stories that sell 1 robert middleton interviews casey hibbardactionplan.com/pdf/hibbard_09.pdf ·...

STORIES THAT SELL 1 Robert Middleton Interviews Casey Hibbard

Copyright ©2009 Robert Middleton, Action Plan Marketing - www.actionplan.com

Robert: Hello, everyone. This is Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing and the Action Plan Marketing Club. Today, I’m interviewing author Casey Hibbard.

Casey is the founder and president of Compelling Cases, Inc., and she’s helped dozens of companies create more than 450 customer stories over the past decade. She has produced and managed success stories for companies such as Macrovision, Jobfox, USA.NET, IHS and Vocus.

Casey is featured in numerous books, articles and teleclasses. She consults with organizations one on one and conducts online customer story classes. Casey is the author of Stories That Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers Into Your Most Powerful Sales and Marketing Asset.

Welcome to the call, Casey. It’s really exciting to talk to you about stories and case studies. They are so important.

Casey: Absolutely. Thanks so much for this opportunity, Robert. I look forward to talking about stories today.

Robert: We’re going to be talking about how we can use stories such as case studies, and I’m sure we’ll be going into other formats, in our marketing to increase the chances of clients working with us. We’re really going to get to the heart of why stories are so important. Why don’t I make that the first question? Why are customer stories effective in your marketing?

Casey: That’s a really good question. I’ll start out by saying that customer stories help you create an element of trust in a relationship. If people do business with people they know and trust, then they need to have that trust level to be able to work with you.



One of the things that a story does is show that you’ve successfully worked with another company, hopefully just like the prospective client that you’re trying to work with. They see that example, the anecdote, and hopefully see themselves in that story, thereby gaining trust in working with you.

Robert: I often say that a case study or story can be the central part of a website. We’ll perhaps talk about how to use them on websites later. It’s true that people want to see what you’ve done and who you’ve worked with, and not just, “We worked with XYZ Company,” but what you did with them and the kind of results you achieved, right?

Casey: Absolutely. Specifics are very powerful. When you go to a lot of websites, there’s a lot of sweeping statements and promises about what you’re going to provide for customers and the benefits of that, but I think a lot of people want to see what’s behind that.

What are you going to provide that’s going to get me to this end result? What are some of the details of that, and what exactly does it look like when you deliver this product or service?

A story allows you to do that. You’ve got the credibility aspect of featuring another happy customer. Then you’ve got the opportunity to provide some deep detail that educates the prospective customer.

Robert: We’re mostly talking to solopreneurs or independent professionals who are in the club. Do you find that many people are using stories or not nearly as much as there ought to be, in your opinion?



Casey: Robert, I definitely would say not nearly as much as they ought to be or could be using stories. When I was researching my book, I talked to a couple of independent professionals or consultants and got some feedback on how they were using their stories, but I had to search around for those people to talk to.

I was looking for people specifically who were independent consultants or professionals, and it was hard to find them that were really using stories.

It can be a competitive differentiator. If your competitors are not showing that proof, showing that evidence that they have happy customers and they’ve really delivered results for those happy customers, then it really makes a difference if you do go in with success stories on how you met the customer’s expectation and delivered results.

Robert: In my experience, when I go to a website and there are no stories at all, sometimes there’s no clarity about who they even work with, which is even worse. I don’t know who their clients are, so why would I be interested? There are varying degrees of effectiveness, which we’ll get into as we go.

We’ve done a lot of expert interviews and many of them are about certain marketing strategies. Some you can take or leave. Maybe you don’t want to do social media or this-or-that. Maybe you do want to do something else. But this is one that 100% of the people listening should really take advantage of.

Understand why stories are important and really work at integrating them into your business. There is really



nothing else quite like it. Nothing else can substitute for it.

Casey: Absolutely. I’ll just share with you an interesting finding that I came across a year or so ago about trusted sources of information. They were comparing, 10 years ago to now, the sources of information that consumers actually trust.

Friends, family and acquaintances has been number one. It’s always been number one and probably always will be.

Robert: It’s your basic word-of-mouth.

Casey: Exactly. A movie, a restaurant, the dentist or whatever, that’s the number one. What’s interesting is right now, strangers with experience is the second-most trusted source of information. So you see that in the Amazon feedback, the eBay feedback. It’s starting to be everywhere.

These strangers, even though they’re strangers, they have experience that’s valuable, and your prospective customers want to know about that.

Robert: That sure is influential to me because I shop a lot on Amazon. I read the reviews, good or bad, because I don’t want to waste my money and my time. I know they’re subjective and we filter that, but it makes all the difference.

Casey: Totally. Whatever you’re buying, it’s nice to be able to read what other customers have experienced.

