Cashing In on the Customer Success Story By Christine Taylor

Next to white papers, customer success stories ? or case studies ? are the most popular tool in the technical marketer's toolkit. That's because it's one of the most powerful tools available to your sales force.

Why are they so popular? Because they are compelling to prospective customers. References and testimonials are great things to have but customer success stories flesh out those testimonials and give them teeth. And if you match the case study customer's industry to the prospects, it's clear to prospects that your company knows how to successfully operate in a given market.

The ubiquitous case study can range from a 3-paragraph online snippet to a full-blown magazine article. The most popular case study in the marketing/PR arsenal is the 600-1200 word customer success story following this pattern: company overview and challenge, project details, and positive results. Elements include:

Customer Overview and Challenge: Start with a 2-3 paragraph overview of the customer's company. This should be very positivesince you're going to detail a problem the customer was having, the last thing you want to do is make them sound like a jerk. So compliment them. Feel free to adapt the overview from their own Website text, where they're already placing themselves in the best possible light.

Then move on to the business challenge. Don't make the customer sound stupid or incompetent. The challenge should always be centered on something good that is happening to them ?Cfast growth, industry prominence, strategic IT changeswhatever. Their challenge should be applicable to your readers' own business issues.

Project Details: Everyone knows that no project goes perfectly, but save the debriefing for the longer-form trade journal article. These short customer success stories should report on the successful project by briefly discussing specific products and benefits.

Don't go all over the map. If the project is fairly narrow or specific, you won't have any trouble sticking with the main point or product. In the case of very large and complex installation, concentrate on the main product or application. For example, Microsoft Great Plains has more modules than you can shake a stick at. Concentrate on the ones that had the most positive impact on your customer.

Business Benefits: Always quantify improvement if you can. Numbers can be dollar savings, percentages, or other measures of saved staff time, more efficient workflows, better customer service, etc. Be sure that the benefits you list are the benefits the customer perceiveshard costs are most easily quantified, but soft costs may have the higher perceived benefit to a customer. Ideally you will have both.

Putting the Customer Success Story to Work -- How can you use your completed stories? Some ideas:

1. Post them on your website. The more you have up, and the more frequently you post new ones, the more often spiders will find you and you'll move up in the search engine rankings.

2. Include them in sales kits. If you have a lot of case studies put them in a separate notebook, which can be very impressive physical proof for a prospect.

3. Make them searchable. Encourage prospects to go online and search your case studies. Use parameters like vertical market, products, or customer challenges.

4. Use them as marketing support for resellers and integrators. The easier your product is to sell, the more resellers and integrators will push your product when they talk to their own customers.

The More the Merrier How many customer success stories should you have on hand? The answer is the more the better. A large companies may have hundreds of them available on their website and in sales and marketing kits, and even many smaller companies commonly have 25 or more. Why? Because they work. Start capturing those customer success stories today, and watch those sales rise.