hardScenarioBehaviouralMidSeniorStaffLead
You are on a reference call and your existing customer starts telling the prospect the implementation was painful. What do you do, in the call and afterwards?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Enterprise Captive, Product Startup
Answer
Short answer
Let them finish, because interrupting a reference confirms the worst reading of it.Then use the call to establish what specifically went wrong, and treat the existing customer's unhappiness as the problem to fix rather than as a sales incident to contain.
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Likely follow-ups
- The prospect asks you directly, in the call, whether that is typical. What do you say?
- How do you prepare a reference call without coaching the customer into sounding scripted?
- The complaint is accurate and nothing has changed. What do you tell the prospect?
- Your account team wants to pull the reference from the programme. Do you agree?
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