Robert: What are other main competitive advantages solopreneurs can have by using stories in their business?



Casey: Good question.

Robert: We’ve covered a lot. I don’t know if there’s anything else.

Casey: I see what you mean. In terms of trust and education.

Robert: What other advantages are there of using stories in our business? I’m asking the question, and I can actually think of one answer. I’ve read people’s stories and then told other people about the story because it was so good. It creates a whole word-of-mouth in and of itself.

Casey: Definitely. There is definitely a word-of-mouth aspect of using stories. There’s also a memory advantage to using stories. It helps people remember information better if they’ve heard it in the context of a story. You experience that when you’re learning anything. If someone gives an example as part of a story, it really helps cement the information in your mind so you remember it.

Robert: It’s interesting. When I talk with clients about creating marketing materials, they say, “It’s hard to explain what I do.” They’re doing it from a conceptual point of view. I say, “Instead of that, just come at it from a story point of view. What was the situation the client was experiencing when you came, what are some of the things you did for them, and what are some of the results you produced?”

If you can’t explain it that simply, you’re really unclear on your services. Sometimes certain aspects of that story are unique, funny or interesting, or the results are very compelling. It just sticks in your brain. It’s not conceptual, so you can see, “I can get a result like that myself.” They’re very relatable.



Casey: Absolutely. There’s kind of a psychological aspect, as well, to read about someone that sounds like you solving a problem. So if you feature a person or company in your case study that sounds like the prospective customer, either the person or the company, then there’s a lot of power there. It’s very compelling to mirror the reader and the company featured.

Robert: There’s this whole concept of social proof. If other people like you have had this problem, it’s a social proof of “I’m not alone.” When you read a story about “They were going through this problem and that difficulty, and we were able to help them. This is how,” it’s better than anything. It’s more persuasive than anything we know. Again, you’ve got to have them.

Let’s get into more of the details of how to put stories together and that kind of thing. There is an importance to choosing and approaching a story strategically, and not just featuring any happy customer. What is meant by “approaching a story strategically”?

Casey: I often see organizations or individuals or small businesses just jump on a happy story as it comes up without really thinking clearly about whether that story is going to be an effective story for them from a sales and marketing perspective.

Just because it’s a happy customer doesn’t mean that that’s going to be a story you can really leverage effectively in a lot of different ways to reach out to your audience.

So really when I talk about approaching a story strategically, it’s about looking at “Who do I want to go after? Who is my audience?” from a type of company



perspective as well as a decision maker’s perspective. It is a mid-level manager at a manufacturing company.

Robert: That’s your ideal client, perhaps.

Casey: Right. So say if that’s your ideal client, and that’s just an example, you want to have a case study that features a mid-level marketing manager at a manufacturing company.

It’s important to basically map out who you’re going after, what vertical markets or types of companies you want to work with, and then try to get customer stories that fit into those slots basically, so that whoever you’re talking to, you have an effective story that you can pull out to share with them.

Robert: I know what you’re saying in that I keep thinking of the websites I’ve gone to. Sometimes you see a bunch of testimonials from independent professionals, and they’re all rather generic testimonials, like “It was great working with Tom. He was wonderful. He helped my business a lot.” That’s not very effective, and the target for the business seemed to be bigger companies.

There was a disconnect. He obviously had worked with some small companies, but he was targeting bigger ones. Those sorts of testimonials would actually undermine the credibility by having the wrong stories on the site.

Casey: Exactly. Because really, often, especially if you’re talking about your website, someone is researching you before they ever call you. If that’s your first impression, you want to make sure you’re reflecting who you want to work with



in the customer examples you put on there, whether those are testimonials or customer stories. That is important.

And like you said, if you are going to use testimonials, at least try to be specific in those. “Tom helped us reduce our overhead by 40% in three months.”

Robert: I often think that sometimes people will send in a story or testimonial and because the business owner, the independent professional, hasn’t really thought through this strategically, they say, “Okay. This is fine.”

We’re going to get into how you pull out good stories and get good stories written that produce that impact. Before we go on to that, let’s get clear about the difference between stories and testimonials. How would you say they’re different?

Casey: Good question. A testimonial is basically a sound bite. It is an endorsement. It’s a comment from a happy customer, but it doesn’t really give you the opportunity to go into more detail.

Testimonials are effective. You can include them in places where you don’t have a lot of space, perhaps in a letter, on a direct mail piece that you’re sending out, or in an email. Even in a testimonial, you can tell a little bit of the story.

Robert: That’s right. They can be specific or general. It can be, “Robert helped me double my business last year.” That’s a good one. “Robert is nice to work with” is nice, but it’s not very effective.

Casey: Exactly. It doesn’t really help somebody make the decision. When people are looking at where to spend their



money and who to work with, they need specifics. Those specifics really do make a difference in swaying people. Ultimately, a story allows you to go into more detail basically.

