

filled-prompt.txt

Contact and role: Priya, VP Operations at Atlas Logistics
The relationship (how strong, what they have already given): strong 18-month relationship; she already gave a quote for our website
The specific win they got: cut new-hire onboarding time 40% in two quarters
What I would love, in priority order: a 20-minute reference call for a prospect; or a written quote; or a case study
Their known constraints: their legal team does not allow public logos or press

Good output vs bad output

GOODLeads with their result and their effort, offers a menu smallest-first, honors the known legal constraint without making them raise it, and makes a no the easiest possible answer to give.

Subject: A quick ask (and a real thank-you)

Hi Priya,

Watching your team cut onboarding time 40% in two quarters has been one of the
highlights of my year, and that was your work, not our software.

If you are open to it, I have a prospect in logistics wrestling with the exact
onboarding problem you solved. Would a short reference call be OK? If a live
call is too much right now, a couple of sentences I could share, or nothing at
all, are all completely fine. I know public logos are off the table on your
side, so anything here would stay anonymized to "a national logistics firm."

No pressure either way. Either answer keeps us exactly where we are.

BADLooks fine at a glance. Here is why it fails.

Subject: Partner with us on marketing!

Hi Priya,

Since you have had such amazing success with us, we would love for you to be a
featured customer! We are thinking a video case study, a press release, and a
keynote slot at our user conference. This is a fantastic opportunity to raise
your profile and position Atlas as an industry leader.

Let me know which of these works, our marketing team is ready to go. Given
everything we have delivered for you, I know you will be excited to partner on
this!

Wrong registerFrames the vendor's marketing needs as a favor to the customer ("raise your profile"), when a reference is the customer doing the vendor a favor, not the reverse.
Missing contextPitches a press release and a public keynote to a contact whose legal team bans public logos and press; it ignores the one constraint that was stated.
Over-promising"Position Atlas as an industry leader" promises an outcome the vendor cannot control and the contact never asked for.
No next stepThree big public asks at once, with "given everything we have delivered" implying a debt, leaves no easy small yes and no graceful way to decline.

Guardrails

When NOT to use this

Do not ask right after an escalation, an outage, or a rough renewal; the timing reads as tone-deaf and can undo the repair.
Do not ask a contact with no authority to speak for their company publicly; you put them in a spot with their own legal or comms team.

Responsible use

Respect their company's PR and legal limits. If they say no or go quiet, take it gracefully and do not re-ask for months.
Never trade a reference for a discount or a roadmap promise. The moment advocacy has a price, it stops being credible for either of you.

A human must review the output before it reaches the customer.

Model + settings

Model: Claude Sonnet is plenty; the value is calibration and warmth, not horsepower.
Temperature: 0.6 (a bit higher, you want genuine warmth, not a form letter)
Settings: Give it the specific result and the relationship history, or it defaults to generic flattery any customer can smell.
Tell it the customer's constraints up front so it does not ask for something they legally cannot give.

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