October 5, 2022
There are plenty of stories you could share with your buyers.
You could have a story about how you ended up in your role (aka Origin Story), what values you stand for (aka Value Story) or how your company came up with that new product (Company Story).
These are all great, but if I had to choose one story that I’d tell for the rest of my life, which one would it be?
I’d choose the Customer Success Story.
A Customer Success Story is a story about a specific customer that you’ve helped overcome a major pain point.
In this article, you’ll learn 1) Why Customer Success Stories matter, 2) How to craft a Customer Success Story, 3) What makes a great Customer Success Story and 4) How it looks in real-life.
Let’s go!
We’re social animals.
Every time we make a decision, we ask ourselves either consciously or subconsciously, “How would someone else decide in this situation?”
This is why we check the reviews on Amazon prior to making any purchase, we go on imdb prior to watching any movie, or Yelp prior to going to a restaurant. We don’t trust our own judgment, but much rather the judgment of complete strangers.
The same applies to any sales conversation.
Your buyer is likely thinking, “How would someone else (boss, co-worker or a competitor) solve that problem? What would they do?”
That’s when you bring in a Customer Success Story.
Customer Success Stories are stories about satisfied customers that you or your company has helped overcome a major pain point.
Having listened to thousands of stories, I noticed that the most impactful Customer Success Stories cover four steps:
Now, go ahead, take a look in your CRM (or comparable), review the customers you’ve worked with and identify the ones that seemed satisfied working with you.
Found someone?
Write down a one or two bullets for each one of the four steps.
That’s your customer success story.
1. The customer is the hero
The protagonist should be the customer, not you. As Nancy Duarte put it in her book Resonate: You’re Yoda, not Luke Skywalker. You’re not the hero in the story. You’re the guide that helps the hero figure out what they need to overcome the challenge. So, share the story from your customer’s perspective.
2. It’s about a person
Your story will be much more powerful if it’s about a specific person and not a company. We as humans don’t care about companies. We care about other humans. Humans experiencing similar struggles and emotions as we do. So, try to tell your success story from the perspective of a specific person (e.g. end customer, head of purchasing, CEO, etc.).
3. It’s relevant
Before you share any customer success story, you want to be crystal clear on who’s the buyer that you’re trying to influence. What’s his or her company size, industry, geography and pain points. Once you’re clear on that you can craft a story about a customer that has a similar profile. Sure, most of the time, it’s tough to find a story that fits your buyer perfectly, but try to tick at least a few boxes. If you share something that is not relevant to your buyer, it can work against you.
Now, that you know what makes a great customer success story, let’s look into a specific example to show how these stories look in real-life. The example comes from one of my clients, Julia Winkler, who used that story when she worked as an Account Manager at Tricycle Europe.
“In August 2017, our agency was hired by one of the top three tech companies in Germany. We were asked to help the sales org improve their social selling. What that meant: Help them find and engage with target customers via social media such as Linkedin, Xing or Twitter.
One week later, I met with the CMO in Munich. In his office, the CMO told me, ‘Look, Julia. We’re dinosaurs. 99 out of 100 people in my team would much rather pick up the phone and call someone than send a message on Linkedin.’
At that moment I asked him, ‘How many times have you posted something on Linkedin in the last month?’
Cautiously, he responded, ‘Well, I haven’t posted anything this month…’
After that I said, ‘Look, I’ve been analyzing the social media activity of your management team. I’ve compared the numbers to the numbers of your competitors. It turns out that your team is 63% less active on social media. If you want to drive change in your organization, your management needs to lead the change.’
Well, the same day, we agreed to train the management team first on social selling and only then move to the rest of the organization. With management leading the way, the company managed to increase their social media activity drastically.
In fact, two years later, the CMO called me and said, ‘Julia, this is good stuff. Our social media activity has doubled since you came onboard. We’re now making billions through leads from social media. Thanks.’”
That’s it. That’s how you craft captivating Customer Success Stories.
Give it a try. Next time you find yourself pitching your product or service, try to share a Customer Success Story instead.
I guarantee that you’re customers will love it.
Want to truly master the art of storytelling? Then, check out this next article in which I share How I’d Learn Storytelling If I Could Start Over.
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