Robert: Let’s get into how you get these from clients. I’ve gone through various experiences with this. In the past, I got names from clients, interviewed them, and got good stories. I’ve also asked clients to get testimonials or stories, and they were afraid to ask for them so they didn’t. We go through all sorts of weird things with this.

How do you ask customers to give you a story? What’s the process that you recommend people use to make this happen and get the best story?

Casey: Okay. First of all, as we mentioned, it’s important to make sure that this is a good candidate, this is a story you want to tell, and this is the type of customer that you want more of.

So then, from there, I assume this customer’s happy. That’s an important criteria. If it’s a solopreneur or independent professional, then they’re going to have close contact with their customers and generally have a good read on the customer’s happiness level.

At that point, I would approach the customer with the idea and say, “We’ve had a great experience. It seems like we’ve had a good experience working together, and you’ve seen some results. I would love to feature you in a customer story.”

I think it’s important, when you approach a customer, that you don’t sound like it’s a favor that the customer’s



doing for you, like “Would you please be a reference? Would you please be a story?”

Robert: In other words, you don’t want to sound like you’re begging.

Casey: Right, right. Because ultimately, it’s usually something that’s going to benefit them as well. It’s going to paint them in a very positive light. They’re going to get exposure, most likely on the web, in front of other audiences. And it’s an opportunity for them to put out there that they’re doing good things. They’re doing best-practices things, improving things.

Always present it to a customer as if this is an opportunity. “Let’s work together.” The customer themselves can always use it for their purposes if they wanted to put it on their site or have that to show anyone else.

Robert: Say you went into a company and things were a mess, terrible and disastrous – it does happen – and you turn them around and help them, but they don’t want everybody to know what bad shape they were in. Can you say, “We can make this anonymous if you’d like?” or does that backfire on you?

Casey: Well, you have a couple of options there. What I typically try to do is write the story in a way that doesn’t air the dirty laundry, doesn’t show specifics of how bad the problems were before because we all know that there’s some big messes that people have to go in and help clean up, consultants and such.



So you could just say, “They were looking to improve this area. They wanted to reduce their overhead. They wanted to improve their employee retention.” Say it in terms that are a little more general.

Robert: You don’t want to say, “They were bleeding employees so fast that they thought they would go out of business.”

Casey: Exactly, exactly. So there are definitely levels of airing the problems before.

Robert: Ultimately, as we’ll talk about in a few minutes, the client gets to read the story as it’s been put together and gives approval on it.

Casey: Right. Exactly, exactly.

Robert: Some people out there are very sensitive and don’t want to do it. Have you found that that’s much more the exception than the rule?

Casey: It is common. It is more the exception than the rule, but it does happen more often than I would like, where the customer really just is not willing to be featured. And most often, it’s because it’s a larger company.

There are so many people out there, especially independent consultants, who can say, “I’m working with this Fortune 500 company, but they won’t let me talk about the fact that I’m working with them. I can’t mention them on my website.” It’s very frustrating.

Robert: The legal department is in charge. “What if you said this, and someone used you and weren’t happy? They would sue us,” which probably will never happen, but nevertheless.



Casey: Right, right. So for whatever reason, some of these companies have gatekeepers that are there to say no. So it can be tough. That said, an anonymous story can be valuable.

It doesn’t have the same credibility as a named story, but if you have some nice detail about the customer and the customer’s results, which often you can get even better detail if the customer’s not named because they’re willing to say they’re saving $30,000 a year or whatever. So I do recommend that companies or organizations try to do that at times.

Robert: I recently did a number of customer stories. I did 10 of them, and we’ll talk about that a bit later. I had someone interview them. I think 100% of the people I asked said yes.

Casey: Oh, good.

Robert: If you’re dealing with a small business, you have a good relationship with them, and you feel that you got a good result, you’re probably going to get good reception.

Casey: Absolutely.

Robert: You might call, send them an email, or do both, but essentially you say, “Would you like to do this?” Where do we go from there? There are two ways to do it, I guess. You can interview them, or you can hire someone to interview them. Obviously, you’ve been the hired gun, in many cases, who has done those interviews, right?

Casey: Right.



Robert: What’s the advantage of finding someone else versus doing it yourself?

Casey: Well, there are a couple of different aspects here. If you’re going to write it yourself, which some independent professionals or solopreneurs want to do – if they feel like they have good writing skills, they definitely might do that on their own – in which case they may want to do the interview on their own because it’s always beneficial for the person who will be doing to writing to be doing the interviewing as well.

Robert: What are the advantages of having someone else do the interview?

