It takes a big effort to establish yourself as a thought leader with the articles, insights and ideas that show your targets how smart you are, and it works. But how can you easily bring prospects from knowing you’re smart…to knowing you’re good. Telling them you’re good is silly, everyone says that…so show them.
Nothing demonstrates your credibility like a track record of getting deals done. Married with great thought leadership content that demonstrates your expertise and intelligence, success stories are the ultimate way to transition prospects into your sales funnel…without the client feeling like they are being sold.
The 3 pillars success story content
- Case Studies are the Holy Grail of marketing content. Print, video and audio there is nothing more powerful than seeing the story of a customer profiled in depth to help the prospect understand first-hand how you deliver the goods.
- Tombstones. Absolutely terrific way of showing volume of deal activity and pretty easy to do and execute.
- Testimonials are short quotes, can be as short as a sentence or two or as long as a stand-alone video, that can be interspersed throughout various marketing and sales content. Really great way to punch up the efficacy of your more self-promotional content.
Ideas to make success stories easy to execute
- Put client consent in the closing docs or make it part of the closing process. Get their consent to use their logo, deal information, etc, and they will have final approval before any publication. The new client is happy (hopefully) to be doing your deal, now is the best time to ask for the permission to tell the story.
- Follow the C-P-S rule: Customer – Problem –Solution. Anywhere from a few sentences to a few paragraphs on a description of the customer’s business, the problem the customer was trying to solve and the compelling event that made them seek solutions and then finally a detail of the value you brought to the table that made you the obvious choice. A very simple, easy to use and wildly effective format…no charge.
- For lenders: Leverage the credit write up. Most of the content for the CPS rule is in the credit write up. Add in a few testimonials from the customer or your deal team and you make the process even easier.
- If all else fails – genericize! Instead of saying “ACME Plastics” you’d say “Midwest mid-sized injection molder”. Listen, the usage of the client name, logo and details of a particular customer are incredibly powerful, but in the event where client consent is elusive, the sales team is afraid to ask or doesn’t have the time to participate (Grrrrrrrrrr), getting the story out there without the company name still works in building that critical track record with prospects. Some consistent success story effort is better than none.
As you read about building great marketing content to support your sales team, keep a few of these things in mind. Success story content is a critical component of a great marketing effort and sales enablement approach in your business. If you ever want to take stab at building this for yourself or just to talk about it, give us a holler.