War-game a customer reference program before consent rules, quote paths, and advocacy asks harden into how every public reference gets made.
Reference programs fail when the playbook invents willingness the customer never showed, when asks dual-count the same account as available and as exhausted, when sales still promises logo rights in private Slack, and when marketing cannot show which references actually cleared under the published consent. A neat advocacy spreadsheet is not evidence.
Freeze one program
State the proposed consent levels and ask cadence, which segments and products it covers, who owns consent audit and quote refresh, what success looks like after two quarters of reference fulfillment rate and customer complaint rate, and the kill criteria if shadow asks or expired consents past a named threshold. Attach the consent registry, sample ask logs, quote inventory, and the measured path from consent to published reference. If marketing, CS, and sales disagree on whether the program buys pipeline or just deferred trust fights, reconcile before seating.
Name the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new, and the hold criteria if any ask tier still lacks a named owner or a verified consent path.
Hostile seats
- Reference customer. Fear that "one ask" still means three unannounced calls that quarter.
- CS lead. Health math that looks clean while the same three logos carry every deal.
- Sales. Talk tracks that invent logo rights the MSA never wrote.
- Legal. Quote language that still hosts retired brand guidelines.
- Skeptic. The claim that looks strongest and is least sourced.
Optional product marketing seat if case-study production binds the form. Same pack for every seat.
Private pass
Feed Pingpong the program draft and exhibits. First pass steelmans the consent ladder. Later passes attack from the seats above. Final pass turns surviving objections into clearer cadence, a published refresh SLA, or a hold. Delete invented "customers already love talking about us" claims and dual-counted fulfillment rates.
Force a day-after narrative: what happens if a large customer screenshots mismatched quote usage, if sales still teaches unwritten logo rights, or if marketing cannot list the open consent cohort. If those stories are stronger than your mitigation plan, fix the package before you publish it. Separate a customer reference program from a customer advisory board or a press release so each decision stays testable.
Ask every seat to mark which asks are optional in practice. Optional consent refreshes become skipped within a month if nobody names the owner and the time box. Related: pretend you are the largest customer, pretend you are the customer success lead, pretend you are the product marketing lead, and the war-game decisions hub. Process: how to run a Pingpong.