Casey: Having someone else do the interview gives you a chance to make it a little bit more objective. A customer story, you would argue, is not very objective because it’s intended to be a success story endorsing the product or the service or company.

However, I think people tend to open up maybe a little bit more with an outside person who is a little more objective. I’ve seen that be the case. For whatever reason, they feel a little more comfortable talking to someone who is outside the company.

Robert: That’s been my experience. I remember once I interviewed an executive recruiter. All the people I interviewed essentially said she walked on water and was a miracle worker. We came up with some very powerful stories for a brochure. I think if she had interviewed them, it would be hard to say it quite that way.



If you’re interviewing and say, “Tell me how good I was. Tell me how great it was,” you just don’t get quite the same level of endorsement. With a third person in there, it seems more powerful.

Casey: Exactly. It is a little bit strange and uncomfortable to be exactly like you said, to be asking how great of a job you did on a project or something. It can be a little uncomfortable.

Robert: Nevertheless, if you can’t afford it, and it’s often going to cost you a few hundred dollars per interview, you might have to do some yourself.

Have you ever heard of two professionals trading? “I’ll interview your clients, and you interview my clients.”

Casey: I have not heard of that, but I think it’s a great idea.

Robert: If you have a good relationship, it might fit for some people who are listening. I’ve heard of people who have done it quite effectively.

Casey: Right. Exactly. You maybe create the questions for the other one. I think that’s a great idea because then you really are going to get richer information.

Robert: You have to find a way to do these things. Sometimes the littlest things stop us. “I don’t want to interview myself, and I can’t afford anyone. End of story.” Don’t let it end there. Find a creative solution to this.

Casey: Right. Or even a journalism student at the local college. I mean, they need to work on their interview skills, and they probably have great interview skills already. It’s a cheaper option.



Robert: In some cases, you can even do an email interview. Some people will be happy to write the answers to the questions. Then you do some editing and feed it back to them.

Casey: Right. Definitely.

Robert: But it’s nice to talk to them, that’s for sure.

Casey: It’s nice to talk because then it can be a little more interactive and dynamic. If the customer says something interesting, it gives you the opportunity to go a little bit more in-depth with that.

Robert: Exactly. “Well, how did that work?” “What was that situation?”

Why don’t we get into the questions and the questioning techniques? What do you put together when you’re about to interview someone? What are some of the best kinds of questions? Tell us a little bit about the questioning techniques.

Casey: Okay. I tend to follow what I would call a challenge-solution-results format of interviewing as well as writing the story. So, my questions will start out getting some basic information about the customer: who they are, number of employees, locations, what they do, and customers they serve. And then from there, it really does get into this challenge and then solution and then results.

So you want to find out what the customer was doing before, and what the pains and problems were of that previous situation, and really get some detail on that. You may not, as we talked about before, be able or want to talk all about that in your story, but it’s helpful to really know



what they were facing and why they were motivated to make a change.

And then the second area, the solution, whether that’s a product, a service, company, whatever the actual solution was. Then I get into that, finding out timeframes. When was it brought in? How many people use it? Who is involved? If it’s a service, how was it delivered and over what timeframe?

I really ask a lot of questions, to be honest. I think I typically ask at least 30 questions.

Robert: But they’re all based on those three big questions: What was the situation or challenge? What was the solution, or what did they do? What were the results or outcomes?

Casey: Exactly. In terms of the results, getting specific in your questioning is really important. If you just say, “Well, tell me a little bit about some of the benefits of working with us,” that’s pretty broad for someone to answer.

But if you say, “Okay. Let’s look at this one process. You mentioned earlier that this process was taking way too long before, causing all kinds of delays and problems. So now, let’s look at that process. How much faster is that?”

If you break down all the areas of possible benefit and ask them in very specific questions, “What was this like before, and what is it like now? How did it change?” you’ll get much better information.

Robert: It’s great if you can get some measureable numbers, if possible. Do you ever send an email ahead of time with some of the questions or tell them, “I’m going to be asking



you about some changes and specific numbers and statistics”?

Casey: I definitely do, yeah. That’s a really good point, Robert. I will often send my interview questions ahead of time because if they have a chance to look at it, then their answers are going to be much better than if we just dive in in an interview and they don’t really know what to expect.

Some will actually take the time to look at it, and some will not, but it’s always helpful to give them the opportunity to look at those questions.

Robert: Do you have a length that an average interview is?

Casey: Typically, 30 minutes.

Robert: That’s all?

Casey: I try to get it done in 30 minutes. If it’s a complex product or technology or solution that’s been delivered, then maybe 45 minutes. Yeah. But pretty much it’s a lot of questions that I ask in a short amount of time. I try to go through them quickly and if I’m finding that I can’t get to them all, I’ll drop out the least important questions and just make sure I’m focusing on the key aspects.

I wanted to add something. We were just talking about measurable results. One thing that I saw an independent consultant do that I found really effective and intriguing is before a project, she would go in and ask them a set of questions related to her business – she does HR consulting – and have some metrics, like “Rate this on a scale of 1 to 10.”



After she goes in and helps them with some of their problems and challenges, six months later or a year later, she would go back with the exact same questionnaire and have them fill that out and see how things had changed. So I thought that was a pretty creative way of measuring what she does, where it’s often intangible for her and her client.

Robert: Yes. That’s both brilliant and rare. You’re really thinking ahead.

Someone said this to me really well the other day. He said, “Robert, we’re in the success story business. We don’t want to be in the seminar business. We want to be in the success story business as the result of doing our seminars.”

They had changed the format of their seminars and then changed it back to the old format because it wasn’t getting as many good success stories. If you’re not getting success stories, then ultimately people aren’t as happy and the results aren’t there. Any way that you can measure that going in is helpful.

Alan Weiss is a famous management consultant. He asks people going into the engagement if they’ll do a case study or write a recommendation letter or something like that. He says, “If you’re happy with the services we provide, will you provide a story or recommendation letter after we’re said and done?” They all say yes. Then he follows up on that.

As a result, he has a book about 3 inches thick of success stories, which he uses that as a marketing tool. He plunks



this on their desk and says, “Here are a few people I’ve worked with.”

Casey: Wow! That’s impressive. Yeah, so he’s kind of planting the seed early.

Robert: Yes. And why not? Often we’re sort of afraid to ask. If you ask up front and make that a part of your whole marketing process, it also puts some pressure on you to do a fabulous job. You think, “I’m in this to get a great success story as well as produce a great result for you.”

Casey: Right. Absolutely.

Robert: It just works in your business to do that.

Casey: Right. Definitely, definitely.

Robert: I think I’d better ask that for the next group I’m doing. Note to self. Sometimes I have great ideas that I forget to implement myself.

Casey: Yeah. Definitely.

Robert: Let’s talk about the format. Now I’ve interviewed this person. Do you take notes, or do you record it?

Casey: I record my interviews, and at the same time, I type in the answers. I’ve been writing for such a long time that I just don’t 100% trust recordings. I type out my notes on the screen as we’re going along so that I’ve got two records of that.

I always ask at the beginning of the interview if they mind if I record it so it helps me with the writing process. I specify that so that they know this is not intended to just be posted on a website or something.



Robert: Do you use online recording software?

Casey: I do not. I use a little Olympus digital recorder that I hook to my phone. Then I can download that onto my computer.

Robert: Great. There are a lot of ways to do that these days, and we won’t go into all of that. It’s a pretty good idea to record it because some people can’t take notes that fast. You can always go back and have someone else transcribe it, or go through and transcribe it yourself as you’re writing the story.

Casey: Definitely.

Robert: Let’s talk about that format. Now you have all the information. You have all your notes. What is a good format for putting it together for its final use?

Casey: You have a lot of different options really. A one-page success story can be fairly short, or you can have a longer story that goes onto multiple pages depending on how much detail you go into. Most of the stories I really would recommend you keep on a couple of pages.

Robert: Not 10 pages, in other words.

Casey: Right, right. Yeah. There are some case studies that go long like that, but really, if you’re trying to show the problem, solution and results pretty succinctly, you can usually do it in a page or two.

Robert: I also want to point out that in your book, Stories That Sell, you go into this in a lot more detail. You have some examples. You even have some graphic examples like the breakdown of the customer story and traditional format.



For someone who really wants to get into this and really do it well, even better, I recommend you spend a few dollars and get her book. I’ll put a link to your book up on the website as well.

Casey: Okay, great. Thank you.

Robert: Is there anything else about the format? Do you have those three main sections as you talked about earlier?

Casey: I’m sure most of us have seen success stories that actually have those headings: Company Profile, Challenge, Solution and Results. I have really started to migrate away from that because those subheads don’t really tell you anything in themselves.

Robert: They’re very generic.

Casey: Yeah, they’re generic, and if someone is just skimming the page, it would be much better if the challenge, solution and results headlines actually said something and were more descriptive.

I tend to use subheads throughout the story which will tell a story in themselves. The subhead will speak to a benefit, and then the next subhead will speak to a different benefit.

Robert: Like “How They Increased Profitability by 20%.” The word “how” just pops out in the subhead.

Casey: Right. Definitely. You want to be writing for the readers and the skimmers, so you have a headline at the top that’s a really specific benefit that’s a strong benefit and some subheads through that are descriptive.



Then additionally, I recommend what I call a “sidebar summary” that goes along the side of the story that just is the whole thing at a glance: who the company is, what their industry is, what their challenge was, the solution that was applied, and three or four bullet points of results. Again, so that if someone isn’t reading the whole thing, they can just glean the story from the sidebar.

Once you’ve got that, you can use that content in so many different ways.

Robert: Let’s talk about that. What are some different ways that you can use this content? Now I have a story. I’ve put it in Word. What are some of the best ways to use it? We’ve mentioned, obviously, on a website. I suggest having a section on a website called Case Studies or Client Stories.

Casey: Right. Definitely, definitely. Even having a customer story featured on your home page is really effective. You might have just a little box down on the bottom or on the side that says, “Learn how Company X is saving 30%,” or “Reduce this process by 10 days,” or just something intriguing that will capture people’s attention when they actually go right to your site. I think that is one of the most effective things you can do on a website.

Nowadays, we have so many different opportunities to work these stories in. So once it’s captured, you can blog about the story and then link back to it on your site. You can tweet about a story on Twitter and link back to that.

Robert: “Client increases profitability by 50%. Learn how. Click here.”

Casey: Right. In 140 characters or less.



Robert: For those of you who are on Twitter. If you’re not, listen to the interview on that. We have one of those.

Casey: Right. So there are ways that you can send people back to that story. A lot of people have e-newsletters that go out. You can feature a customer in your e-newsletter or in a sales letter that goes out about an offer, product or service.

You can include a short anecdote from a customer story in emails and live presentations. Once you’ve gathered all the rich information from a customer, you can put it in a PowerPoint or mention the story when you’re talking with an actual prospect.

In proposals even. I have a book here that I’m getting ready to start reading and it talks about how to write effective proposals. One of the tips is including success stories in your proposal.

Robert: “We’ll use ______ approach as we did with XYZ Company.” What you’re really saying is that you’re making these stories the center of gravity or key element in your marketing. It comes back to that over and over again.

Casey: Right. What it is is someone else saying how great you are. It’s not you saying it. It’s someone else, and that is really influential. Especially if it’s someone in the same industry, then that really catches someone’s attention.

Robert: Definitely. I want to underline the one about emails. People are often saying, “What do I put in my email newsletter?” I say, “As often as you can, put in success



stories.” If you’ve interviewed a whole bunch of people, then you have something to draw from.

Sometimes it’s just a “We worked with a client recently,” and you haven’t even interviewed them. You’re just relating a quick story about them. But if you get into the habit of this, then it’s very attention-getting. It’s very persuasive, as opposed to “concept, concept, concept.”

Something I’m trying to do is always tell some kind of a little story in my ezine, no matter what it is. It just gets more attention and interest.

Casey: It definitely does. It’s absolutely true. I’ll mention just a few other ways that I see organizations using them, and really there are probably a couple different ways you can leverage the story information.

Contributed articles. A lot of us contribute articles to publications in our industries, so that’s a good way. Say, “Can I contribute an article?” Use a reference, use an anecdote from an actual customer to make your point.

You can include your customer story as the centerpiece of a press release as well. Start out with a powerful anecdote about how a customer accomplished this, and then say, “This is our new product launch,” or “This is the new service that’s available.”

Robert: “In this failing economy, XYZ Store increased their sales by 27%.”

Casey: Right. Exactly.

Robert: You’re turning a pitch into a story of a real person and a real result.



Casey: And the media’s looking for that.

Robert: Let’s hope so. Right now, we could use all the positive stories we can get.

Casey: It’s true. It’s true.

Robert: This is good. I hope everyone is starting to see that the story is the attention-getter. It’s the thing that gets people to say, “Hmm. I could have that as well.” It’s often a much bigger leap when you’re just talking about things conceptually, which everyone seems to want to do and no one is very interested in.

How do you make the stories even more compelling? What do you find are other elements in the story that are more persuasive or interesting, or get people to read it?

Casey: Okay. There are several different elements here. One of the main ones we have touched on a couple of times is to match the industry to industry, or the problem to the perspective customer’s problem, so that you’re hitting your audience with the same problem or a similar situation as they’re facing. That’s pretty compelling in itself to get someone to read a story.

Additionally, making it look more like a feature story and not just another corporate capabilities brochure. Maybe even something you’d see in a magazine. Maybe it’s got a photo of the customer or a graph, something a little more visual.

Robert: Then people wouldn’t even think of it as a “case study.” It’s like an article.

Casey: Exactly!



Robert: In that case, it could probably be a little bit longer too.

Casey: Right. Absolutely. With the interesting headline and interesting subheads that we’ve talked about.

Quotes are important. If you’ve ever seen a customer story written where they did not interview the customer and there are not customer quotes, it’s pretty flat. So as much as you can, try to get quotes from the actual customer. It really makes a difference because those are really the customer’s words.

Robert: As you’re interviewing them and transcribing that interview, some things just pop out at you. “I couldn’t believe that was even possible. When they applied that solution, there was some resistance at first, but then we got by and _____,” so it’s a real thing that they said.

Casey: Absolutely. Quotes are definitely very, very important. Measurable results really do make a story compelling. Be specific as much as you can be.

For example, I wrote a case study on an NBA basketball team and the arena that they were playing in. The actual arena managers were using software for this, and we really tried to get specific. There’s 500 employees that all come together to make this event happen, and there’s 120 events that take place in this arena every year.

Really gather details about your customer’s environment and pull those in. Pull in interesting details. Basically tell a story, in a nutshell.

Robert: I had someone interview my clients. We put the stories on my website in an interview format, with the questions and



the answers. It was edited and fine-tuned a bit. Do you ever do that format, and what do you think of it?

Casey: Yes, I definitely do. I like that format. It’s very authentic. I think readers know that that’s what you asked and this was the customer’s answer, so I definitely think that that is an authentic way of doing it. It’s one format of presenting a success story. I don’t do a lot of those unless the people I’m working with are doing more the story format, but it’s a perfectly valid way of presenting.

Robert: It wouldn’t be quite as good for a press release or an article.

Casey: Right, right.

Robert: It seems that on the website it works pretty well. It’s sort of like, “You worked with Robert. Why did you come to him in the first place? What was going on in your business? What happened as a result?” etc.

Casey: It’s nice. I think it has a really authentic quality. It’s a situation where you might want to add a photo of the actual customer, a head shot or something, where that’s another level of authenticity there.

Robert: We did that too. The point is that there are a lot of different formats. You probably want to pick the one that’s right for you and keep a similar format if you put a lot of case studies on your website, right?

Casey: Right.

Robert: Then you could take that, adapt it, and use it in different ways.



Casey: Right. Once you’ve got that information, use it every way that you can, with your customer’s permission.

Robert: Once you have it all written and put together, you have to get the approval from the customer. Tell us a little bit about that phase. How do you do that? How does it usually go?

Casey: Okay. Once you’re comfortable with the story and the company itself is comfortable with the story, pass it on to the customer. Usually email it over. Give them a call to let them know you’ve just sent it over in case it goes, with that attachment, into the spam folder or something.

The email usually says, “Thanks so much for your time. I’m sending the story that we created. Please get back to me with any edits or changes or questions.” Give them a few days to look at that.

They may say, “It has to go through our legal department,” or PR department, depending on how large the organization is. Then you just basically stay what I call “politely persistent” through the process.

Your customers are busy, so check in with them. Drop an email, phone call, just to say, “I just want to check in and see if you had a chance to take a look at it, have any changes,” so it stays a little bit on the radar screen.

Robert: Are you the one who does that if you’re interviewing them, or does the client sometimes do that?

Casey: I’m most often the one that’s doing that part, but it’s perfectly fine for the company or independent consultant



or professional to do that. It’s really a matter of just staying persistent with them until it’s approved.

They may come back and say, “We’re not comfortable saying this or that.” It’s just a little bit of a negotiation then, “If we can’t say it this way, can we say it this other way?” until everyone’s comfortable with it.

Robert: Then you’re good to go.

Casey: Right! Exactly.

Robert: Have you found that there are sometimes other benefits to your clients in getting these stories? Do they learn things about themselves that they didn’t know, which helps them make changes, like in their marketing message?

Casey: As a result of doing the case study, what I see happen most often is that a client or customer will realize that they really saw a huge benefit from the product or service and they didn’t realize it. Just the fact that they sat down and talked about it and documented it often makes them go, “Wow!”

It can be a pretty powerful process for both sides to go through, especially if that person that you interviewed wants to show a higher-up or an executive, “Look what our department did. We accomplished all these things with this solution.” It can be justification for hiring the consultant again or investing in the service again.

Robert: If they say that you walk on water, maybe you should call them back and see if you can walk on water some more.

Casey: Exactly! Exactly.



Robert: Have you ever had the situation where you’ve spent a lot of time putting together various stories and then they really didn’t utilize them very well after it was all said and done?

Casey: Definitely. For whatever reason, that happens, often in a larger organization. You create the story and then it’s maybe posted on the website, but it’s buried. It’s way down.

Robert: No one’s going to find it, so what use is that?

Casey: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve seen people put it in a section called Downloads.

Robert: I think it should be a top-level navigation, Case Studies or Client Success Stories, one of your seven or eight links. That should be one of the top ones that’s easy to find.

Casey: Absolutely.

Robert: Also, you can direct other pages to the Case Studies page. On your Services page, it can say, “Click here to learn how we did this with some of our clients.”

Casey: Definitely.

Robert: Or as you said, you can put the link on the home page in some cases. Really make it a center thing. It’s really a shame to go through all that work and then no one has the chance to read it. That’s crazy.

Casey: If no one finds it, then what’s the point of that? Sales reps and everyone should be taking it with them on appointments. They should be emailing stories to prospects. It’s just more in your favor.



Robert: It sounds like you want to have a story plan or a case study plan. The first step is finding out who to interview. Interview them, write it up, and put it all together. Then have a plan in which you’ll use those stories and really leverage them. First is to get them up on the website. Then there are all the other things we talked about.

That’s your homework, everyone listening to this. After you’ve done this, write down four, five or six things you could do, like integrate it into an ezine, put it into a press release, turn a couple of them into more detailed articles perhaps with the help of a writer, etc.

It’s such a powerful thing. This isn’t a very complicated how-to interview in a lot of ways. There are some tricks. Getting Casey’s book will help you do it even better.

It’s just the fact that we don’t do it at all, in some cases, and it’s just an untapped resource. I call it “latent marketing energy.” It’s marketing energy there to be tapped. If we’re not tapping it, we can’t get any mileage out of it.

Casey: Right. That’s really true. It’s there. I mean, you have happy customers.

Robert: Absolutely, but nobody knows. If it’s the best-kept secret in the world, it doesn’t do you any good. Essentially, marketing is communication about your services so that people will want to use them. Story is the most powerful way to do it. There’s no question about it. It’s making me think I could even do it better myself. I really could. We all could.

Casey: Well, how has it gone with your stories?



Robert: I’ve put them on my website. It’s hard to tell. It’s hard to really measure. I know, however, when I do ezine articles that integrate a story, they get better readership and better response.

Casey: Good.

Robert: I’m thinking of more ways to do that. Sometimes it’s a bit hard for me because I’m only working in these big groups. I don’t work really closely with individual clients.

Nevertheless, I’m going to make that a point to do a case study of some sort of everyone who’s going through this next Marketing Mastery program. Then I would integrate those stories into the sales letter, for instance, for the next program.

Casey: Right. Definitely. And there are ways to make it a little easier to collect the story. There are organizations that have a form on their website, a Share Your Story form. It’ll ask a few questions and have a few fields. “Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. What was the challenge? Why did you need this product or service? How are you using it? What have been the results?”

That simplifies it a little bit. You usually need a little button that they can click, “We can print your answers on our website” or “May we have permission to call you for more information?” That’s a good way of prequalifying customers and collecting some information from them.

Robert: I’ve seen things done for some internet marketers where they do case studies, interview people, sometimes even put the recordings up, and integrate those into a blog. It’s like a case study success story blog where it’s nothing but,



“Here’s my story and how it worked for me. This is what I did.” When you look through that, it’s very persuasive.

I spend a few thousand dollars on programs because of things like that, to tell you the truth, so I know it worked on me. It was because of their stories, unvarnished, un-touched-up and straightforward. “This is how it worked for me. This is what I did. This is what I learned.”

It all makes a difference. It’s so much more digestible than most marketing information.

Casey: It is, because you’re learning about how the solution works in action without even realizing that you’re learning. It’s not like you’re reading a white paper or a data sheet or product brochure or something. You’re learning in the process of reading something interesting, so it makes people more likely to continue reading.

Robert: I think we’ve covered most of it, Casey. This is great information. I hope it motivates people to take action. That’s what the club is all about, taking action. Do you have any final comments or ideas before we wrap up?

Casey: I would just encourage people to start collecting their stories and sharing those stories. Even if you just begin in a verbal way, not even writing it down, just hearing feedback from customers and then sharing that with prospective customers verbally is one way to start that doesn’t cost any money. It’s really easy.

Over time, begin documenting that so it’s something that you can use over and over again in so many different ways.



Robert: I tell people to make it part of what I call your “marketing conversations.” When you’re talking to somebody and they say, “What do you do?” you tell a bit and then say, “For example….”

If you have a few of those in your repertoire, and you haven’t just thought them up on the spot, but you have five or six stories that you thought through and you just tell them in a natural way, they’ll say, “I want to know more about that.” Good stories are more effective than anything else.

Casey: Especially, as we’ve talked about, if it’s similar to the prospect’s situation.

Robert: Casey, this was fun. Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. I think it’s going to make a difference for a lot of people. I can see them scrambling for their word processors right now. They’re putting stories together.

Casey: They’re picking up the phone to call their customers.

Robert: This is something I reiterate, but we really got into some of the nitty-gritty of how to do it. That really makes a big difference. Casey, thank you very much.

Casey: Thank you, Robert. I really enjoyed the interview and sharing the information.

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